CONNOR WAS EXACTLY WHERE I thought he’d be: in the living space, at the drafting table, focused on his sketchbook. He looked up and smiled as I stalked toward him, blocked his greeting with a kiss that nearly knocked him off his stool. Let sensation overwhelm me; sighed away the memory of Grey’s rage, and his insults, and his tortured, muddled eyes.
“Okay, then,” Connor breathed, brushing the hair away from my flushed face when he finally drew back, his own hair wrecked by my searching fingers. “It’s good to see you, too, Lane.”
“Sorry. I might have gotten carried away.”
“Yeah, not complaining. Something bothering you?”
“Nothing. Grey’s in a mood.” I pushed aside all thoughts of said mood, and everything it meant. Connor turned back to his sketchbook, hair falling forward to hide his face. “Sadie’s out there dealing with him. She said she’ll come get us after they mingle.”
“Too many people are here if shit has reached mingling capacity,” Paul yawned from his stool as I settled on the futon. “Laney, tell your boy to send his friends on home so I can get some peace.”
“This wasn’t my idea,” Connor said, shooting a look at the door. “I thought that was your crowd.”
“No. It isn’t.” Paul thumped his forehead against the sculpture. “If I catch the bitch responsible for putting these together every weekend, I swear to God.”
“Right there with you. Once Sadie gets back here, I’ll clear it out and shut down for the night.”
Paul nodded in approval, rolling out of my line of sight. I sighed out the last of my nerves, stretched my legs, reached for my toes. Lifted my eyes to meet Connor’s as he rose and walked toward me, holding my gaze. I tipped my face toward him, but he leaned past me, retrieved my knitting project from its paper grocery bag home beneath the futon, and tipped it into my lap; his follow-up kiss landed on my forehead. I smiled up at him, caught the edge of his answering grin as he resumed his work, and if that flutter in my chest even hinted at turning to butterflies, I’d rip it out with my own bare hands.
I flexed my fingers, picked up my needles, and let them set my rhythm. The blanket flowed over my crossed legs, warm and blue and ever growing.
“That’s really coming along,” Paul said after a bit. “Though I must say, every hour you spend on it is an hour you’ve spent here not wearing out my boy, so he may not be a fan.”
“Ha, ha,” I said, throwing a skein at Connor’s chuckling back. It sailed past him, and he went after it, dropping it back in my lap on the heels of a wink. “It was your boy’s idea in the first place. He even spun the yarn.”
“The poor girl needs something to do when I’m obsessing over work,” Connor said. “Oh, that reminds me, Lane. I have something for you.”
“ ‘Reminds’ you,” Paul scoffed. “Like you’ve had a single other damn thought for the past two days.”
“For me?” I blinked at Connor’s hesitant face, at the blush staining his cheekbones. The nervous fingers he ran through his hair. “It’s early for Christmas, isn’t it?”
“This isn’t a Christmas present. Consider it an apology, since I managed to traumatize you during the creative process.”
He reached into the shallow drawer of his drafting table and pulled out a bracelet, turned it over in his hands before offering it to me. I ran my fingers over the tarnished twists and folds, the intricate carvings, the inlay of tiny red sunstones—earth and fire, forged together in a flawless cuff. The memory rushed in and sucked me out to sea: the pale, blue-threaded underside of his wrist next to the darker lines of mine. A measuring tape and a sheet of copper. Blood-edged shears and a blood-edged blade, my hands trying and failing to close the wound I’d made in his.
“Oh my God.” I slid it on, blown away by its weightless, perfect fit, the way it seemed to grow from my wrist. No boy—no person had ever given me such a gift. “Connor.”
“Oh, thank Christ,” Paul said, swiping a sheet of sandpaper around the base of his sculpture. “He’s been all but soiling himself over that thing for weeks. If you didn’t like it, he’d probably give up the trade for good.”
Connor’s smile was a living thing, shy and radiant, as he leaned in to kiss me over the pile of yarn. I set my needles aside and closed my eyes, breathed him, slid my fingers through his hair, and pulled him closer. Knocked the pencil from behind his ear and tugged the air from his lungs on a low hum.
It was a different sort of kiss than the one I’d given him in greeting. This one sparked from a sweeter burn and grew from there, snaking along the path of my pulse. This was as close as I’d been to something real—a wisp of longing, a thrill of anticipation. A thread of fear, woven tight around my throat.
