Chapter Twenty #2
Aiden had expected I’m going to tear your throat out or I’m going to fucking eat you .
But the idea of being left tore through him like a bullet.
His chin dimpled, voice thick and strained.
“Kelly called me while we were in Vegas. She told me not to go to Colorado. Said death follows me everywhere. I told you it was Camila on the phone, because I didn’t want you to freak out, and you’d just. .
. You’d just bitten me, okay? Red Rocks was one of our biggest tour stops, I didn’t know what the fuck to believe, I.
. . I had this naive, stupid hope that we could move on from everything.
I know how it sounds, all right? I know.
Those fuckin’ weird groupies were tracking us, and Cassie happened, and the party happened, and.
. . and we happened. . .” He tipped his head against the door, staring at the ceiling.
“Everything went to shit real fast after that.”
Shay sighed. “You should’ve told me about Kelly.”
“I should’ve told you about the ritual, too, but we conveniently forgot about that in Austin.”
“Tell me now.”
“It’s not an easy thing to talk about,” Aiden admitted.
Regret pinched the place behind his uvula.
Envy burned everywhere else. “I don’t know why I did it, but I.
. . I put your blood in my mouth that night.
I think to keep you, maybe. Swallow you.
It wasn’t part of the ritual, but I was a mess.
I hate thinking about it, but I can never stop thinking about it.
” He thumped his head against the door and closed his eyes.
“Anyway, the ritual had steps, and the second-to-last step, the binding—whatever that means—involved the blade meeting every ingredient. Your blood, dove feathers, pig’s blood.
When I drove the knife into the ground, I felt something.
I don’t know how to explain it, but everything went still.
The trailhead felt watched, I guess. Anyway, Cit did the same ritual in a different order.
I burned my intention last. Cit and her fucking minions burned theirs first. I. . . I. . .”
“It’s okay,” Shay murmured, standing just out of reach.
“It’s not.” Aiden cleared his watery throat. “I consumed my intention. They didn’t. I sealed my ritual with your blood. Cit’s ritual. . .” He inhaled a long, deep breath. “Was sealed with her blood and my blood.”
“You ate your intention?”
“Yeah, I ate the ashes. I know how it sounds, okay. I know. Just?—”
“And they didn’t,” Shay said, gently.
Aiden nodded. He fucking hated this. Wanted to claw through his skin and hide in the walls, incorporeal and untraceable.
But he had to look at Shay. Had to meet his eyes and blink away his selfish, shameful tears, and relive that night in the presence of its casualty.
“I don’t know what we did, but I think Laura absorbed their intent.
If she was the only person alive when we left, then she was the only vessel available for whatever Cit was trying to take from you.
Since the ritual wasn’t sealed with your blood, their combined intention didn’t have access to your power.
My best guess is Cit used the same shit I did to build her ritual.
When we interrupted whatever she had planned, we accidentally created another you. Just worse, probably.”
“Wait a second. Hold. . . hold on. You think Laura’s alive?” Shay asked, tilting his head. “Because we both watched her die. Really die, Aiden. Face-split-open, back-broken, coroner-on-sight— dead .”
“Yeah, well, I watched you die, too.” He chewed on his lip and pulled his phone from his pocket, passing it to Shay with the latest Roswell investigation update open on the screen. “Laura’s body went missing earlier today. You heard what Kelly said, we pushed our future off on her.”
Shay scanned the article. His mouth tightened and he made that soft, Shay noise, sighing wistfully through his nose. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I couldn’t,” Aiden bit out. He pushed away from the door and walked into the suite, throwing himself into the nearest chair.
“We were on the road with everyone, and you were going over the new album with Georgia, and I just. . . I wanted to hold onto the. . . fuck, I don’t know—safety, I guess—we’d found in Austin.
I was going to tell you, Shay. I just needed a minute. ”
Quiet filled the room. People laughed in the hall. Music echoed along Bourbon Street, sneaking between the French doors that led to a private terrace. Shay licked his fangs, a newly formed habit, and kicked Aiden in the shin.
“Every time I’ve had the chance to break your trust, I haven’t. Yet every single time you’ve had the chance to be honest, I’ve had to dig for the truth. Explain that,” Shay said.
“You almost ate me in a parking garage.”
“But I didn’t.”
“I poured my heart at your fucking feet in Roswell?—”
“After a trashy witch-cult almost murdered us.”
Aiden exhaled sharply. “What do you want?”
“I want you to trust me,” Shay said. He gripped the wooden armrests on either side of Aiden and met his eyes.
“I do trust you,” he hissed, turning away. More than I should, he thought. With my whole fucking life.
“Don’t do that—look at me.” Shay leaned until he caught Aiden’s flighty gaze. “I’m not asking you to turn your skin inside-out, I’m asking you to stop hiding from me. After all we’ve done, I think that’s fair.”
Aiden opened his mouth to speak, but Shay pulled on the red beads looped around his neck, cinching the rosary tight to his throat, and kissed him.
“Anything else you wanna tell me?” Shay asked.
“Kelly said my heart would get me killed,” Aiden said.
“It might.” Shay pulled him into a longer, deeper kiss. Fangs nipped his lip. “Mine did.”
Something bright and hot, like regret but angrier, filled his chest. He widened his legs, allowing room for Shay to place his knee on the chair, caging him against the patterned fabric. They stayed like that. Shay, holding his rosary like a leash, and Aiden, yielding.
“If I come back like you, it’ll be worth it,” Aiden said.
“You don’t want to be like me.”
“Then you don’t know me at all.”
Shay laughed in his throat. “Anything else?”
“Go if you want. I won’t stop you. But if you ever threaten to leave me again, I’ll put another knife in your stomach.” Aiden stretched his small, slender hand around Shay’s throat. “Is that clear?”
Shay’s lips curved. “Crystal.”
Before Aiden could kiss him or bite him or dig his fingernails into his skin, knuckles rapped the door and Dylan hollered, “Open up!”