NERO PULLED into a parking spot next to Mr. Collier’s truck, but he knew Josh wasn’t going to let him drop that bomb and just disappear, so he tried to minimize the damage. “It’s not as bad as it sounds.”
“It sounds like, in a moment of shock and grief, you did the one thing guaranteed to screw you over. And possibly everyone else too.”
Yeah, he’d considered that. Long after the fact, of course, but that was one of the things that kept him up at night.
“Enough with the stoic shit,” Josh huffed. “What—exactly—did you say? And I do mean exactly.”
“I don’t exactly remember.”
“Mother of—”
“Stop being so dramatic,” Nero snapped. “I’m not even supposed to be talking to you about this.”
“Screw that. Talk.”
Nero sighed. If only it was that easy. If he gave Josh the full details, then Bitterroot was going to make him pay. Period. But at the moment, Nero didn’t care. He owed Josh the truth. More than that, he wanted to tell him the truth. It was too heavy a burden to shoulder alone. “Bitterroot owed me a favor, so I called him and got a mulligan.”
“Bitter—you know—is the fairy?”
“Yes.” And obviously Josh already knew the dangers of saying a fairy name out loud. That’s why Nero hadn’t said the guy’s full name.
“And a mulligan is a what? You get to replace your team with someone else?”
“What? No!” He stared at Josh. “Where did you get that idea?”
“That’s what a mulligan is in gaming circles. You get to replace your hand with new cards and do the turn over.”
Nero’s eyebrows rose. Apparently there were some things the über-geek didn’t know. Score one for the sports reference. “A mulligan in golf is a do-over. A repeat. I’ll get dropped back in time—”
“Oh! An Omega 13 device.” And when Nero stared at him, Josh blew out a breath. “Galaxy Quest. We’ll watch it….” There probably wouldn’t be any more movies together, no matter what happened tomorrow. “Never mind. How does it work?”
“I’ll start up right before the attack, and this time I’ll save every single one of them and kill that fucking demon—”
“No! Don’t go and attack. It’s still suicide to go in with untested equipment.”
Nero watched as Mr. Collier unlocked the factory door and disappeared inside. How he longed to be done with this conversation, but he already knew Josh wouldn’t let him go so easily.
“A fairy mulligan has specific rules. We still have to attack. There’s not a lot I can change.” He looked at Josh. “But I can bring a weapon for each one of my team. Your design—”
“Is not a weapon!”
“Fine! Your plan and your tech will keep them alive. I just need them to survive the blast, then we can kill it. I know we can.”
“No, you don’t know that. All you know is what the demon did. Not what it will do after it shoots off that plasma blast.”
Yes, Nero had thought about that, but there was only so much he could plan for. “I saw the… creature afterwards. It was a pink blob and completely defenseless.”
“Except for the gun. Except for whatever demon powers—”
“Stop arguing with me, Josh. It’s done, and I’ve run out of time. I go tomorrow morning at dawn, whether I have your tech or not.”
Josh reared back. “Dawn! There’s no way I can make five shields in that time—”
“I need the one. I’ve been texting with Bitter. He says if I’ve got one, then he can duplicate it.”
There was a moment of silence as Josh processed that, but his mind obviously wasn’t where Nero’s was. “Fairies have cell phones?”
“Um, yeah. Of a sort.” He did not want to get into the technological weirdness of the fair folk. “Anyway, if we get one shield and one hoodie, he can make four others.”
“And what is he adding to them?”
“What? Nothing—”
“Bullshit.” Josh blew out a breath. “That’s incredibly stupid. Fairy deals—”
“It’s not like that!” Nero huffed, praying it was true. “Bitterroot owed me one. I helped him out once.”
“Time travel is not a small favor.”
“And what I did wasn’t a small favor either!”
Josh leaned back against his seat and stared blankly out the front windshield. “So it’s not an Omega 13, it’s a whole Star Trek reboot, dead planet Vulcan and all.”
