Page 27

27

RAHIL

Rahil wanted to quietly make history with Mercer, for better or for worse.

If he could trap himself in the fae’s life the way he had trapped himself in his shed, by god, Rahil would have done it in that moment, watching Mercer’s face transform from brow-pinched scrutiny, laced in melancholy and desperation, to sudden soft joy. Should he be able to do one thing in life, consistently and exceptionally, he’d want it to be that.

He knew, in the rational back of his mind, that he would never be so good as to keep up that joy forever, or even for long—he’d fuck it up, invert every last happy feeling with his own incompetence, the same way he had with his first family. But for that moment, that one glorious night, he wanted to believe otherwise. Mercer Bloncourt made him wish the best for himself, and with the alcohol still running through his veins and the thrill of Mercer asking him out, he gave in to the darkest desires in his heart: that they might work out.

That they might more than work out.

Which meant he really needed to bring up Leah’s death.

But he couldn’t just plunge from I hope you’re the one for me to just so you know I killed your last soulmate without skipping a beat. There had to be some way to ease Mercer into it. To make it feel less shocking, less—something. Less like the original news of her death.

The thought of how exactly he’d manage it sent a light panic through Rahil, but it was cut off by a spark like lightning as Mercer slid one finger against the pulse at Rahil’s wrist. After a slight hesitation, Mercer dropped it lower, then lower still. His fingertips slid between Rahil’s.

“Come with me,” Mercer whispered.

Rahil forgot everything but the inevitable: the rush, the fall, and then eternity. Even if it was short, even if it ended in a crunch of bone against the pavement, he was going to give whatever he could to this beautiful, thoughtful man. He tangled his fingers with Mercer’s and let himself be bound by the strong grip and firm calluses of someone who’d given him that same trust in return. “Just show me where.”

The boardwalk was still teeming with life, the warmth and chaos swaddling Rahil like a comfortable cloak, but Mercer led him to the end, down onto the less-populated wooden path that swept northward toward the state park side of the lake, dropping the last few bites of his ice cream cone in the trash as he went. Rahil didn’t think it was from lack of wanting it either—rather an excess of wanting something else—and the notion made his stomach flutter, his chest tight. As they ran out of the purposeful pattern of bright lamps, Mercer paused, glancing at Rahil with an expression hauntingly gorgeous in the deep shadows.

Again, he asked, softer and more hesitant, “Come with me?”

“Anywhere,” Rahil said.

Mercer turned them off the main path, onto a steep stone stairwell that Rahil wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. They nearly ran straight into a young man with a bottle clutched in his grip. He hissed like a vampire, alcohol flooding his breath, but as Rahil instinctively hissed back, he swore the stranger’s teeth looked wrong for fangs. The man tucked his way quickly up the stairs and Mercer tugged Rahil further down, and then they were alone on a tiny wall that jutted out into the water, empty and quiet.

Down the beach, a small group sat around a bonfire, someone plucking at a guitar while the others swayed, but it was far enough off for their little dock to feel like a world all of its own. Seemingly endless water stretched out before them, the silhouettes of the mountains jutting like claws of darkness into the starry sky. It smelled of Mercer and of the lake, a damp, slightly dank scent, not traditionally pleasant but comforting after so many years living in San Salud. Rahil imagined the original inhabitants, carried down in stretchers to soak in the mystical healing powers of the sun and the dry southern Californian air. Neither saved them, but Rahil was pretty sure whatever this was could save him any day.

Mercer let go of Rahil’s hand then, but it didn’t feel like pulling back. It felt like permission.

Rahil slipped out of his shoes and settled onto the edge of the wall, dropping his feet into the water. It was perfect—more cool than warm, but enough of a contrast to the balmy air to be a shock.

A little clumsier, Mercer settled in beside him. Their thighs didn’t quite touch. Their breaths didn’t quite mingle. And Rahil couldn’t help but bridge that gap. For better or for worse.

“Can fae see better than humans?” he asked, leaning toward Mercer. His knee knocked Mercer’s—fabric on fabric. Warmth on warmth.

Mercer turned his face, and Rahil could feel each word like a tiny gust against his chin. “In the light, yes—better than Leah and my grandparents, anyway—but not in the dark.”

“That’s a pity; you’re lovely by starlight,” Rahil whispered, and he used his night vision to take in every angle of Mercer’s face, the dark rim of his lashes, the stray curls floating free of his bandana, the length of his neck, the strength of his jaw and the breadth of his lips, even the mole that graced their edge. In every lighting, from every angle, he was spectacular.

