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TWENTY

EASTON

My face heated so much that I believed it would burst into flames at any moment. After Jace had slammed the door on his way out, I stood in disbelief. His venomous words were worthless, but Dad couldn’t see it. His eyes were murky and tearstained, although I doubted he was mourning the mistakes he had made.

Once again, Jace had flared like a brilliant shooting star, showing me just how unprepared I was. Once again, he saved my skin when I was ready to fold.

“My boy,” Dad cried. “Don’t listen to him.” How kind and gentle he was; how sweet and wonderful. So long as we could paint Jace the nastiest colors, our hands were clean. We loved each other so dearly for as long as Jace was outside our circle.

I realized now, in the moment when Dad stepped toward me with open arms, that I hated him. It was abrupt and as powerful as galaxies colliding. This man, who had picked me out of a hundred and given me a chance at a decent life, was not a good person. The debt I carried to him for adopting me was something he had planted into me. “You see, Easton, we chose you because we want to help you.” He’d spoken those words in the car on our way home. He’d put me at his mercy and made me grateful.

I had watched other kids get picked. I had seen their tears of joy. The older they were, the more powerful those reactions were. Most of us that turned five or six knew we didn’t stand a chance. Our cuteness had long faded, and our lives were much better defined. We would stand in corners, not even compete for the attention of the couples that visited us. The older I was, the more it felt like a pageant, and the stupider I felt when they didn’t pick me.

Until the Harpers came and snatched me for the very trait that my defense mechanism had given me: the ability to be quiet, invisible, and agreeable.

“He’s rotten, Easton,” Dad told me now, snapping me out of the memory. “You know this, son. He’s always been a jealous child. He hated you.” Dad shook his head, still moving toward me with his arms open, expecting a grateful hug from his only boy. “How did you even…? But no. It’s not important. We make mistakes, son.”

I looked up, my eyebrows curving into a deep frown. “Jace wasn’t a mistake.”

Dad winced at the sound of his name. He knew. He knew how badly he had failed with Jace that even the mention of the name filled him with terror. His arms dropped to his sides. “You’re confused, Easton. He does that. He schemes and manipulates. I remember this better; you were just a child. There is something wrong with that boy. We should have called the cops and had him locked up in an institution, son. But we only wanted to be free of him. Don’t you remember? You nearly died, Easton. And we released him into the world.”

I pressed my lips into a tight white line, my fists clenching until my nails dug into my palms and pain screamed up my arms. I could feel the bones and tendons of my hands strain under the pressure of my folded fingers.

“We’ll protect you. We will…Easton, we will forget this ever happened,” he said, only vaguely gesturing at the coffee table.

Dad had used the spare key to enter the apartment after Mrs. Johnson had told him about some loud and ungainly noises coming from the apartment. She had informed Dad of a very rude young man who maybe belonged to a gang living with his sweet, polite son. It was her duty as a neighbor and a responsible adult who had raised three children and made them into successful people to inform Dad if she suspected her son was being dragged down the wrong path. She wouldn’t stand for it if it were her child, and she knew that Dad would rather know the truth.

Without a beat, Dad had driven here and entered the apartment, searched the rooms, and discovered a terrible sight on my bed. The embarrassment of having my father see the tools that would have given me pleasure on any other night was such that I had remained stunned and silent for several minutes. But then, Jace burst into the apartment, and my world shattered.

“How’s that, son?” Dad asked, hoping to strike a bargain without the need to discuss anything. That was so like him. If he didn’t benefit from it, he wouldn’t talk about it. He wouldn’t want to face the fact that his son was gay, that he had fallen for the bad boy they’d once called his brother, and that he liked it. It was easier to imagine that Jace had somehow tricked me into it. “Forget about that arsonist, Easton.”

The evidence on the table was proof enough that I was just a prisoner in Jace’s fantasies. Why else would there be blindfolds and handcuffs if not to take my agency away?

But Dad didn’t understand one crucial thing. I had never had any agency in my life. Everything had always been done to me. I was the unimportant figure in the passage of time. Life grabbed me by the balls, not the other way around. Things happened and placed me on paths I had never chosen for myself. I never left any proof of my existence in the world; the world left its tracks on me.

