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I was shaking. I couldn’t stop. “Why?”
“Because you filled a hole in me I didn’t even know was there. You make me complete. You make me happy. I see you, Robbie. I see you.”
He pulled me against his chest, wrapping his arms around me. I buried my face in his neck, breathing him in as I shuddered and shook. He whispered quietly to me in that gravel-sick voice, saying, “Robbie, Robbie, Robbie, you’re here. You’re with me. You’re safe. You’re home. You’re home. You’re home.”
I was breaking, collapsing in on myself. It ripped through me, tearing everything that stood in its way. In the dust and ruins of all that remained, there was only him and me hidden away from the world that moved around us. I was scraped hollow and raw, and I tried to find the words to say what it meant, what I was feeling, how desperate I was to believe every single thing he’d said.
And when I finally spoke, I spoke from the depths of everything I had left.
I said, “I’m going to love you again, okay? I promise.”
He held me tighter, and his breath was warm in my ear. “I know.”
Eventually we slept.
blood
The end of this life hidden behind a barrier of magic began on a Tuesday in the middle of June.
This is what we saw:
I sat at the front desk at Gordo’s, frowning at the appointment calendar. Chris had taken a few calls while I was at lunch, and he’d screwed something up. He’d apologized, patting me on the shoulder telling me he just knew I could fix it.
I scowled after him as he walked back into the garage, whistling as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
My bad mood didn’t last. Kelly brought me lunch again, and we sat out on the sidewalk in front of the garage, eating and talking about nothing in particular. We hadn’t forgotten everything that was looming around us, but we acted like we had. If I tried hard enough, I could almost convince myself that everything was fine.
The sun was out.
The air was warm.
There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. If I looked hard enough, I could see the faint sliver of the moon suspended above us. We sat close, his shoulder pressed against mine.
He said, “I don’t want you to sleep in the basement anymore. You don’t need to. You have a room, Robbie. You need to use it.”
“I know. Ox said the same thing yesterday.”
“You should probably listen to him. He usually knows what he’s talking about.”
“Usually?”
Kelly rolled his eyes. “He’s an Alpha. You know how they are.”
“I can hear you!” Ox shouted from somewhere inside the garage.
“Good!” Kelly yelled back. “I wanted you to!”
And I smiled at him because I could. I felt settled in my skin, and things weren’t perfect, but we could pretend. We could pretend we were just two guys getting to know each other without worrying about everything that lay ahead.
It all came tumbling down an hour after Kelly left to head back out on patrol.
It started with Gordo.
He was saying, “Tanner, give Mrs. Warren a call. Tell her that we have to order the parts to—”
Something crashed inside the garage.
I was up before I even thought about it.