Rahil had known this, he thought—it had been why he’d swiped right in the first place, why he’d tangled himself in Mercer’s trap a second time—but he hadn’t known it this way . There were pretty people, gorgeous people even, and then there was this: a gorgeous person . A whole being, every flaw made lovely by the depth of his motivations and every wrinkle turned to a laugh line by the joy that just being here, just listening to him speak, brought Rahil. And he could not look away.

But Mercer didn’t either, holding Rahil’s gaze in the darkness like he was searching for something. He lifted his fingers, hesitated, then pressed the tips ever so gently to Rahil’s jawline. “There you are,” he whispered. Then he cringed, drawing the hand back. “Sorry,” he explained, “Ice cream stickiness.”

As Mercer leaned down to rinse the butterscotch coating off his skin, Rahil caught him before he could reach the water. His heart thudded against his rib cage, a thousand butterflies mating in his stomach. This could be the exact wrong thing to do. It could ruin whatever they had going; and for the first time in a decade, Rahil thought losing a night like this might kill him, not from lack of blood, for once, but from the aching depths of his heart.

What else was he supposed to do, though?

He lifted Mercer’s hand, tenderly. “I could help with that.”

When Mercer didn’t protest, didn’t pull back or shrug the statement off, Rahil chose not to question further. He pressed Mercer’s fingers to his lips.

Rahil kissed one callus after the next, tracing tiny work scars and wrinkles, before gliding out his tongue in an experimental drag. He didn’t care what else was surely on Mercer’s hands, cloaked by the sticky sweetness—he could have happily been licking off anything, for the expression that crossed his date’s face. Mercer averted his gaze, his lips parting and his brow knitting. His lashes shuddered as he breathed out.

“Speak to me,” Rahil muttered against his knuckles. He’d meant for confirmation, but what Mercer gave him was far better.

“How does it taste?” he asked, his voice gravelly.

“Dark and sweet,” Rahil replied, no hesitation, no shame. “With a hint of salt, and musk. Like you, complex, and lovely.”

Mercer leaned toward him, his breath shallow as it gusted across Rahil’s forehead. His other hand pressed to the side of Rahil’s head, taut as a drawn bow, as though that simple pressure might ease whatever excess of longing was going on beneath Mercer’s skin. His mouth nearly brushed Rahil’s temple as he whispered, “Keep…”

“Keep what, babe?” Rahil teased, letting his tongue graze Mercer’s skin.

Mercer made a sound that was so deep and disgruntled it was nearly a growl. It seemed to release something inside him, something Rahil had seen in every motion of his work and press of his hands during their long hours in the shed, and had been overwhelmed with even then. Now, centered fully on him and his acts, his pleasure, he could feel the demand in every crevice of his being, consuming him from the inside. “If you don’t finish the job, darling,” Mercer rumbled, “I will tie you up and throw you into the lake.”

Rahil went to work, dragging his tongue across Mercer’s fingers, treasuring each sensitive nerve ending like they were the length hiding between Mercer’s legs. His own cock was so sensitive with want that he could feel it straining, begging, and he thought of nothing but giving Mercer the same feeling with each kiss and suck of the sweetness on his fingers.

Mercer was clearly feeling something , because his voice was a darkened mess when he pulled his cleaned hand away. “Good boy,” he murmured against Rahil’s forehead.

It seemed to zap all the energy out of him, turning Rahil into a puddle against Mercer’s side. His fingers wove into Mercer’s like that was their home now, and he breathed deeply of the rich scent of Mercer’s neck. The pulse of his blood was so deliciously elevated. He nuzzled, tender, pleading.

“You want that?” Mercer asked, his free hand still, somehow, in Rahil’s hair, gently stroking over the pulled-back locks that fed into his braid.

“Mhmm,” was all Rahil could manage.

He swore he could feel the tiny side quirk of his lover’s lips as Mercer said, “You can wait.”

Rahil groaned, but then the hand in his hair slipped down, trailing over his shoulder and his chest. Mercer seemed almost clinical about it—clinical in his evenness, his purposeful stroking, like despite the commanding presence he was trying to exert, he was just as afraid of this falling apart as Rahil was. With the same steady pace, Mercer trailed his fingers over the edge of Rahil’s beltline and against the front of his pants.

