Page 10

Chapter 10

Theo

I didn’t know what to do. Wren was looking at me like I had answers, but I didn’t. I didn’t have anything but a deep-seated fear that lived somewhere at the base of my spine and wanted to tear up along my chest. It whispered that I was just as much of a monster as he thought I was.

That fear chased around with loathing, because what happened last night was still playing in my head—I hadn’t slept because of it. I could barely close my eyes without feeling the sensations again, pooling just beneath the surface of my skin and threatening to break me.

I hated him. I hated him so fucking much. He’d done it again without even touching me—without even being in the room. I’d felt him last night, and now my brain knew what it could feel like if I let myself give in to impulse, if I gave myself over to a person.

I couldn’t give myself to someone. So when Wren stepped closer to me, I did the only thing I could think to do.

I lashed out, and felt a small part of me recoil when my fingers hooked, the tips slicing through the air in a blur of black claws. “Just… fucking stay away from me, Wren. Don’t…” I swallowed hard. “Don’t touch me. Maybe if you can do that, I can keep myself from attacking anyone while we run from the problem you made.”

The words came out on a wave of heat, and I felt a little better after saying them, because I watched whatever expression that was trying to build behind his eyes slowly slip away to a chill that penetrated to the center of my chest.

It was better.

It was easier .

I wanted him to hate me too.

“Fine.”

I dropped my eyes the instant I heard the disgust in his voice and nodded. I didn’t have anything to pack—I didn’t have anything to do, other than look toward the door that he’d obviously broken to make sure I couldn’t get out after he’d gone to bed last night.

“Do you have somewhere in mind?”

There was a moment of silence, and he shrugged a shoulder. “Not really. I’ll call a car, and we can just stop at the first place we see outside town.”

Calling a car was probably a good idea. The driver would be by himself, and I could keep my eyes down instead of letting them wander. I’d worried Wren was going to ask us to walk, that I really was going to have to fight with myself to stop any reactions threatening to spill to the surface when I saw those lines drifting between people. I still didn’t understand what was going on. I couldn’t control the anger that surged through my body…

And I hadn’t lied before. I’d killed people, more people than I should have, but it had never been someone who didn’t deserve it. It had never been someone who was… innocent.

Those men on the street had been innocent. They’d wanted to help me, and I’d nearly…

“Fine.”

It was the only thing I could manage, but he seemed to take it as enough. He walked into the other room and pulled out his phone. Ten minutes later, a dark car was pulling up in front of the hotel.

I hated that I still didn’t trust myself—I hated it even more that I unconsciously took a step toward Wren as soon as we left the motel room, because I knew the way I could keep that rage inside me calm. I knew the easiest way to make sure I kept my head.

I wasn’t going to tell him.

I wasn’t going to ask him to touch me.

I didn’t need him.

I ducked into the car without looking at the driver, and I made sure my focus was on the ground instead of the world around us. The last thing I needed was some couple coming out of a room beside us and setting me off because I couldn’t think straight.

When Wren climbed into the backseat beside me and muttered something to the driver about an arbitrary destination, I felt some of the tension flood out of my body. If I turned in his direction and focused on the floorboard, I couldn’t see anything else. If I closed my eyes, the only thing I could do was smell the faint scent of sweat from the driver and something deeper coming from the man beside me.

If I kept my eyes closed, I could pretend that everything hadn’t turned on its head in the last few days, that everything wasn’t changing. That I didn’t have a line running out of my chest and straight into the heart of someone who would rather see me dead than alive.

My fingers drifted up without me thinking, and when I touched the red trailing between us, I heard Wren’s breath catch in his chest. I hadn’t missed his reaction to it before, and it was only instinct alone that had stopped me from yanking the thing from my chest out of pure spite. As much as I hated the world around me, I didn’t want to die.

I wanted to live. I wanted to be safe.

I wanted…

“Could you stop that?” Wren’s voice came out sharp beside me, and I felt the corner of my lips lift into a grin when I probably should have just listened to him.

I kept my touch on the thread light, but I didn’t move my fingers.

“Why?”

I risked slitting one eye open to look at him, but all I saw was his profile—his sharp jawline was tense, ticcing in the silence. His eyes were closed, and if I wasn’t mistaken, a small pulsing tremor rippled through his body before he realized I was looking at him. He turned his attention to me with a glare, violet eyes flinty, but swirling with some underlying emotion I couldn’t read. I needed a translator, maybe a map—I needed a damn star chart to navigate the expression on his face, because it was a galaxy away from anything I’d ever felt, anything I could understand.

I dropped my gaze instead of trying to figure out why it made my chest ache.

Out of the corner of my vision, I could see streaks of color, and some part of me worried that if I saw a hint of red, I’d fling myself out the window of the car. Just because Wren thought I was a monster, and just because I thought so too sometimes, didn’t mean that I wanted to leap out of a moving vehicle.