Butterflies, for sure. Fuck.
“I love it,” I whispered as he drew back. “Thank you.”
“It’s a pale imitation of its inspiration.” His smile widened at my scoff. “No contest at all.”
“The man and his muse,” Paul cackled from his stool as Connor stood, retrieving his pencil from the floor. “Keep that up, Laney, and you’ll get a matching cuff for the other wrist. Rings, necklaces, a fuckin’ crown—anything you want. Shit, you’re about to make me jealous.”
“Hands off, Paul,” I teased. “This one’s mine.”
Connor set his pencil on the table with audible finality. I caught him as he tackled me, sighing at the welcome weight of his body, the familiar way we fit. His words drifted into my ear, so soft they were nearly lost along the way.
“Am I?”
So wrong, to answer with a yes—risky to think, worse to voice. Impossible not to, when the endgame was that smile lowering to meet mine.
This was so very, very bad.
A collective whoop rang out from the front room, followed by yells and raucous laughter. Paul emerged from behind the sculpture, sneering at the closed door.
“And there’s the cue to shut it down. This all-artists-welcome arrangement is officially on my last nerve.”
“I’m on it.”
Connor dropped a last hurried kiss on my mouth and rolled off the futon. I sat up slowly, straightened my sweater, finger-combed my hair forward to hide my flushed cheeks. Suddenly wished I could take back my words and my nods, and whatever the hell had possessed me to let the previous moment spool out unchecked, as if I could just say those things and think he’d let it slide. As if it wouldn’t ruin us, to admit it might be true.
If I looked at him—if I let myself acknowledge his heart, or if he caught even a glimpse into the unsolved puzzle of mine—everything we were would unravel.
He moved around the room, collecting his dropped sketchbook and scattered pencils. I took a chance and slid off the futon, crept toward the door, wishing I were a little bit smaller. A lot more invisible would also do.
“Lane.”
My name stopped me in my tracks. I forced my lips into a small, painful smile, turned to meet his eyes. They were wide and bright, slashed through with raw streaks of hope, and oh God, there it was. What had I done?
“Yes?”
“Everything okay?”
“It’s fine. Just helping you find Sadie.”
“And Grey.” Paul rolled his stool slowly into view, then shoved off suddenly with his feet. He glided across the room, side-eye locked on mine, and drifted to a stop inches from the wall. “Your brother’s out there too. Wouldn’t want to forget about him.”
“He’s not my brother.”
I left it at that. I turned my back on both of them and stepped into the hallway, immediately choked on a waft of chemicals and vomit. The bathroom door was halfway open, and the light was on, which meant someone—hopefully not Sadie—was either in there making their personal business public, or they’d made a mess of the place and wandered off. I held my breath and knocked. Nothing. The door opened wider at the second tap of my knuckles, and I stepped inside, almost tripped over somebody’s outstretched boot. The spray bottle lay on the floor next to it, diluted bleach water dripping slowly from its cracked nozzle. My heartbeat doubled. I recoiled from the sharp, familiar stink, fighting back a strange scuttle of panic.
“Oh. Sorry. I—hey.”
The guy slumped against the wall in front of the puke-spattered sink, chin-to-chest, legs askew, face hidden by greasy hanks of blond hair. Shirt and wall coated in what hadn’t made it to the basin. Paul was going to be pissed.
“Dude, come on—at least get over the toilet. Are you okay?”
He shifted and moaned, head rolling to the side in a half-assed approximation of a nod. Close enough.
“All right, then. Let’s get you up.”
He heard me, at least. His head bobbed again, and he reached up, his hand all bones and scabs and chapped, stained fingers closing around mine, nail beds cracked and packed with grime, and what the hell was I doing. He was high off his ass, oddly familiar, and oh man, was he a mess. Skin like an old book binding, cracked and weathered. Mouth a decrepit graveyard of sores and rotten teeth. Eyes a scatter of burst blood vessels edging deep-space pupils. He was barely older than me.
I knew that face. I’d seen it on a street corner, shy and skittish, smiling at the promise of hot coffee. Seen it twisted in a sneer a million years ago, the day Connor taught me to spin yarn: Aiden, who broke locks and stole tools, got himself ousted from the fringes of the fringe. Who stretched out his shirtsleeves, to hide his shaking hands.