The Harpers adopted me, and I went with it.

Jace tormented me in that insufferable way you taunted your crush to make yourself noticed.

Piano lessons were given to me.

My team elected me, then got rid of me.

Kyle outed me before I had the balls to come out on my own terms.

And Jace had come into my life without an invitation, cashing in a favor he’d given freely. No. I didn’t make my choices. And that was no way to live. For once in this pathetic life of mine, I needed to call the shots.

“It wasn’t him,” I whispered, every part of my cowardly being wanting to turn away and not see Dad’s face.

Dad was confused. He had just seen Jace here in person. Of course it had been Jace.

“You and Mom were too busy building trenches between us to see it, but I was in love with him even then. I was in love with the boy you forced me to call a brother. And it made me sick, Dad.”

But Dad shook his head, refusing to accept it. Why change the order of things when we could all sweep them under the rug and never think about them again? We could live our lives quietly, suppressing everything about ourselves until a blood vessel burst in our brains or an ulcer ate away our stomachs. And even then, we wouldn’t think back on our deeds because it didn’t matter. Things had just played out the way they were supposed to, huh?

“I couldn’t be there anymore,” I said, my voice cracking. “I could live with myself when Jace was around because I spent every waking moment wanting him. When other boys and girls held hands in school, I begged God to force Jace to take my hand in his. When they learned to kiss, I cried myself to sleep because he wasn’t kissing me.”

“He led you on,” Dad accused.

“Bullshit,” I snapped. “He couldn’t stand me. I was a sniveling mess, and he tormented me because of it. But I saw what you did to him. On every Christmas morning and on every summer break, I saw how you separated him, and I came to hate that house, Dad. I wanted it gone. Me. I wanted it gone, Dad.”

The darkening color of Dad’s face told me he understood, but the disbelief in his eyes was still strong. “No, no, no. You remember it wrong, Easton. It was Jace. He was always playing with the matches. I had to beat him, son, to make him stop.”

I snorted. “Do you remember what we did the morning before the fire? Mom took us shopping. She bought me four new T-shirts and a button-down shirt for the summer. Jace wanted a hoodie, but Mom yelled at him that he couldn’t have it because it was hot outside. We returned home with my new clothes, and Jace got nothing. Nothing.”

Dad latched on the wrong thing, as always. “Why should she buy him a hoodie in July? It’s silly, son.”

“But I saw how it made him feel to be yelled at at fifteen years old,” I said. “I saw how she embarrassed him in front of all the other kids at the mall. And I set my closet on fire. I didn’t even know I was doing it until the flames spread, and I ran into the bathroom, locking myself up like it couldn’t get to me there.”

Dad shook his head. The version he had told the firefighters was that it had been an accident. The version that our family held on to was that Jace had been jealous of my new clothes and set them on fire to get back at me. But the truth was that I had hated us all.

To this day, I remembered little of it, except the moment after the fire, when Dad dragged Jace to the car, and Jace caught my gaze. He had a fascinated little smile on his lips, eyes glowing, almost as if he was proud of me. He didn’t think I had it in me. I’d surprised him for once—the predictable, boring, old me.

He could have protested, but I suspected that he knew nobody would believe him. Perhaps he didn’t want to be believed, anyway. Perhaps the fire was one of those events that gave such unexpected new possibilities that Jace wanted to see where the events would take him.

“You,” Dad whispered, beginning to believe me. Here was his boy, finally capable of doing something.

I had expected anger, perhaps even the buckle of his belt, but Dad stiffened, color draining from his face and taking all the hints of emotions with it. Something died in his eyes just then.

“We never adopted children,” he said flatly. “We adopted snakes.”

I didn’t argue with him. What they adopted was not the same as what they put out into the world. There were years of smithwork until they forged these fucked-up creatures from the raw helplessness of what they’d brought home.

“You’re not my son, Easton,” he said, although it didn’t surprise me. “This…” He shook his head and hesitated. “I don’t understand this. And I don’t want to.” He stood in silence for a few moments longer, then lifted his head. “You’re on your own from now.”

Without another glance, without a goodbye, Kevin Harper turned on his heels and walked out of the apartment.