Nero turned to him. “I have no idea how to answer that.”
Josh waved it away with a depressed sigh. “This Bitter guy owed you, right? He didn’t ask anything in return?”
Not exactly. Nero didn’t say the words out loud, but his face must have given the answer away, because Josh abruptly pointed at his chest.
“I knew it! What did you promise him?”
Nero’s hands fidgeted on the steering wheel. There was no going back now. He might as well tell it all. “After the mulligan, no matter what happens, I go work for him.”
“For how long?”
Nero didn’t answer. He didn’t like thinking about it, but if it meant his team survived, it was worth the sacrifice. It was worth a thousand times the sacrifice. He just hadn’t expected to meet Josh before he left the mortal realm for Fairyland. And he hadn’t expected to fall so hard for the guy.
But fairy deals had to be honored. The alternative was always worse, as in skin-burning-off-for-eternity worse. And that was one of the nicer possibilities. “How long?” Josh repeated.
“A year for every day that the mulligan stays available. Payable whether or not I use the portal.”
“But it’s been weeks.”
Nero nodded. “Six weeks and six days. The fairies have a thing for the number seven, so at seven weeks the portal closes, whether I use it or not, and either way—”
“You’re living the rest of your natural life in servitude to the fae.”
“Actually, it’s natural and unnatural. If I die before the contract is up, they’ll resurrect me as something….” He shuddered. “Something unpleasant, and I’ll keep going.”
“Wonderful.” The sarcasm was heavy in Josh’s voice, and Nero rounded on him in fury.
“Stop with the judgment already. I don’t need it, and frankly, you’re wrong. I don’t regret my choice for a second. Not a goddamned second. And I’d do it again if it was a hundred years for every day. They are my pack. I’d do anything for them. Anything.”
“Even give up the rest of your life—”
“Yes.”
“Give up a new pack—”
Nero winced. He hadn’t counted on finding friends, much less a new pack in the trainees. “Yes.”
“Me.”
Nero looked down at his hands. He didn’t have to say the word yes—they both heard it loud and clear in his silence.
“Well, I guess I understand why you broke up with me today.”
“We were never supposed to be a permanent thing. Even without the fairy deal, we would have gone our separate ways.”
Josh didn’t answer in words, but one look at his face told Nero more than he ever wanted to know about what the guy was feeling. Hurt and betrayal burned hot in his cheeks. Pain shimmered in his too-bright eyes. But what was a thousand times worse were the words that Josh said next and the flat intonation in his voice when he said them.
“I loved you,” he said. “I don’t trust easy, and I certainly didn’t want to fall for the meathead trainer who blew up my life. But I loved you, and I would have done a lot to make this work.”
Nero’s throat closed down, tears and pain choking off his words. But Josh deserved some sort of acknowledgment, something to show that Nero appreciated his bravery in saying the words out loud. That was the kind of courage Nero didn’t possess. Because even though he felt it, he’d never let the word love slip out. Even in the past tense.
But he did love Josh. And if the lives of his packmates hadn’t been on the line, he would have done a lot to see things work out too. He almost said that now. He nearly found the strength to admit his own feelings, but he hadn’t missed Josh’s verb. He’d said loved. As in past tense. Josh had loved him, but he didn’t now.
So be it. But Josh still deserved something.
“Thank you,” he finally said. The words burned in his throat because they were so much less than he felt, and so miniscule compared to what Josh deserved. “I— That means a lot—” He kept tripping over his own tongue, and the right words wouldn’t come. “I’m sorry, so fucking sorry for how this worked out.” Or didn’t work out.
“Yeah,” Josh said into the increasingly cold car. “Me too.”
They both sat there a moment. Nero wanted to do something, to say something to bridge the space between them, but there wasn’t anything he could do. And then, as if they were still in sync, they both opened their car doors at the same second and headed inside.
“Let me handle my father,” Josh said as they made it to the shop door. “You just keep upping the money.”
“Deal,” Nero said.
“And stop making deals!”