So weird, how life unravels people, weaving their loose ends into yours, thread by thread. This boy—this Aiden, who wasn’t even supposed to be in the warehouse, let alone coating its interior in vomit; the world had juxtaposed us yet again, insistently and inexplicably, as if determined to make him stick. Damn if the third time wasn’t the fucking charm.
I had a single goal: locate Sadie and Grey. I was fully justified to go do that, and let Paul scoop this kid off the floor and howl about the bathroom. Let Connor figure out the fastest, most efficient way to remove him from the warehouse without trailing muck all over the place. Let them scour puke off the wall and sink; maybe send Grey home for a spare smudge stick while they were at it, to cut the stench of soiled clothing and unwashed skin. This was their place—this wasn’t my concern.
But that was the thing—this guy, Aiden? He wasn’t anyone’s concern. Hadn’t been for a long, long time, from the look of him, and what the hell was my problem, that I could so casually wash my hands of a human being? What kind of shitty hypocrite was I to walk away, when I’d spent the past month wrapped around a boy who’d suffered the same indignities and indifference for so long?
The least I could do was help this person stand.
I actually couldn’t, though. He was deadweight and limp limbs, way too heavy to lift. There was no way this would work without getting in close, wrapping my arms around his sick-damp torso. I wasn’t sure I had that in me, good intentions or no—but I never had the chance to find out.
Aiden’s eyes snapped open all at once, inches from mine. They skittered around the room, and there was no spark of recognition or any other thing, only haze; then a sudden flare of panic, and then nothing but whites and burst-vein red as he seized, limbs convulsing, neck locking. Hand crushing mine in a spastic, concrete vise.
The world caved in. I tripped on my own feet and fell hard, took the brunt of the floor in my left knee. Found myself on his level, eye to eye, and if I could just get him off the floor—get the blood flowing to his arms and legs—if I could help him find his footing, he’d take over from there. He’d walk it off. He’d be fine.
I tried. I doubled my grip and dug in my heels. Tried so hard to stand again and pull him with me, until my wrist popped, and my foot slipped, and I landed back on my knees, and what was I doing, I couldn’t help him. I couldn’t begin to unwreck this train.
“Get up. Get up, get up, oh God, stop. Please, please stop.”
And he did. His tremors subsided, his head lifted, his eyes hooked on mine, and it wasn’t any better, that stillness—it would never be better again. His scabbed lips parted around a wet gasp. His body curled in on itself, slumped like an unstuffed doll. Released its contents, breath and waste, and it was that same dank stench—that same filth, overwhelmed by eye-stinging bleach; the tiles hard beneath my knees; the flow of still-warm blood around my tiny, bare feet; her face, icy to the touch; his hand, rough and cooling, already changing around my fingers. How was this happening again? How had I doubled back to this place?
“No.” The word was a whisper, building to a wail, filling and then spilling from my mouth. “No. No no no no no.”
“Lane? What’s going on?” Connor’s voice reached me before he did. “Are you—oh. Oh God.”
“Connor?” Sadie was a trill in the distance, tripping toward us in a slur of twang and unsteady footsteps. “Connor, what is it?”
“Sadie, stay back.” He was close, then closer, prying my hand from the literal death grip. Catching me as I sagged against him, holding me tight to his pounding heart. “Get Paul. Tell him—oh God. Oh my God.”
“Tell him what? Grey, baby, can you—where did you go? Connor, Grey was right here. I think he’s—oh, Lane, there you are. What’s happening?”
“Get back, I said!” Connor’s voice ripped through me even as she defied him, weaving her way into the tiny room. Choking on her drink as she took in the sight at my feet.
The thing in the bathroom, slumped sideways, stuck between the sink and the wall—just a thing now, though at one time it had been a he. A pitiful scarecrow of a he, all jitters and sores and underfed limbs. I don’t know if he’d known me at the end, recalled my eyes or my hair, or the nervous tilt of my chin, but it didn’t matter. His eyes stared through me; his mouth listed open, as if poised to speak. As if he hadn’t yet realized he’d never say another word.
Aiden. Another dead body on another bathroom floor.
And just like him, I couldn’t make a sound.
Then Sadie found her voice, and her screams were more than loud enough to compensate.