I could see him driving home and informing his wife. I could see them mourning the injustices done to them. And I could see them never once asking themselves if they’d had a hand in all this. They, too, were people to whom life just happened. But I couldn’t be that guy anymore.

It took me an hour to compose myself, but when I did, I grabbed my keys and my wallet, and I walked out. I had to find Jace.

The hours melted away as I walked around the block and expanded the circle of my search. No phone call was returned, and his was the only number I had. I didn’t know his friends or his gambling dens. I knew so little about Jace that it terrified me how strongly I felt about him.

What I know is all that matters , I told myself, my legs burning with exertion after walking long into the night. I didn’t know where Jace would go when he had nowhere to go, but I knew that underneath the chaos that surrounded him, there was an iron core. It was the anchor that kept me safe all these long weeks as I watched my life slip away, drain through my fingers like grains of sand.

The streets were quiet. Small groups of people gathered in the shadows, watching me until they saw I was not a threat. How could I be? I was a wandering madman, whispering Jace’s name and crying over the terrible mistakes I had made. Today, I had pushed him away, letting all that I had been taught about him consume me before giving him a chance to explain. It had never occurred to me to give him the benefit of the doubt. Hell, I’d never even considered that he was just a man, capable of mistakes like all of us. An oversight, but a well-intentioned one. I never would have had the balls to come out to my team, and yet coming out had been inevitable.

At least I knew who my friends were and who had only pretended. And I was done living in secret, no matter the cost. It offered a twisted kind of relief, where losing so much still felt like it was a fair price to pay for the sense of freedom that replaced all that tension.

I wandered the streets in solitude and hopelessness, knowing I wouldn’t just run into him. When I returned to the apartment, stupidly hoping to find him on the other side of the door, it was closer to sunrise than the previous sunset. Jace was not there. He was never going to be.

What little sleep I got was cut into pieces and haunted by nightmares of the fire I had started in my childhood home. It wasn’t Jace but the house. The house was rotten. It had to burn.

I started awake at a sound from somewhere in the apartment. Something had scratched. The day was colder by degrees of magnitude than the days had been so far, as if the summer had finally accepted its inevitable death. Rainy, grimy, gray-washed, the day matched my mood one for one. But there had been a sound somewhere.

He’s back , I thought and leaped to my feet, rushing out of my room into his. Not there. His things were scattered around the room in a total mess, and the scent of his body and sweat lingered on the clothes on the floor.

I hurried into the living room. “Jace,” I whispered, standing still at the sight of the empty room. The window was ajar, and the curtain billowed in the wind. The sheet music had spilled from its stand on the piano, pages upon page of Moonlight Sonata littering the floor.

Hopelessly, I looked into the kitchen, but he wasn’t there.

It was another day of painful waiting, dragging out far longer than a day had any right to be. In the space of the following twelve hours, I tried to make a meal that might resemble something Jace would have made only to throw it away after overusing Jace’s spices. I forced myself to remove the toys from the living room so they wouldn’t be a reminder of the things that had happened yesterday. I looked at cheaper accommodation because I couldn’t afford to live here without the support of the Harpers. And, at last, I knelt in Jace’s room, holding his T-shirt against my nose, inhaling the scent of him.

What would he say if he saw me like this?

What would he do to me?

Jace had followed me for weeks, hiding in the shadows, watching over me, and I had never noticed him. The first time I saw him was in the playground when some guys were arguing and fighting nearby. He’d revealed himself to me like a spirit that had possessed me long ago.

He no longer had a reason to do that. The guy he had been protecting pushed him away. Except, Jace had forgiven me worse things. When I thought he had returned to haunt me because he’d taken the blame for the fire, he simply shrugged and said he wouldn’t do that. He told me, in clear terms, that he had no leverage over me as far as he was concerned. The few instances when either of us mentioned the flames that had defined our lives, he had allowed me to retreat with as much grace as a guilty person could afford.

Oh, we had our grudges, I had no doubt about that. Jace had more than enough fuel and frustration to take it all out on me, but he’d found a way to do it that pleased us both. My own grievances and hurts worked much the same way. We could eradicate them from one another with the ruthlessness and roughness of our play.