Rahil’s dick seemed to swell against his touch in a frantic firework of bliss, making his head light and his body weak.

Mercer exerted just a little pressure, stroking softly in a way that Rahil knew would keep him yearning stupidly for as long as Merc decided to torture him. But it was a beautiful torture—a perfect, endless moment of sensation and hope and life, with Mercer’s skin beneath his lips, blood pumping just out of reach, and Mercer—Mercer Jacques Bloncourt, fae craftsman, father, stony-faced and boiling with so many emotions beneath— his Mercer was giving to him. The thought swelled so huge and delirious, from his mind to his chest, that his lungs were moving and his lips forming words before he half knew what he was saying.

“I love you…”

It was barely a whisper, just an echo of the thought that was blooming softly in his heart, but it hit him like a hurricane as Mercer went completely still. The tension radiating through him was palpable.

Rahil knew instantly that he should not have said it—not yet, not with the equally large confession he still held inside him. But he couldn’t say, I love you and your last love died at my fangs , now could he?

“Like this,” Rahil clarified, swallowing hard. “I love you like this , so confident. It’s, uh, a good look for you.”

That tension remained though, as tight as Mercer’s breathing. His fingers wove through Rahil’s and slowly squeezed. “You could simply love me , if you wanted.” They were broken words, mangled by so many emotions that Rahil could only distinguish them by looking at the chaos of feeling in his own chest and finding the same silhouette.

“Mercer…” He lifted his face, pressing it to the side of his date’s as he stroked his hair. Gently, he kissed Mercer’s temple. “I do love you,” he whispered. It was out now, wasn’t it? Whatever happened, it was worse to deny it. “I don’t know how it began, or how my feelings progressed this fast—except that I’ve seen so much of the world that I don’t love, and the more I see of you, the more I…”

It was so stupid. So much and so stupid, and after going on a thousand first dates that turned into nothing—most that he’d never have wanted anything else from, even in the most perfect of worlds—this felt like a different reality entirely. Like he’d broken out from some hellish canyon and found that there had been another 52hz tune echoing above him the whole time, calling to him from across a chasm of empty water.

Rahil gave a tiny laugh, as happy as it was disquieting. Sometimes the best things were wild and scary and perfect, he supposed. “Has Lydia ever played you that whale song?”

Mercer hesitated. He drew his thumb over the back of Rahil’s hand. “She… said it was me.”

The other loneliest whale.

Whatever dam had been holding in Rahil’s emotions broke in an instant of bittersweet joy, tears welling behind his eyes and his chest aching. He pressed his lips sweetly to Mercer’s temple. “Maybe the loneliest whale was both of us.”

“I’ve been so alone.” Mercer’s voice cracked. “I’ve had Lydia, but… she’s my daughter. She can’t hold me up or take care of me—she’s just a kid .”

“What you’re wanting for is a partner.” Maybe this time—maybe Rahil could do this right—maybe—

“I think it is,” Mercer replied, the shock in his voice resolving into realization as he said it. He tipped his head, catching Rahil’s gaze in the darkness, so close they were almost kissing. “I was perfectly happy with Leah. She was everything—She still is .”

It was not what Rahil had expected to come next, but it touched a place of love inside him that he didn’t realize needed to be found, to be pressed against and told was real: that he could still care about Shefali, after all this time. And that those feelings were normal. It also reminded him, uncomfortably, that he needed, more than ever, to find an opportunity to talk about his own part in Leah’s death. And here they were, already broaching the subject of Leah.

But the conversation still felt one step too removed, Rahil’s own emotions making circles around the topic. Soon though. He could find a way.

Rahil cleared his throat. “Shefali and I should have been forever. I told myself that so many times after we divorced. We’d been so happy, too, and we were in love—I’ll always be in love with her.” But then he wasn’t able to make it work. Rahil couldn’t say it out loud and have to hear Mercer’s encouragement, confront what it meant, so he skipped over it. “We got back together when she was diagnosed, but we had so little time then.”

“The lung cancer?”

“Late stage, yeah. Maybe we’d healed enough from losing Jonah or maybe we were just scrambling to try and make something out of the love we both still held since it could have been our last chance, but I—I made a mess of that too.”

Mercer brushed his free hand over the side of Rahil’s hair, so gently it hurt. “Rahil…”

“I offered to turn her.” He could feel the vehicle of their conversation speeding down the path, barreling toward the jump, and he’d have to take it—he’d have to tell Mercer soon. They were all but hovering around the topic without Mercer even realizing it. Rahil’s heart thudded, the excitement that had been pooling in better places now turning to knots in his gut.

