Page 67 of This Blood that Bonds Us

“I know, I’ve just been thinking about your brothers and their secrets . . . Being here gives me so much time to retrace oursteps. If your brothers hadn’t kept their secret, or even if you and I hadn’t had any in Blackheart, if we’d all just laid it out, how different could things be? If we never got as close as we did and ended up in the church. If you’d had told your brothers, and you all left, or maybe if Kilian hadn’t seen what he saw in them. These secrets . . . have often made things worse for everyone. Maybe he can help, and he’ll know what the problem is.”

“You spend a lot of time thinking.” I shifted till the weight of her leg dug into my hips.

“It’s helping.”

“It is. It’s great. I just don’t want you to get lost in there. I need you here with me.” I kissed her temple, then her cheek till her anxious grip on me loosened, and she was back to melting into me. There weren’t words for how I needed her. Her blood was low on the list.

“I’m here.” She laughed softly.

“We’ll tell him. I think it’s a good idea. No more secrets. But that does mean we’ll have to tell him I’ve been drinking from you, and I’m not ready to have that conversation with my brother. Doesn’t need to be a secret, just not ready to deal with the questions. Plus, he’s already struggling with the changes.”

“That’s fair. Maybe we’ll go see him before Presley comes this weekend.”

“Yeah, but we have to get him out of the house. How many times can someone watchLion King 2and sulk?”

Even Kim couldn’t convince Presley to get off the couch, and she’d tried just about everything.

“I spoke to your mom about it this morning. I think she’s going to make him volunteer at the dog shelter during the week.”

She was already ten steps ahead of me.

“I wonder why he wants to go to Fairbanks so bad,” I said.

“I’m not sure, but it can’t hurt to take a little night off. For all of us.”

I’d denied Presley’s request for so long because I didn’t want any nights off. I wanted to spend every minute working toward getting my brothers back, but I didn’t need to tell Kim that, she knew.

She drew little circles over my bare chest, and I shivered. It brought my attention back to the weight in my heart.

It was weird to get used to it. My own grief physically embodied. All our grief lived in my body as a constant reminder of what was lost. Like I needed the extra reminder. Every night I looked up at that night sky, thinking about the distance and wondering what they were doing and how they were feeling.

“Where does it hurt?” She flattened her palm over my chest.

I grabbed her hand and guided it to the middle of my chest. “Here. It always hurts here. Like someone punched a hole in my chest and it’s just empty. It’s deep, like I can’t get to it.”

I moved her hand to the right. “And here it feels like stabbing sometimes, and then I’ll feel it in my back.”

“Want me to rub your back?”

I smiled and guided her head back to my chest. “This is better.”

Nights kept me together. I couldn’t imagine sitting and staring at the ceiling alone.

In the warmth of the cabin, I could tell Kimberly everything. Every good thought, every bad. We had no secrets anymore, and more importantly, nothing to hold us back from each other. Blackheart felt like a distant memory. I’d held myself back from her, and I was sure it caused all our suffering, because being with her was the easiest thing I’d ever done. Loving her came naturally, like it was something I was meant to do and it was the one thing I was ever any good at.

I gasped as a star streaked across the sky. One single ray of light carving a path through the darkness.

“A shooting star.” I’d only ever seen one, and it was with Kimberly.

That’s where I’d made my first wish, and it had come true.

I’d gotten to stay with her, and she was undoubtedly mine. I pulled at her as if I could get her any closer. There was one way, but it was still early in the night.

Kim placed her hand on mine. “Let’s make a wish together.”

I squeezed my eyes shut.

I want us to win. Please let us all get to come back here together.