Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Kit
I'D SPENT AS MUCH OF THE day and evening as I could with Marion and Agnes, telling them all about what Meggie said last night and listening to them try to reassure me that even if I was half-fae—whatever that meant—they loved me anyway. It didn’t change who I was.
But didn’t it?
It sure changed who I thought my mother was.
I’d dreamed last night of her running her fingers through my hair, magic tingling in her touch as she sang me that haunting, beautiful song again.
More lyrics and details surfacing. But if she was fae, weren’t they supposed to be hard to kill?
Did that narrow down the suspects? Was the other fae Meggie mentioned involved?
It might explain the mystery magic that killed both her and my father. Not a strange spell but fae.
I was tempted to head back to O’Shea’s and ask Meggie more questions.
Especially since being back in an empty house reminded me I’d been in Halifax a week and was no closer to finding my brother and his wife.
Their wedding photographs hung on the walls; their clothing hung untouched in the closet and sat in drawers.
The empty shell of their lives surrounded me, and the bleak prospect they might never return to it solidified by the day.
Hope is a terribly fragile thing, and mine was crumbling to dust in my palms. I was in the kitchen steeping tea when quick nervous taps sounded on the front door. Like whoever it was had been halfway to changing their mind before going through with it. Frowning, I went to answer.
Gus stood on the front steps. The top buttons of his rumpled shirt were undone beneath his open jacket, his dark hair damp from the light mist and tousled by the wind.
He was red cheeked, and I suspected he’d walked from home.
But the hollowness of his gaze concerned me.
He was looking through me, not at me, and the hairs on the back of my neck prickled with unease.
“Is it Ted?” I asked, forcing my words out through chilling fear.
He blinked and finally focused on me, shaking his head slightly before he cleared his throat. “I haven’t heard from my contact yet. No news.”
Relief was slow to come. I couldn’t relax when he looked like he was barely holding himself together. “What happened?”
He sucked in a quick breath and looked at his shoes. “Can I come in?” The lost sound of his voice tore through me, pulling at my heart.
Why was it that Gus could still affect me like that?
Stepping back, I motioned him in, and led him to the sofa in the sitting room. He sat on the faded floral cushion, staring at the floor.
“Gus?”
“It… uh. I got a call from Russell—my boss. He was… my father went missing again, just before you got back to town. Russell was looking into it. We thought he just took off on Hazel and the kids like…”
“Like he did to your mother?” It was almost a year after I left when Tillie finally told me they were divorcing.
I’d asked about him in my letters, thinking I was being polite, not knowing I was delivering papercut after papercut with my curiosity.
She’d never explained what happened; all she said was they weren’t together anymore.
A couple years later, Ted told me he’d gotten married to the woman he’d left Tillie for.
Privately, I’d thought he was a dolt. Tillie was one of the most wonderful women I’d ever known.
“That’s what we thought.” Gus’ voice was devoid of emotion, but a muscle flickered in his jaw as he clenched his teeth.
“Did he?” I prompted. He wouldn’t be here if he didn’t need me for something, and me getting Gus to talk when he wanted to guard himself had always been one of the patterns of our friendship.
Gus shook his head, and I sat on the sofa beside him. Not close enough we were touching, but close enough to offer support. If he wanted it.
“Russell found his car in a deep ditch. He must’ve gone off the road, and his car got wedged upside down against a tree.”
Closing my eyes, I let out a slow exhale. No matter how nonexistent their relationship was, I knew Gus would never wish for this. I wanted to hold his hand, but what if he didn’t want me to?
“He tried to get out, but he was trapped. He died alone and frightened and hurting.” His voice wavered slightly, his control over his emotions slipping.
“Gus…”
He shook his head again. His eyes were wet, and his lip trembled, but he blinked hard, clearing away the start of tears I knew from experience he’d never let fall.
This time I couldn’t stop myself from reaching for his hand.
My heart squeezed painfully as I remembered sitting on a similar sofa one house over, after Elsie’s funeral.
Ted had been upstairs reading a book in Gus’ room, and John was playing with a wooden train set behind the sofa with Henry.
Tillie had gone up to bed looking pale and older than she really was while Mr. North went out back to shovel snow from the steps and path.
When I’d offered to do it for him, he’d looked at me blankly for long moments before quietly turning me down.
So I’d sat on the sofa next to Gus, covertly holding his hand in mine beneath our pressed together thighs. Neither of us were talking, but I couldn’t stop my tears. Gus was stoic and dry-eyed, looking at the picture of Elsie smiling at us from the wall.
“It’s okay to cry, you know,” I told him, shakily, guilt eating me alive. “When it hurts this bad, when it’s something this big, you don’t have to keep it in.”
The hard expression on his face melted, and he glanced over at me, his own eyes watering a little as he took in the wetness on my face. I’d wished I was dead instead of her. Wished I could take back that whole night. Never gone with the Norths that weekend, so she’d be here right now.
“I can’t,” he said, husky and strained. “If I start crying, I’ll never stop.” Gus didn’t even check if anyone was around before he lifted the hand that wasn’t holding mine to gently wipe away the tears on my cheek. “Maybe you’re crying enough for both of us…”
Now, Gus said in a hushed tone, “There were six of us. Now there’s just three.
I don’t even want to feel anything about him dying.