As the night came, I walked outside. Rain came down in a mist, not exactly falling anymore, and I ate my only meal of the day at an Indian corner restaurant. Instead of returning like a reasonable person would, I decided I couldn’t face the emptiness of that place.

If Jace wasn’t there, I didn’t want it.

I wandered the streets, looking deep into the shadows, outside the pools of light coming through the haze from the streetlamps. I searched for him, but I knew I wouldn’t find him. Nobody could find him when he wanted to hide.

I’m sorry, Jace , I thought. I’m sorry I didn’t believe in you. I’m sorry I misunderstood your intentions. I’m sorry I let you down .

The playground where I had first seen him was abandoned. It was as quiet as a graveyard, the swings empty, the slides slick with rain, and the soft, rubbery padding on the ground covered in muddy footprints. The light from the streetlamp gave the whole place a supernatural halo, and I spotted movement in the shadow near a plastic house that was four feet above the ground, a ladder on one side, and a slide on another. By the little house, two guys stood together, speaking.

Neither of them had Jace’s lean build. These were big guys, and they filled those hoodies with muscle and protective fat, whereas Jace’s clothes were loose and billowy.

I almost passed the playground before a crazy thought struck me.

Didn’t I believe in Jace? Wasn’t he always there when I needed him? Wasn’t he the guy who looked into my eyes and all but congratulated me on lighting that flame?

I veered off the sidewalk and marched up to the two guys. They were instantly alert when they realized I was approaching them. Their hands were in their pockets, hoods lifted over their heads to protect them from the mist that descended from the clouds.

“Got anything I could buy?” I asked. My tone didn’t sound like I was a junkie in need of a fix. At best, I was your friendly neighbor asking if you had a cold beer.

“Skeddadle, kid,” the bigger of the two said.

“I’m serious,” I said. “Are you selling?”

“Fuck off, narc,” the smaller guy said. He was only small in comparison with his colleague.

“You heard him,” the other one boomed.

“I’m not a fucking narc,” I spat. “I want what you’re selling.”

“You better drag that sissy ass out of here,” the shorter fellow said.

His temper was much quicker to flare. That was good. I focused on him. “What did you just say?”

“You heard me,” he said, taking a step toward me.

Fear roiled through my stomach, but I believed in him. Finding the courage I had never known I was capable of, I took a step closer to the shorter guy. He was already bristling. “You’re going to apologize to me.”

His pink cheeks burst with color as he surged forward, grabbing my jacket in both fists and shaking me senseless. “Are you fucking with me?”

“Say you’re sorry, bitch,” I baited, seeing my own tombstone rise from the ground. Except I no longer had a family to pay for it. Perhaps an unmarked grave of a fallen fighter? Or, more likely, a bag full of bricks and a trip to Lake Michigan.

I managed to grab my attacker’s wrists, making myself enough of a threat to get the other guy involved. Two against one, it wasn’t a fair fight anymore. Any moment now…

“Get him,” the smaller one said, and the big guy stood behind me, wrapping his arms around my torso and yanking me back. The first blow punched the air out of my lungs.

The second fist came swiftly, smashing the side of my face. My teeth ached, and I could have sworn something cracked in my skull. The heat of the blow spread through half of my face as the shorter guy pulled back and huffed. “Who the fuck sent this clown?”

“Who are you with?” the big one boomed, shaking me from behind.

“Let me go,” I demanded, tossing impotently and only tying myself tighter into his grip. “I’m gonna fuck you up.” I knew I didn’t sound threatening, but I only needed to anger them.

“Shut him up,” the big guy said, and the smaller one kneed me in the stomach, making me wheeze and struggle for air. The blow that struck the back of my head came before I had hoped.

Who was I kidding? I had come here without hope. I had known that, but I had come anyway. Jace wasn’t going to rescue me. Jace wasn’t there to watch over me. All I needed was for someone to hit me so that I could finally feel something other than the pain of my own mistakes.

The world flickered out as I fell out of the big guy’s hold. The lamplight flooded my vision as if someone had brought it all the way to my face. White. Cold. Hot. Something bothered me, but I drifted deeper and deeper asleep.

I wasn’t going to see him.

