Chapter Five
There he stood. Laken I-still-hate-you Augustus.
Stumbling back, I watched the blood drip from his nose and tears rise to the edges of his eyes.
Eyes I hated. Blue, but not like the sky or diamonds.
Notoriously dark blue, like the deepest parts of the oceans, taunting but dangerous nonetheless.
His short, messy, dark-blond hair highlighted by the Gods—if the Gods had favorites, he’d be one of them.
I was painfully aware of every movement he made.
Each breath he took. Laken wiped his nose, thick veins flexing over his skin—along with his…
tattoos? I focused my stare on his forearm, which I shouldn’t have.
A dark hooded figure at the base of his forearm swarmed with black swirls, like smoke.
The ink traveled up his arm and over his shoulder, barely visible under his shirt.
My gaze made it to his shoulder, then to his face, and his lips.
The same full lips that once devoured mine, the same strong jawline—sharp, but not sharp enough to make him look like an asshole; you know the type.
He’d changed, grown, matured, but… it was Laken. The same Laken I’d loved and the same one who abandoned me.
I didn’t know if my mind stopped working, if someone shoved a stopper into its gears, or if it straight-up abandoned me on the battlefield—but I couldn’t form words.
What the hell happened?
Watching him wipe his own blood from his lip, I remembered the ache in my knuckles. The clench of my jaw. The raging pants of my breath.
“Fuck, Reece, you can still pack a punch, can’t you?” His voice, a soft rasp, straightened my spine and snapped something inside of me back into place.
Be nice, I told myself. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
Laken straightened; his eyes traced my body yet wouldn’t meet my stare. His lips parted, then closed as if he couldn’t speak. “I’ve been looking after the place,” he cautiously explained, “until you got back.”
Of course. Of course, my father asked Laken to help. This definitely wasn’t the “family friend” I’d expected. I tried to hide the mother lode of knee-boggling pain begging me to aid my hand. “Why? And why the hell did it have to be you?”
Now he met my glare. His chin dipped like a dog that knew it was in trouble. “Reece.”
“Don’t,” I snapped. I slammed that door, refusing to hear another word of whatever bullshit he’d prepared. Standing, I secretly tried not to cry because what the fuck.
Laken’s shock at the venom in my tone was fleeting. The widening of his eyes so brief I almost missed it before he masked it with something else.
“Need some healing cream for your hand there? Maybe some numbing elixir?” he mocked, nodding toward my aching knuckles.
Feeling his attention too warmly on my skin, I staggered back. “No. Doesn’t hurt.” I snickered.
A sly chuckle. “Didn’t hurt me, either.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
His eyes met mine and my walls of rage crumbled.
It set in. He was in front of me again. And a new pain settled in at the reality.
My father taught him, trusted him, after never teaching me.
And Laken accepted that? My chest tightened as if a corset were tied around my ribs. Like a wound reopened, my insides bled.
Laken Augustus stood in my house. After three years. Where had he been? And how long had he been back? Why didn’t he reach out? Why didn’t he…
He halfheartedly let out a laugh with the ridiculous smirk capable of making my legs go limp. “You look good, McCarthen.”
And there it was. Laken’s inability to be honest or real, instead reverting to charm and jokes.
He flirted as easily as he breathed, and as often.
He always had, and it made everyone love him—made me love him.
Something about hearing his blasé voice and the lilt of his laugh set me off.
I wanted to rip my hair out, scream into an abyss, and crawl into a hole.
But currently, those weren’t readily available options.
“Get out.”
I shouldn’t have, but I watched his chest fall with a defeated breath. Gods damn it. A long silence took place before he solemnly said, “Yes, milady. Let me know if you need anything; I’ll be next door. Feeding instructions are on the desk.”
Before he could take two steps, I caught him by the elbow. I didn’t know what to say; I looked around the house trying to find something, anything, to keep him a little bit longer. For whatever reason.
“We have any goat milk?” Our dassin goat milk contained healing properties, which we turned into a lotion to sell.
“Yes.” Laken snickered, apparently not impressed by my not-so-subtle skills of keeping him. “I’ve also started resupplying the stock of healing cream because your father had stopped.”
Not surprising about my father, but good to know. “All their food?”
“That, too.”
Okay then. “What about the eggs? Have you checked recently?” I waited for his answer, secretly hoping he’d made a mistake. That he’d tripped up, blanked out, or was anything other than the perfect golden boy I remembered him as.
“This morning.” Damn.
“Good,” I prodded.
“Good,” he concluded, waiting in front of me for a response. I hate him.
With nothing left to say, and some embarrassment heating my cheeks from wanting to push him further, I stepped aside, and he moved for the door. He reached for the knob and then his words from before finally hit me—
“Did you say next door?”
Laken stopped, turning over his shoulder and leaning against the frame. “Yeah, I bought the Giblins’ place last year.”
Last year.
The words ached somewhere inside of me where he could not see—somewhere I can safely replay punching him—pounding my ribs like little jumping beans.
“You moved back last year?”
“No,” he said, and I decided to listen but keep my pissy-pant anger fuming internally. “I bought it last year. I came back about a month ago.”
“And,” I hedged cautiously, shifting my weight on my feet, “what are you doing here, exactly?”
His storm-filled eyes shut for a moment too long. His pompous smirk disappeared. “I had time off work. Your father needed help around the place, so I’ve been here.”
Right.
When I forced my eyes back to his, I didn’t see this Laken. I saw the old one, and a memory flashed in my mind.
There was a time, long ago, when Laken came over almost daily.
Back when I’d still considered him a boy and not yet a man, when our lives were intertwined as much and as often as our hands.
One spring day in particular, when flowers were just blooming and the breeze was calm, one of our hellblazers broke into the house and flew around hysterically, scorching the place.
Roasted Chicken—named by a nine-year-old with witty humor, as all the chickens were named after chicken entrees—wreaked havoc.
The difference between a regular chicken and a hellblazer is the latter spits flames.
And this mother-clucking flock had been rescued from an underground fighting ring—they were feisty.
Laken stumbled into the living room for shelter from the fiery feathers as I took to the kitchen.
Both of us ran, screamed, laughed, and tried to catch the damned thing without being turned into a human torch.
Laken dove behind the couch, but his leg caught our end table and sent a cup of water flying through the air—just perfectly enough to extinguish what became an angry but soggy chicken.
We were sixteen. And that was a different time.
“Right.” I swallowed. “Well, I’d roll over in my grave before needing your help, so I assume I’ll see you around sometime. Show yourself out.”
He grinned. Grinned. “Same old Reece.”
The door shut in my face.
I couldn’t pinpoint the exact cause of my anger. Having to return home? Laken? My father not telling me? Or how Laken actually left when I told him to?
Whatever the reason, I stayed for another moment after he left, basking in my fury and anxiety-induced sweat, wondering what I’d gotten myself into.
Tomorrow, I decided. I’d figure it out tomorrow.