He left us a long time ago and never looked back, but I keep thinking about the times he took me fishing and camping.
Or when he’d read us a bedtime story with Elsie in his lap and the rest of us huddled around his chair.
I hated him, so why am I so cut up? It’s not fair. ”
My eyes burned, thinking of John and Elsie, and now, Mr. North.
I didn’t want to cry, had trained myself not to when anyone else was around, but I couldn’t stop it.
Tears blurred my vision and overflowed for everyone Gus had lost. For the little boy who’d worshipped his father until everything went wrong.
Uselessly, I wiped my face with the wrist of my soft long-sleeved undershirt and sniffed. “It’s really not fair.”
“No.” His fingers clenched around mine, like he’d just noticed I was holding his hand. Gus wet his lips and finally looked at me with dark eyes. “Just for tonight, can we pretend things didn’t go wrong between us?”
My heart faltered in its rhythm, another tear splashing down my cheek. “August…”
“I can’t.” His voice was broken glass. “I can’t talk about them or him. I don’t want to think tonight. I'll do it tomorrow, okay? Just, please, Lovely.” And this time he said it with that hint of sweet desperation that had always coloured our time alone. “Pretend with me.”
Before I consciously decided, I was agreeing. To heck with how badly this would hurt later, how bloody and ground up my heart would come out of this. I’d never been able to deny Gus anything. Not when he needed me like I was the only thing keeping him from ripping apart at the seams.
Gus took a steadying breath that I copied. “If we were still together, you’d have taken me to bed,” he said. “You would’ve made it all go away for a while and then held me together after.”
I hesitated. He wasn’t wrong. Gus didn’t let himself be comforted in many ways. Same as he didn’t much know how to give comfort. “Gus, I don’t know…”
“Please?”
My heart raced too fast, all nerves. My skin was too tight, every part of me too hot, emotions roiling, but Gus needed me. I could do this for him even if it would kill me later.
I could.
Pulling us both to our feet, I kept a grip on his hand as I led him up to the guest room I was staying in.
It used to be the one Ted and I had shared as children but had long been converted.
A forbidden shiver raced up my spine. We’d fooled around in Gus’ room plenty, but never mine.
He’d had his own, so there’d been privacy from younger siblings I didn’t have.
At the reminder of Ted, I forced away remorse and fear. Gus wasn’t the only one running from his problems tonight.
Shutting the bedroom door behind us, I backed Gus up against the solid wood, our bodies a breath apart in the dark. Faint streetlight filtered past the edges of the curtains, enough to see by. “Are you sure?”
His shadowed eyes studied me, gaze dropping to my mouth and back up again before he drew me in with one hand on my hip and another sliding into my hair, cupping the back of my head, guiding me into a kiss that devastated and owned me.
The pressure of his firm lips against mine tingled awareness through my body.
The strong slide of his tongue into my mouth was hot and demanding.
Nipping at my bottom lip, Gus scraped his teeth along the firm swell as he pulled away before diving right back in.
I clutched at his arms, focused on staying upright and kissing back as my knees threatened to buckle.
Every single raw and broken piece of my heart reverberated, and my body followed suit.
Losing myself in Gus was easy, perfect, and that was a problem.
For later. It was a problem for later, because right now the gut-punched sound Gus let out when I stroked his tongue with mine wiped thought clear out of my head.
When he tried to walk me toward the bed, I pushed back, forcing him harder against the door. My breath gusted over his damp lips as I said, “Not so fast. We’ll get there when I’m good and ready.”
Groaning, Gus dropped his head back against the wood and his hips twitched forward, rubbing his trapped cock against mine. The friction was so good, I helplessly thrust into it before stilling.
“When I am good and ready,” I repeated, brushing the hair back from Gus’ face as I pulled him into a slower kiss, deep and sweet with an edge of teasing that drove him wild against me.
Sliding a hand between us, I cupped the hard ridge of his cock, grinding my palm down the length.
His deep moan vibrated against my mouth as I worked him, massaging firmly while he bucked into my touch, his fingers curling around my hips with bruising force.
My own sound of pleasure made him shudder against me, reminding me how much he loved auditory stimulation.
Releasing his mouth, I rasped my teeth along the sharp edge of his jaw, tongued just below the hinge before moving to suck his earlobe into my mouth.
Then I let out a hot little whimper next to his ear, exactly the kind that used to—still did—he gasped and shook and sighed my name, so I did it again as I rubbed my throbbing erection against the thick, muscled thigh he’d slid between my legs.
“You feel… so good,” I whispered, squeezing my fingers around him, kneading my palm up and down. “You’re so hard for me, aren’t you? Do you like it when I touch you like that?” Teasing the shell of his ear with my tongue, I kept touching him as I made another breathy sound. “Such a—”
His body locked up, teeth grinding as he shuddered and jerked in my grasp. “No,” he grunted. “Fuck!”
My hand froze, and I leaned back to take in his expression.
His eyelids were slammed tight, a furrow between his brows, caught somewhere between ecstasy and humiliation, his breath held as he pulsed against my palm.
Shock and lust flared equally bright, sending a throb of pleasure right to my aching balls.
Had I seriously just made him come in his pants?
From a little rubbing and some panting in his ear?
Gus slowly stopped twitching, his face and neck flushing dark as he slumped against the door, his head falling back to bang painfully hard against the wood.
God, I had.