Page 85 of This Blood that Bonds Us

“You were so cold. There was blood everywhere. It felt real. It felt sure. I was screaming for you . . . and you were gone.”

“How do you know it’s showing you the truth? It could be showing you just what It wants you to see just to scare you. We don’t even know what you’re tapping into. We can’t trust everything we see at face value. We don’t know what the visions mean, let alone who is sending them. Even if it was the future, who’s to say that’s the only outcome?”

“But what if it’s true? What if you die? What if it’s . . . written in the stars?”

The stars twinkled above. They usually brought me comfort, but I wanted to hide Aaron away where the stars couldn’t touch him. Away from the stars, the gods, or whatever else wanted to take him from me. Because this love was the kind that would haunt me day and night. The absence of Aaron Calem would leave me empty and nothing could ever fill it again. I'd caught the sun, felt it burn in my hands, and if it went out I'd never get another.

“Then I’ll change it. I’ll make my own constellations. I’m not scared of the stars. They should be afraid of me.”

I was awestruck at the fire in his eyes. Who was this infinitely hopeful man, and how did he muster the courage?

“How are you so brave?”

“I learned it from you.”

I shook my head. I didn’t feel brave anymore, and I could scarcely remember a time when I did.

“No. Not anymore. Every time we get a little closer, the less control I have of the future. I wish I could fast forward to know the end because it feels like I’m about to lose everything.”

Love had sucked the courage from my bones and left me hollow in its wake. I no longer felt the fire. Only a brisk emptiness of sorrow in the face of all I’d come to love being torn from me. To know love was to know true pain. It was a fragile,fickle, flickering thing in danger of being snuffed out despite my strongest efforts. I couldn’t control it. There was no certainty in love.

“You’ve been brave every day of your life. And you did that all on your own. It’s my turn to be brave for you.”

He was braver than I ever was. He’d known love his entire life and was at risk of losing it all, yet he smiled.

“I’m not going to let anything kill me that easily. I’ve got a girl that needs me.”

I squeezed him. “She must be special.”

He made me feel that way. Special. A word with no meaning before I met him. I’d just been Kimberly. A girl. Never a favorite. Or the best. I was never chosen first for anything. I was never anyone’s first phone call or thought in the morning.

No one picked me.

But Aaron did.

“She is. She’s everything. And I’m going to show her things can work out.”

Finally, the fear released me, and when I looked at the sky, I could appreciate the stars again and their glow in the dark sky. They were infinite, like our possibilities for a different future. A better one.

FEBRUARY

Thirty-Six

Presley

Another day, another minute of contemplating robbing a bank to buy my plane ticket to Ireland. Robbing the bank would be the easy part. The bank in town wasn’t the most high tech, and I was confident I could break into anything.

My stomach ached at what Luke would think of my willingness to commit a federal crime. Maybe that’s what he meant by being good.

I was being punished. Maybe Hell Bitch wasn’t a demon and She was a god and knew I spent every minute in my room thinking of how much I hated Her, so She was smiting me. I thought of Her—too often, likely not healthy—I felt anger, and I think it was my brother’s anger. Probably. It was hard to tell. After a while, all the strange internal sensations started to feel the same.

That’s the only explanation for why two weeks felt like two days—hence the bank robbing plans.

The only thing preventing me from committing a federal crime was knowing even if I made my way there, I didn’t know their exact location because I couldn’t figure out the stupid riddle. I was no Bilbo Baggins. Also, no money. I never acted on my thoughts, but sometimes in the dead of night, I’d go to the kitchen, grab the car keys, and toss them from hand to hand.

Everyone tried to make it better, but that’s what made it worse. I was feeling like Aaron when he was whiny and annoying, but I wished everyone would let me be sad. I’d let the sadness swallow me if it would’ve made time pass quicker. Aaron and Kimberly were off being heroes, and I was sitting in my room in the dark.

There was a knock at my door, and I refused to let go of my pillow and tear my gaze from the lamp.