Mercer tensed, as though his body knew what was coming just as much as Rahil’s did. “But Shefali didn’t…?”

“No.” Rahil shook his head, short and sharp. “She said she wanted to die on her own terms. Which was funny, because it was the same reason I gave when I turned.”

“You chose to turn?” The question seemed to spill out of Mercer, before he paused and added, no less aghast, “You were dying ?”

“Freak accident.” Rahil shrugged, not because it didn’t hurt, but because it had hurt for so long that its pain, like so many others in his life, was just an ordinary part of him now. “I don’t really remember it. Shefali and I had just moved in together—much to our families’ chagrin—into an apartment in the downtown area, and I was walking home just after midnight from the mart a few blocks away. We’d finally finished unpacking, and Shefali needed a pack of smokes. A driver, drunk I think, swerved onto the sidewalk—I don’t even know if they realized they hit me. I was pinned on a piece of old metal in the alley for… a long time? But a vampire smelled all my lost blood. That’s the part I really do remember—feeling so desperate. Wanting to take any option that might make the suffering shorter. I was terrified of spending weeks in a hospital with my insides stitched up, everyone praying for me, pooling money for me to stay, not knowing if another surgery would kill me or save me.”

He could feel the waves of emotion that rolled through Mercer, his body stiffening and his fingers tightening around Rahil’s, his other arm gently pulling Rahil closer. It made those scars so much easier to bear, knowing that someone who cared—maybe not loved , yet, but cared, deeply—was bearing them with him. Mercer didn’t try to interrupt, and when he did speak, it was soft, not with pity but with attention and compassion. “I’m sorry.”

Rahil leaned into his touch. “For a long time, I thought I’d made the right choice,” he admitted. “But now I feel like… like I took that choice away from someone else. The coin only flips to heads so many times. I got lucky, so someone else…”

This was it. The segue.

He knew exactly who’d died making the same choice he had, and Mercer deserved to know it too.

But Mercer was already on the move, shifting to cup Rahil’s face in his thick palm, his eyes bright in the darkness. “Babe, you are brilliant enough to know that that is not how chance works.”

Not how chance works.

Brilliant.

Babe .

Rahil drew in a breath and was almost surprised to hear it sound like a sob. The warmth that slid down his cheeks caught him off guard, nearly as much as the sniffle that followed. This was not—it was hurting?—he was hurting . He didn’t understand why or how something like love could have done this, but in that moment he felt every year of loneliness and shame and grief as one blinding flash, and pressed against the solid form of someone who cared, it finally, fully hurt .

Mercer pulled him close, wrapping him up in a hug that felt so familiar and yet like nothing Rahil had ever experienced.

But he didn’t know yet. He didn’t know he was comforting the person who’d taken away his wife. Who’d ruined his life. Maybe now it would be all right, though—now that they both knew they wanted this. Maybe they could work through it.

“Mercer,” Rahil tried, his throat closing on the last syllable.

“I mean it,” Mercer insisted. “It was not your fault. Everything you blame yourself for, it’s—”

“ Mercer ,” Rahil repeated, stronger.

This time, Mercer just looked at him, not pulling away, but more pulling to attention. Soft, but firm, he said, “Yes, Rahil?”

Rahil had to swallow down every last panic fluttering through his body, and condense it all into his twisting gut as he said, “There’s something I have to tell you.” It sounded so ominous, but then so was the fact of his fangs in Leah’s neck. Maybe the best thing to do was not to shy away from that reality, but to acknowledge it. Rahil took one of Mercer’s hands in his, squeezing firmly. “I’m afraid it’s dark, and it’ll be painful at first, but I think you’d want to know now.” He couldn’t bear to look at Mercer as he continued, so he just did, one word after another. “When I was looking in Leah’s notebooks, I—”

But Mercer cut him off. “Is this—This is about her—about her death?” He didn’t sound horrified, yet the pressure of his fingers twisted around Rahil, until Mercer was the one holding Rahil’s hand. Mercer shook his head. “I don’t want to hear it right now. Later maybe, but… This is the first night where I haven’t felt like I have to orient my life around the pain of Leah’s passing and I want to keep it that way.”

The back of Rahil’s throat seemed to lose all moisture. He swallowed again. “It might change how you feel about me.”