He was gone. I’d come here for the beating I deserved, and that was all I was getting. But I didn’t feel the pain. That heat lingered, running through my face, burning me up from within, but the blows had stopped.

When had they decided to give me a break?

The ground was soft under me as I wandered the unlit corridors of my mind. My soul drifted while my body shut down. Was I dying? Was that the bright flood of light I had seen? A guy like me wasn’t going to the well-lit place, I was sure. My sins were too many and too great to let me pass. Perhaps I would forever sit in this darkness.

How I wished my awareness would fade.

But I heard them even now. The hurried footsteps, the whispers, the plotting. How would they get rid of me? Was I breathing? I didn’t hear their voices or their words, but I could guess what they talked about.

It grew harder to hold on to reality. I didn’t fight the wave that came for me. I didn’t resist the quiet abyss that sucked me into its depths. I slept.

Damp. I was damp all over.

As pain slashed through my head, I realized that I needed to wake up. I had to. I was outside, in the rain, bleeding and cooling down.

I didn’t want to die. I just wanted not to feel.

Fight, dammit , I growled at myself. Wake up. Crawl back and lick your wounds, you coward.

As I became conscious, I noticed several things that didn’t belong. The air was warm when I inhaled. Warm and dry, and my throat hurt because of it. The ground was soft, too soft. The dampness wasn’t freezing over me. There was a sheet covering me, and it had absorbed my sweat.

I opened my eyes.

I lay in my bedroom in the middle of the bed, pillows piled under my head, the sheet wrapped around my body, and the light came through the small space where the door wasn’t completely shut.

I eyed the room wildly, thinking how impossible it was that I had dreamed all of it. The pain in my face was enough to assure me that I had done that terrible thing.

There, in the corner of my room, deep in the shadows, Jace moved in the armchair. “Awake?” His voice was low and flat, seething with anger.

“Uh-huh,” I croaked.

He said nothing for the longest time. Awareness came to me in pulses, like the beats of my heart, shedding more and more light on the events of the night. He was real, wasn’t he? He was sitting in my armchair, after all.

“Do you know what you did?” Jace asked, his tone unchanged.

“Sort of,” I said. Speaking made the left side of my face hurt.

“Mm.” He didn’t move. “You went out to get yourself killed.”

I didn’t argue with that, although it exaggerated the truth.

“Mild concussion,” Jace said. “Fractured cheekbone, probably a loose tooth with its fate as of yet unknown.”

I moaned quietly.

“Three stitches isn’t too bad, but it’ll leave a scar,” Jace informed me. He wasn’t talking to me. He was handing me this information like a doctor who couldn’t remember my name.

“Stitches?” I asked.

“The vet did the best he could,” Jace said. “You should be grateful to him.”

The vet… I didn’t say anything. Part of me wished I had stayed asleep. Jace was cold, far too composed, and I hated it. It made me feel small and ashamed. “Is there water?” I asked.

Jace walked over without a word, leaning down and pouring water from a pitcher into a glass, then supporting my upper back as I tried to sit up. He held the glass and me as I drank a few sips.

After I had had enough, I lay back, and Jace set the glass on the nightstand. He stood above me, looking.

I blinked; the light from the hallway outside my bedroom gave me a throbbing headache. “You stayed here all night,” I whispered.

“Night?” Jace asked. “Easton, it’s Tuesday morning.”

My heart hammered quickly. I left my apartment on Sunday evening and slept through all of Monday. My gaze flicked to the window, and I realized that the blinds were down. It wasn’t just dark outside. And this wasn’t the hallway light coming through but the daylight that snuck into the apartment through all its other windows.

“Easy,” Jace said, seeing the panic in my eyes most likely. “You needed the rest.” And when I said nothing to that, he asked, “Do you need to puke?”

“No.”

“And your head? How bad is the pain?” Jace asked.

I shrugged. “I’ve had worse.”

“In the rink, yeah, I heard that before,” Jace muttered. “The doctor shot you up with painkillers last night. They’ll be wearing off, so don’t panic. You got it easy, all things considered.” He turned away from me and walked toward the chair, but he didn’t sit. He stretched his arms above his head and rose to the tips of his toes, making a satisfied sound as his joints cracked. “It’s lucky I had business there, and I knew the guys you went after. They won’t bother you.”

