Page 37

Matty

M atty woke up warm and rested and…light.

He’d never felt so light, not once in his life.

And maybe he shouldn’t have felt that way after having his life threatened and watching a man get sliced slowly and painfully into pieces just the night before, but he did. Like there was a giggle at the back of his throat, just waiting to come out.

He kept it in for now. Nightmare was sleeping, and Matty had never seen him do that. Maybe he needed the rest. And he deserved it, after making every single one of Matty’s dreams come true.

They’d separated again at some point in the night, and Matty had turned in his sleep so they were facing each other, one of his legs slung up over Nightmare’s hip. The shadows must have cleaned Matty up, because he didn’t feel sticky anywhere.

One of them tickled his cheek now, and Matty pursed his lips, a silent good-morning kiss hello.

“I’m awake, sweet,” Nightmare rasped, barely above a whisper. “Only resting.”

“Oh.” Matty glanced up to find Nightmare’s eyes already open, his flat white gaze focused on Matty’s face. “Good morning, Scary,” Matty said with a grin. “The rest of our life begins today.”

Immediately, Matty’s cheeks warmed. That had to have been the cheesiest thing he’d ever said in his life.

But Nightmare’s lips twitched, his fangs peeking out in a small grin. “That it does, little mate.”

The giggle that had been threatening finally came out, and Matty tucked his head into Nightmare’s chest, laughing at absolutely nothing, except for maybe how wonderful he felt.

When he’d gotten it out of his system, Matty let out a happy sigh. He was safe and warm in their little cocoon together, and he found himself saying, “I think I might want to go back to school. Luca pulled me out of high school, and he never let me get my GED. I’d like to now.”

He hadn’t realized it was something he wanted until the words were already leaving his mouth. But it was true. He’d had so much taken from him, and Matty wanted to take a little of it back, if he could. It was a start, at least.

“A noble pursuit,” Nightmare told him.

“I can do that part online, I think. But maybe—maybe one day I’ll want to go to college? If they’ll have me. I could study film or—or something like what Cooper does with computers?”

His sentences kept ending in question marks, and some of the lightness left Matty as he considered. Shouldn’t he know by now what he was interested in? Shouldn’t he have had some secret yearning for a vocation lingering in the back of his mind all this time?

Nightmare rubbed a soothing hand along Matty’s spine. “You’ll be able to study many, many subjects in your lifetime, Matteo. You don’t have to choose now.”

Matty bit at his lip, scratching his nail lightly down Nightmare’s chest. “I might not be a good student.”

Nightmare scoffed, but it was a nice kind of scoff. “There’s no need for you to be. But you’re curious and brave and determined. You’ll do well.”

Matty frowned. “I’m not sure I’m any of those things.”

One of the shadows pinched his cheek as Nightmare told him, “I’m certain enough for the both of us.”

Matty snuggled even closer, although it was barely possible with how hard he was pressed against Nightmare already. It was a nice reminder that they were naked, and wonderful things could happen when they were both naked together.

But then Matty’s stomach grumbled loudly enough to startle the shadows, sending them spinning off the bed.

Matty glared down at his stomach. “Maybe we should go down for breakfast.”

“Mm,” Nightmare agreed, his lips pressed tightly together, like he was fighting off a smile.

They dressed quickly and headed down to the kitchen. The whole crew was gathered around the table there, with assorted mugs in front of them and a plate of pastries that had clearly come from the Bakeshop on the table.

“Does anyone know if Seth’s okay?” Matty asked as he and Nightmare walked in. He couldn’t believe he’d forgotten to check the night before. “And Benny?”

Sascha swallowed his bite and cleared his throat.

“They’re both fine. Seth stayed in last night, and Benny’s the one who dropped off the pastries this morning.

I don’t know if he even knows what really happened last night.

He just gave me a fist bump and told me to pass one onto you while his creepy boyfriend glared at Kai like he was the devil. ”

There was a sort of tense silence after his announcement, and it took Matty a moment to remember that he’d basically admitted to being a bloodthirsty murderer at heart last night.

Maybe he and Nightmare were no longer welcome here, in Sascha’s safe place. Maybe they were too broken and twisted for family and friends.

But then Sascha stood from the table, walking quickly over to Matty and enveloping him in a hug, not even hesitating with the fact that Nightmare and his shadows were within touching distance.

“Everyone’s got their issues,” Sascha murmured in Matty’s ear before releasing him. “Come eat something.”

