Chapter 26
chapter
twenty-six
Tobias sat on the edge of the bathtub and examined his slit cheek in the mirror.
He could let it heal without stitches. The knife he’d slipped Josh wasn’t silver. He would probably heal fine without it.
But he’d feel better without a literal hole in his face. So he sighed and held up the curved needle he’d pulled out of his first aid kit, threaded with a spool of dental floss.
“Stitchy,” he said solemnly. “We meet again.”
Stitchy the curved needle said nothing. Tobias wished painkillers still worked on him, then he could blame this behaviour on loopiness and not the pathetic loneliness dogging him every time Alexander told him to leave. Also it would make the next part easier.
He grimaced and raised the needle.
His front door opened. Tobias shot up, only relaxing when Alexander’s cool, clean scent washed into the bathroom.
“Did you pick my lock?” he called.
Alexander ignored him, striding into the bathroom like he’d been invited. He made a face at Stitchy the curved needle.
“You should invest in medical thread,” he told Tobias.
Then he grabbed it and took Tobias’s chin, twisting it to examine the wound in his cheek.
Tobias grinned. He knew he had caught a flicker of hesitation when he’d asked Alexander to follow him out of that motel room.
“Stop smiling,” Alexander said. “You’re stretching it.”
Tobias obeyed reluctantly. “Your parents didn’t put you on—ow—scrubbing duty?” he asked, pausing to wince at the needle going through his cheek.
Alexander didn’t chide him for flinching, like he expected. He just pulled a careful line of floss out the other side of Tobias’s skin.
“I told them I had to go to work,” Alexander said. He sounded distracted, like he was still going over it in his head. But his hands were steady and his gaze was focused as he slotted the needle back in, gentler than the first stitch.
Tobias laughed, making sure to keep his mouth still for it. “Bet they loved that. Baby Alex can’t bend to their every beck and call, he’s got a big boy job now.”
“They know they’re my first priority,” Alexander replied.
Tobias held back a bitter smile. It was difficult to be that cut up about it when Alexander had lied to his parents to come and stitch up his cheek.
Blood dripped down Tobias’s chin. Alexander wiped it up with his own sleeve, and Tobias watched his blood dirty the crisp material.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Alexander said. His tone was so soft Tobias wanted to kiss him for it.
“Done what? Gotten stabbed?” He turned his head purely to feel Alexander twist him back, his fingers digging into Tobias’s wet jaw.
“If my mother says he didn’t have a knife,” Alexander said. “Then he didn’t have a knife.”
Tobias rolled his eyes. Josh had been worried, too. All hissing whispers and shaking as Tobias cut him free and pushed the knife into his hand.
Just do it, Tobias had said. You do what you’re told, right? Give me your best shot.
And Josh did. He even apologized after, staring at Tobias in gaping shock before Tobias gestured wildly for him to get the hell out.
I didn’t mean to get you so bad, Josh had blurted.
Tobias believed him. Josh really hadn’t wanted him to get hurt, in the motel room or in that arena. But he was building a life. And Tobias was in the way of it. If Tobias had grown up like Josh had, he might have done the same thing.
“I could see where your parents’ ‘interrogation’ was going,” Tobias said icily. “That kid wasn’t gonna give them any information they didn’t already have. I’m not sorry for saving his life.”
Alexander said nothing. He tugged one last neat stitch through Tobias’s cheek and snipped the line free. Then he sat back to examine his work.
“Gonna storm away now?” Tobias asked, unable to stop himself. “Back to your parents’ side?”
“I was always on their side,” Alexander said absentmindedly, twisting Tobias’s chin to examine the stitches under the light.
Tobias blinked. Not what he meant, but whatever. He knew he should let it go, let himself be happy with the crumbs Alexander was giving him, but he was growing more desperate each time Alexander took one step toward him then two steps back toward his family.
“You’re listing,” Tobias insisted as Alexander cleaned his face with smooth, even swipes of an antiseptic wipe. “You’re thinking about running away with me.”
Alexander laughed hoarsely. “I would never.”
He stepped up to the sink, nudging Tobias to the side with his shoulder to rinse Stitchy the curved needle. His fingers were wet with Tobias’s blood. Tobias had a bizarre urge to put them in his mouth.
He moved behind Alexander and rubbed his nose along Alexander’s hair, breathing in that tantalizing scent of mate. Alexander tensed at the touch. But only for a moment. Then he went back to washing the needle.
“You don’t have to live that life,” Tobias said. “You can do whatever you want.”