“Lucky,” I said softly. “That wasn’t luck. You followed me.”

He said nothing. Slowly, he turned to face me again.

My back was sore, and I pushed myself up against the pain. I sat in the bed, yanking the cover off my body. He had changed me into a clean pair of sweatpants, but my torso was bare and slick with sweat.

“Can you stand?” Jace asked darkly.

I tossed my feet over the edge of the bed and clambered up, standing as the floor swayed gently under me and steadied as if it were a ship running aground. It was still now, and I took another step, reaching for the door to let in the light. “Pretty much.”

“Good,” Jace said and moved in haste toward the open door. The light blinded me momentarily, but I saw his shape receding into the hallway. “I’m leaving, Easton. Don’t do stupid shit like that.”

My heart hammered quicker. Sauntering into the hallway, I pressed a hand against the wall for balance. “You’re not,” I said.

Jace hesitated. He wore his usual baggy, dark clothes, the artwork of the tattoos along his arms concealed by the sleeves. The backs of his hands and fingers and those little spots on his face and shadows on the neck were the only ones I could see. Rare Soul, the tattoo on his fingers said. Each letter for the back of one finger. And he was indeed. He was the rarest soul I knew. Capturing a soul like that, taming it a little, letting it take you wildly away from your empty little life was a privilege. But it wasn’t enough.

“I need to,” Jace told me.

I shook my head despite the pain. “No.”

“It’s not your choice,” Jace said. “Besides, you already let me go.”

“And the fact that you still followed me means nothing?” I asked.

Jace shrugged like it didn’t matter. “Kyle is still out there, Easton. He could move against you.”

“And you want to protect me,” I said.

Jace struggled, closing his eyes for a moment. “I can’t protect you from myself, Easton. We both know this. Every bad thing that happened to you happened because of me. And you were right. I hijacked your life, and you never should have let me in.” His voice dropped to a bitter growl as he flung my words back at me.

“It’s just us, Jace,” I said. “All our lives, it’s always been you and me.”

He snorted. “You, me, the hate between us, and Kevin with his belt.”

“He’s gone,” I said. “I told him the truth. I set the house on fire, Jace. He knows it was me.”

A flash of horror crossed Jace’s face. I’d hoped, maybe, he would feel vindicated, but I hadn’t expected this. “Don’t be stupid,” he gasped. “They pay for this place.”

“I don’t care.”

“They’ll disown you, asshole,” Jace said as if that hadn’t crossed my mind.

“Let them,” I said. “If they could send you away, I don’t want them.”

Jace paced to my piano and back, rubbing his forehead. “You’re talking about ancient history, Easton. This isn’t a game.”

“Everything’s a game,” I said, grasping for straws.

“Stop,” Jace said. “You’re talking nonsense. It’s the concussion.”

“My head is fine,” I said.

Jace freaked out again, reaching the edge of my piano and heading straight for the door again. “I have to leave.”

I was faster, although not because I could easily run but because I lost my balance and slammed the door with my right hand both for support and to bar his exit. “I’m not letting you leave. And you’re going to have to deal with it.”

He stared at me, confused and terrified. “What happened to you?”

“I finally understand it,” I said.

“No,” he protested in a pained voice. “You understood it all just fine the other day. You understood that I ruin things wherever I go. You know this, Easton. Letting me in only brings harm.”

The rapture in Jace’s psyche was far worse than I could have anticipated. It was the result of years of attempts on his self-worth. We had stripped everything good from him and made him into this. But he wasn’t beyond saving. Neither of us was. I couldn’t accept that we were.

“Bullshit,” I said. “We hurt nobody. It’s us versus the world, Jace, and I’ll bet my life on you. Because when I walk into a fight, you’re watching my back. And when I fall apart, you pick up the pieces. And I’m done letting everyone do things for me. It’s beyond time that I should be here for you.”

“Why?” he whispered incredulously.

“Because I love you,” I snapped, agitated. Didn’t he see that?

He shook his head fractionally. “You shouldn’t.”

“Well, it’s too late to change it,” I said, moving away from the door and toward Jace.

He stood in that spot, frozen and wide-eyed. His fine, sharp lips parted, but he didn’t speak.