After a few seconds of silence, Wren’s voice came again. It was soft in the hush of the car, because we were both aware that there was someone else in here with us. The awkward tension had caused the driver to turn up his music and focus on where he was taking us, but he was still here.

“Does it bother you when your eyes are closed? You seemed fine in the diner until you… weren’t.” He added the second part with the slightest bit of accusation in his voice, and I wasn’t sure if it was because I’d tried to attack people or because I’d stabbed him. Of their own accord, my fingers drifted to my leg and ran across my thigh. Wren’s voice came again, slightly softer this time. “It’s fine.”

“I wasn’t—”

“I’m just letting you know.” He cut me off before I could work myself into saying something malicious. “I heal quickly. I can take a lot of damage.”

I wasn’t sure if that was a threat or a comfort, so I ignored it altogether. “I can still… feel everything around me like some angry buzz in my head, even with my eyes closed. It’s…” Agonizing. Exhausting. “Tolerable.”

My lie was even more bold because I knew a truth I hadn’t before—a truth that changed everything. It was better when he touched me… better when I could feel his skin, cool and solid against mine.

I’d spent so much of my life with misery buzzing in my periphery, agony threatening to rip me apart. It had manifested into something real, something tangible and frightening that wanted to completely take me over, but it was familiar. It almost felt wrong that his skin on mine made it melt away.

“Tolerable? Theo, we—”

“We’re here.” The cab driver sounded a little too eager for us to get out of the car. I wondered if the tension pouring between us was so palpable he could feel it beating against the back of his head, or if there was something ominous radiating off me that made him worry for himself.

Whatever it was, Wren cut what he was going to say short and handed the man in the front seat a handful of cash before we got out of the car.

It was immediately obvious that I was in trouble. Wren hadn’t specified where to drop us off, and we were in front of a very busy hotel, on a very busy street. In broad daylight.

I froze, my jaw clenching so hard it felt like my teeth were going to crack. I needed to close my eyes—I needed to look away, because I knew what I was going to see. I could feel it all around me. People holding hands. People in love. People who were—

Wren’s cool fingers slid across my face, digits forcing my lids shut. It wasn’t the way the world went black that calmed me. It was the feel of his skin pressing against mine, submerging me in gentle waves, a sweet, black ocean where I could sink to the bottom.

I didn’t realize my body had swayed slightly, my back pressing to his chest, until I’d already done it. And I didn’t question him when he slipped one hand around my waist and started guiding me forward.

“Keep your eyes closed.” He whispered it in my ear, and I nodded as he slid his hand between us and threaded our fingers together.

I hated it—I didn’t hold hands. I didn’t want to feel like this.

I just…

I could barely breathe. I could barely think. That calm was rolling through my body in intoxicating waves and making me forget why I didn’t trust someone to put their hand in mine.

“Hurry.” I said it through gritted teeth, and he didn’t answer. He just pulled me inside and spoke in a calm voice to someone at the reception desk, then kept pulling me forward until I heard the sound of elevator doors slide shut. When I started to open my eyes, his hand spasmed, bringing my face to his shoulder and pressing me against him.

“Not yet. Stay with me.”

There were people in the elevator with us.

Their soft, flirty conversation made my body tense… and Wren’s fingers tugged gently at my hair and forced me closer against him. He’d realized, even though I hadn’t said a word, what his proximity did.

I wanted to tear out his throat.

I shifted and pressed my lips to his neck instead so I could keep track of his steady heartbeat—count the tempo of his pulse. When I moved, it sped up, and I wondered if it was because he knew that if I pulled away, I’d kill the people in the elevator with us.

That had to be it.

I drew in a deep breath and shivered. Wren smelled like… Fuck, he smelled like the only good memory I’d ever had. Being small and safe, the warmth of summer, berries and chocolate. The flavor of sweet and tart on my tongue before everything faded to the taste of coppery blood and the feeling of hunger and pain.

What the fuck ?

I jerked back from him before I fell forward, before I fell into the lie of him and did something stupid like beg him not to let me go. The elevator door dinged open and I darted into the hallway without seeing anyone, without seeing anything past the desperate way I needed to get away from Wren.

I thought about turning and going straight to the stairwell, running as fast and as far as I could. He had no business making me feel anything , and no business somehow smelling like the only good memories I had.

He had no business existing.

“Theo.” He called my name behind me, and I whirled on him as soon as I heard the elevator door slide shut. We were still in the danger zone, because there were rooms all around us—there were people all around us—and I was beginning to think that it didn’t matter . I’d kill them all if it meant I could get away from what it felt like he was threatening me with, what it felt like he was trying to break me with.

“Get the fuck away from me, I—”

He didn’t step closer; he just held his hand out. For a second, I thought he was trying to get me to take it, and for a second I felt myself swaying, wanting to… then I realized he had a room key held between his slender fingers.

“Right behind you. I got joining rooms again, so you can have some privacy.”

I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it, but his eyes were just a little too wide, a little too wild for him to be completely unaffected by what had just happened.

It made me wonder…

When Wren thought about his best memories, what did they smell like?