The words sounded familiar. It wasn’t until Alexander scoffed in disbelief that Tobias realized it was pretty much word for word what he’d told Josh back in Alexander’s parents’ motel room.
He hadn’t noticed the parallels at the time, too busy trying to come up with a way to get Josh out of there in one piece.
Alexander placed the needle back in Tobias’s first aid kit and tried to zip it up, pulling it determinedly over a broken section. “You keep asking me to run away with you. I think you have a different idea of what we are.”
He did. Tobias knew that. He thought they were destined, death-do-us-part mates.
For all the good it did them. But he also knew that Alexander was lying out of his ass, and he was getting worse at hiding it.
He couldn’t even look at Tobias when he said it, and it had nothing to do with the broken zipper.
He grabbed Alexander’s sleeve, still damp with Tobias’s blood, and dragged it up between them to show Alexander the stain on the otherwise pristine fabric.
“I think you know exactly what we are,” Tobias said. “And you’re too much of a coward to admit it. And shit, maybe it’d be smarter to just give up on you! But you know what, Alex? Unlike your family, I think you’re worth fighting for.”
Alexander’s hand went slack in Tobias’s grip. He stared at him, eyes wide, with a vulnerability that Tobias had only seen when he was balls-deep inside him.
He watched Alexander’s throat work. There was a fleck of tap water on his Adam’s apple that Tobias wanted to suck off.
“They were going to get me to—” Alexander paused. His expression shuttered. “To put him down. In the motel.”
Tobias was filled with such rage it choked him. Josh was a two-timing jackass, but he was still growing his first batch of facial hair, for god’s sake. And those butchers would have made their nineteen-year-old son put him down like a dog.
“They said it was because they were finished interrogating him,” Alexander continued. “But they just wanted me to prove myself.”
“Huh,” said Tobias, proud of how calm he managed to sound. He dropped Alexander’s sleeve and rubbed leftover blood into Alexander’s chin. “Think they’re gonna ask you to kill me?”
“They wouldn’t,” Alexander said quickly. “I—”
He stopped. He didn’t make a noise about the blood Tobias was smoothing into his barely-there stubble, too busy staring intently at Tobias.
Like he was imagining holding a silver blade to Tobias’s throat, watching his skin sizzle.
Like he was standing above him with a shotgun pressed into his chest.
“You what?” Tobias dragged a bloody thumb to Alexander’s mouth, rubbing his scent all over him. His parents had their claws in him, but Tobias was inside him too. Deeper than they knew.
“I thought my soul was dust,” Tobias said. “Right?”
Alexander said nothing. His eyes were shiny. He blinked hard, as if holding back tears.
“Alex,” Tobias whispered. “Baby.”
Alexander made a broken noise and swayed toward him.
Tobias’s cheek throbbed. He ignored it. It didn’t matter, not with Alexander looking at him like that.
But before either of them could close the distance, Alexander’s phone rang.
“Ignore it,” Tobias said.
Alexander hesitated. Then he pulled back, shoved a hand into his pocket, and brought his phone out with a frown.
“It’s Donna,” he explained. He cleared his throat and held the phone up. “Donna, hello. I was going to text you, I can come in tomorrow.”
The other end of the line was silent. Static crackled.
The hairs raised on the back of Tobias’s neck.
Alexander looked at him, his blond brows furrowing. He felt it too, Tobias could tell.
“Donna,” Alexander repeated. “Are you there?”
He tilted the phone out. Tobias leaned in to listen, heart dropping as the seconds passed in silence.
Finally, a harsh drag of breath.
“I’m…I’m at home,” croaked Donna shakily. “He said…he said you’d come—”
The line cut off.
They stared at each other. The bathroom suddenly felt so much colder than when Alexander was leaning in thirty seconds ago.
“Shit,” Tobias spat. “We gotta—”
But Alexander was already moving, running to his bedroom toward his insane collection of weapons. He ripped open a duffel bag and rifled through the gleaming silver.
“Where are the girls?” Alexander barked.
“They said they were doing touristy shit for the rest of the evening.”
Alexander swore. “I’ll call my parents. It will take them about five minutes to drive over, but—what are you doing?”
Tobias didn’t answer. He was too busy rifling through Alexander’s pocket, bringing out a small, immaculately maintained lockpicking kit that Alexander never went anywhere without.
“The girls are doing tourist shit,” Tobias explained. “But Steve-van is sitting pretty in the parking lot.”
Alexander stared at him. Then he grinned, so bright and proud that for a moment Tobias thought everything might be okay.
Then Alexander forced the smile down, and Tobias remembered what kind of story they were in.