My balance was messed up, and I reached for him as much for stability as to feel him under my hands. I grabbed his upper arms and looked into his eyes. Was I a mess? Was I ugly with bruises and cuts again? But Jace didn’t look away. He gazed at me as if I had just descended from heaven. “Jace, please,” I said. “You have to believe me. I love you. Even if it destroys us, we need each other. We deserve each other. Tell me it’ll kill me, and I’ll still have you. I don’t care about anything else.”

A frown trembled over his eyebrows. “I’m trying to do the right thing, Easton.”

“If that’s right, I don’t want it,” I said, my left hand moving from his arm to his chest, clutching his hoodie in my fist. “You’re all I want. Your lips on mine. Your hand around my throat. Your body and mine, Jace.”

He still resisted. He refused to accept it. “We’re gonna eat each other alive.”

I smiled darkly at that. “Have we ever? Think about it. The only time we hurt each other was when they led us there. You and me, we’re not really like that. And I need you, Jace. Just like you need me, don’t deny it. I can’t live without you, without your hands all over me, without your strength to keep me safe, without your control when you have your way with me. I promise you, I’m yours.”

Jace narrowed his eyes, blinking quickly a few times. He swallowed thickly and put his hands on the sides of my torso. “You can’t dangle this before me and snatch it away later.”

“I swear,” I said. “I love you, Jace. Even when I’m mad at you.”

Something glinted in his eyes as if he had never thought the two could coexist. Pressure increased on my torso as he tried to push me back, but I didn’t budge. A small breath escaped his lips. “You’re a dumbass,” Jace said, his voice quivering. “And I love you.”

My knees trembled, threatening to buckle under me. I steeled myself and stared at Jace’s lips. That sexy Cupid’s bow was so sharp and pronounced, the corners of his lips deep and pointy, his entire face a gorgeous composition of fine lines and angles. “Say it again.”

“I love you, Easton,” he said, his voice raw. Had he ever said this to anyone? The words alone felt as though he formed them by sheer instinct, not practiced in any way.

“You do,” I confirmed.

Tears welled in his eyes and rolled quickly down his cheeks. It angered him. He frowned and shook his head, but they came again, and a desperate laugh broke through him. “Is this real?”

“Oh, it’s real,” I assured him. “It’s as real as you and me. I love you, Jace.”

“Even though I’m trouble? Even though I cheat at cards?” He grasped for the most insignificant things as if he was about to find the exception to the rule and blow this whole thing open, revealing that he had been right to think nobody loved him.

“If that’s who you are, then that’s who I love,” I said. “It’s not just a feeling, Jace. It’s a promise.”

And then the frown left his face. His brown eyes widened, and he let the tears fall. His shoulders shook. He folded against me, our bodies melting together. “I can’t ever lose you,” he said, shuddering.

And he wouldn’t. Not now. Not ever. Because I intended to keep this promise.

Jace was all the family I needed or wanted. If it meant turning away from everything the world thought of as decent and normal, then so be it. I would live my life with Jace, and we would never lack for anything.

He cried, his head in the crook of my neck, and I held him, finally able to lend some of that strength back to him. Even the anchor needed something strong to hold on to. Even the oldest, tallest mountains needed a strong base. I would give him that.

Jace and I swirled around one another all our lives, orbiting, never colliding. The forces that kept us moving both attracted and repelled us, locking us in an endless, terrible dance. But we shattered the circle.

Sometimes, you had to break the rules. Ours had never been a happy story, but its ending was in our hands. And to have a shot at it was worth every price, none too high for me.

Jace’s breathing slowed down, and his hold on me relaxed. “You should be resting,” he said.

There wasn’t anything I should be doing other than this: holding him together.

He lifted his head and looked into my eyes, brown gaze tearful and bright.

Slowly, I leaned in, lifting my head just right and letting my lips brush against his. Every touch hurt, but I hid it from Jace. He knew. He kissed me gently, letting his lips move over mine, his head still, his breathing slow.

It was a healing kiss. It was a soft kiss. It was a kiss that gave me life and love and hope. Whatever demons we had to face, we could do so together. That was the only way. That was the way I wanted it.