And then Cooper was making space for Matty at the table, and Nix was patting gently at his shoulder, and Kai was placing a Danish in front of him.

“Blueberry lemon,” the big demon said gruffly. “Sascha saved it for you.” He looked over to Nightmare, arching a brow. “We don’t have any virgin blood or children’s tears on hand, but the coffee’s hot.”

Nightmare scoffed, scooping Matty from his chair and placing him back down on his lap. “As if I would have anything to do with children, crying or otherwise.”

“We won’t ask you to babysit the hatchlings, then,” Chaos said nonsensically, ducking under Kai’s massive arm to steel his mug of coffee, seemingly for no other purpose than to hear him yell in rage.

Matty sat very still for a moment, until he was certain he wouldn’t burst into tears at the table. Until the happiness in his chest was contained enough for him to move steadily.

Then he ate his breakfast, surrounded by his friends.

By late afternoon, the other couples had left to go back to New York—with a promise to return to Seacliff later in the summer for an extended stay—and then it was only Sascha and Kai in the house with Matty and Nightmare.

The other two had sojourned to Sascha’s office to rebook their flights and reschedule their travel plans, so there was plenty of space for Matty and Nightmare to be on their own, but Matty had gotten kind of accustomed to his and Nightmare’s new routine of strolling around the town every day.

“Should we go for our walk?” he asked a little before sunset, and Nightmare agreed.

The evening was warm, and now that they didn’t have to make an effort to be seen by lingering mobsters, they had the option to explore more of the residential neighborhoods, so Matty took them down a new route.

And there, on a street Matty had never been down before—near enough to the coastal path that he could still hear the sound of the waves breaking against the rocks if he listened closely—was a little house.

It was a single-story clapboard cottage, painted a cheerful pale yellow, with a covered porch and a large, overgrown yard. The sign said it had two bedrooms and one bath.

The sign said it was for sale.

Matty stood there staring at the apparition, Nightmare’s hand clasped tightly in his. He looked up at his demon. “You believe in fate, right?” Matty asked. “You think we were, like, meant to be together?”

Nightmare had never said as much, but Matty didn’t know how else to describe Nightmare’s very singular obsession with his mortal soul.

Nightmare’s dark human eyes flashed white in the twilight. “I believe you’re mine.”

Matty grinned up at him, even though it wasn’t a real answer to his question. Or maybe it was.

And then Matty couldn’t stop staring at that sign. He’d loved living with Sascha and Kai—as much as he’d been able to love anything with how scared he’d been of Dominico’s return—and he knew he wanted to stay close to them. But also…

A place of his own. Matty had never had that. Not once.

“I don’t have any money,” he pointed out quietly, more to himself than anyone else.

Nightmare huffed, sounding almost offended. “I can get you money, sweet.”

“You can?” Matty tilted his chin to peer down at the shadow nestled between his pecs, the one who’d become his more or less permanent companion. “Are you all robbing banks now?”

“I’ve found my way into endless dreams over the centuries, little human. I’ve seen buried gold, hidden riches. Not all of it was imagined. I know where to find these things.”

Well. That was… Matty didn’t know what to say to that, actually. Those things—buried treasures haunting someone’s nightmare—didn’t sound real to him. But then again, neither had demons, once upon a time.

“Enough for a little cottage?” he eventually asked, unable to keep the hope from his voice.

“Many times over,” Nightmare told him, pulling Matty closer to him and wrapping his arms around Matty’s chest so Matty was still facing the house. He seemed content enough to stay there, staring, for as long as Matty liked.

Matty bit at his lip. “It’s not too small for you, is it?”

“I like cramped, dark corners. All the better for looming over my prey.”

Matty laughed, delighted. Everyone thought Nightmare was so serious all the time, but he had some great jokes, if people ever bothered to listen to them.

“A place of our own,” Matty mused.

“A place of our own.”

“We’ll have a lot of them, I guess. Over time.”

“We will.”

“Because we’ll be together always.”

“Always,” Nightmare repeated.

They stood there as the sun set fully over the horizon, the light around them growing dim.

A year ago Matty had thought himself doomed for pain and death, unwanted and unloved. Unlucky, definitely. He’d always thought that. Maybe less than some but surely more than most, was what he’d decided.

But now, with his demon at his side, the future an endless road of infinite possibilities before them, Matty thought he might be the luckiest human alive.

When the world was dark around them, Matty tugged on Nightmare’s hand, pulling him to the empty house. “Come on, Scary. Let’s look inside.”

He wanted to see what the start of the rest of their life looked like.