“Nothing from our pasts can do that.” Such certainty. Mercer didn’t know what he was saying, Rahil told himself. What if he did, though? If he knew this was about Leah’s death and that it involved Rahil… what option was there, but the obvious? Maybe this really wasn’t the terrible, shocking secret Rahil had made it out to be in his mind.

“Tonight,” Mercer insisted, “can we just be who we are tonight ? No more anxieties, no more guilting ourselves. We do enough of that every other damn day.”

“I…” Rahil started, and he had a momentary twist in his gut, an impulse to say it anyway; they’d come this far, and it felt wrong to keep bottling it up. But Mercer was asking him—begging him, practically. He could see the tightness in Merc’s brow, the tension in his grip, and Rahil didn’t want to overstep—

A shriek interrupted his thoughts as a pair on a jet ski charged toward their darkened little lakeside wall. A broad-shouldered, cackling man with his open shirt flapping in the wind revved the engine. The smaller figure buried in his back screamed, “Reginald McFlame-Beard Hughes, I swear to god—”

The man steering—who Rahil was pretty sure didn’t have a beard—only laughed again. At the last second, he turned the jet-ski, forming a wave of water that crashed over Mercer and Rahil’s little wall, drenching through the top of Rahil’s head and the front of his shirt. He wiped it out of his eyes. His nose smelled like the lake.

“Watch it! There’s people here,” Mercer hollered, scrambling up as he waved his sandals at them. He looked so much like a stereotypical old man shouting at the clouds that Rahil couldn’t help the little delirious chuckle that left him.

All the pent-up emotion and the highs and lows of the night tumbled together in a sobbing laugh, leaving him leaning onto his knees as he tried uselessly to catch his breath. Mercer rubbed his back, muttering profanities. Rahil had almost pulled himself together again when the jet-skiers had the audacity to come back around, slower this time.

The man at the wheel called an awkward, “Sorry!” while his companion scowled.

Mercer waved the bird at him, and Rahil broke into a maniacal grin. A snort left Mercer, then a chuckle, and finally he dropped his face into Rahil’s wet hair and cackled awkwardly.

By the time they were both standing, shoes in their hands and shoulder to shoulder, it felt like an entire night had passed.

“I think it’s time we head home?” Mercer asked.

Home .

He must have caught something on Rahil’s face, or in the press of his shoulder, because he adjusted quickly, “My house, I mean. Though, someday I want to see this gothic mansion of yours.”

“Ha—well.”

It seemed there was more than one truth Rahil had to break to Mercer. But he hadn’t wanted to hear it; not yet. It would be better back at the house, anyway, at the very end of the night, in a place where Mercer could comfortably curl up and deal with his grief, if need be. If Mercer wanted tonight to simply be for them, nothing to shatter their remaining happiness, nothing left to work through but their own joys, then so be it.

Rahil tried not to stick his hands in his pockets just to give them something to do. His clothing had mostly dried during the walk back to the car and the ride to Mercer’s house, but he still felt uncomfortable as he stood in Mercer’s driveway, trying to judge in which direction Mercer intended the night to go, other than happy . His instinct was to build himself a shield of terrible flirting, but he worried if he tried that, he’d make a mess of the wonderful sincerity they’d managed so far.

Before he could decide what exactly to do though, Mercer demanded, “We’re going to the shed.”

He was on the move before Rahil could fully process the statement, and Rahil had to jog to catch up. Mercer’s muscles bulged in delightful ways as he heaved open the side of the shed, but Rahil still couldn’t figure out what they were doing. Leah’s device and the additional pieces he needed for it were in there, sure, but if this was just about retrieving them, it could all fit in Rahil’s hands—in his pockets, even, if his pants weren’t so tight. Rahil spotted the pieces in the cast of the lower security lights, and he made for their table, but Mercer stopped him halfway there.

He calmly reached for Rahil’s wrist, directing one of the trap cords around it.

Rahil didn’t pull away, but he tightened his brow, hoping that maybe, just maybe, there was something more happening here. Something beautiful. “I thought we were done with the unholy gold?”

“We are,” Mercer agreed. “But I’m not done with you.”

And—fuck it all—Rahil could think of nothing else suddenly. His body took over, shoving aside the knowledge that they were both avoiding Leah’s death as every nerve in his body came alive for one thing and one thing only.

He was fairly certain his soul had ascended.