Chapter Eight #3
Aiden chewed on his lip. His heart pushed against his ribs, searching for Shay and answers and excuses. “I don’t?—”
“Can’t lie to me, sweetheart. My stars might’ve changed, but yours haven’t.
Come into my house, call me a fraud, pretend I can’t see your heart.
You Ramírez witches,” she spat, shaking her head, “always messin’ with the unthinkable.
” Her soft-spoken, business voice was gone, replaced by a clipped southern accent.
She lifted her henna-covered hand. “We all do what we have to. I look the part to sell the product, but you? You’re too busy hoping he won’t see through to your core, hoping he won’t know what the devil does.
” She clucked her tongue like his mother used to.
“Think you’d be alive if he didn’t already know? ”
“There’s nothing to know,” Aiden snapped.
“You should ask your sister for help,” Kelly hissed, and started to cough. “And get a wrangle on your heart before it gets you killed.”
Aiden remembered the ache in his chest. Watching Shay try to breathe with a knife in his stomach. Remembered thinking, instantly, I take it back, give him back, I want him back . He swallowed around the lump in his throat and turned toward the door, halting at the delicate sound of three knocks.
Shay stared through the peephole. He exhaled a short, impatient breath, and walked into the kitchen, crouching in front of Kelly’s bent legs. “Fix your face and answer the door,” he said, sternly.
“Shay, we need to go. Like, now. Right now,” Aiden said.
Another three knocks.
“You, go,” Kelly said, gesturing from Shay to the sliding glass door.
She met Aiden’s eyes. “I’ll say our session ran late.
You’ll leave through the front once my next appointment is inside, otherwise my neighbors might make unfortunate assumptions.
” She got to her feet, smoothed her dress, and dabbed her wet cheeks with a dish cloth. “Coming, dear!”
“ Go ,” Aiden snarled, shoving Shay toward the slider.
Shay disappeared around the backside of the house.
Kelly sighed, donning her whispery work-voice.
The front door swung open. “Laura, is it? Hello, honey. Welcome. Apologies for the delay, but we were exploring deep, deep wounds. The kind a person hides,” she said, and turned her crystalline eyes to Aiden.
“Say hello to your sister for me, won’t you? ”
Aiden scooted aside, allowing a girl—teenager, maybe—to step into the foyer.
Her shiny black creepers thudded the floor and a striped headband fit over cropped teal hair.
Surprise quirked the corner of her lips.
“Oh, you ,” the girl, Laura, turned her narrow, fey face toward him, and plucked at the velvet gloves wrapped to her elbows.
“Well, I’ll be damned. See you later, rockstar. ”
“See you,” he said, awkwardly. He stepped around the groupie, recalling the way her eyes had found his backstage last night, and glanced at the psychic. “Have a nice day, Kelly,” he said, biting on her name.
Kelly shut the door. He heard the lock click .
Aiden filled his lungs, exhaling as he climbed into the passenger’s seat.
Shay hit the gas and sped away, hands perched on the steering wheel, face shielded by obnoxiously oversized sunglasses.
Aiden thought, keep your mouth shut, but still blurted, “Next time, maybe don’t throttle the fucking psychic. ”
Shay’s fangs left white lines on his bottom lip. He sped out of the neighborhood, blew through a stop sign, and pulled into a half-empty strip mall parking lot.
Oh, no .
A gasp filled the car. Music did, too. Scratchy radio tunes, Shay’s wolfish growl, and Aiden’s heartbeat skidding into his throat. Shay clamored over the center console, locked his hand around Aiden’s jaw, and slammed his palm on the window, caging him against the seat.
“I didn’t choose this, Aiden,” he barked, baring his teeth. His brows pulled close, onyx eyes fixed on Aiden over the rim of his glasses. “This happened to me. This was done to me. You did this to me. So, don’t you dare tug on my collar.”
“Shay—”
“I should rip your throat out,” he seethed.
“Yeah, you should,” Aiden whispered, swallowing hard. They were impossibly close. A breath away from colliding. “You’ve got power most people would kill for, and we both know I can’t stop you. So, put your new teeth in me. Go ahead, asshole.”
Shay slid his palm around Aiden’s slender throat and squeezed. “You’d tear easy, you know that? Split like a wishbone.”
“Yeah, just like you did,” Aiden said, and meant it, and hated himself, and wanted to say I’m sorry .
Shay pulled his mouth shut. Pain came and went, bolting across his black eyes, before he ripped his hand away and fell into the driver’s seat. Aiden subconsciously reached for his throat. Touched two fingers to the place Shay had held him.
One of their phones rang. Aiden didn’t move. Couldn’t move. His heart was a swollen, rotten thing, and he hated how it ached for Shay, to be like Shay, to have what Shay had, to have Shay in every possible way. He knuckled at his watery eyes and put on his sunglasses.
“Yeah, Georgia,” Shay said, holding Aiden’s phone against his ear. “Oh my God, stop yelling. We’re on our way back.”