by Scott Tracey
“You already know.”
I struggled and fought, but Trey refused to let go. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” I couldn’t see straight, my vision was a constantly jerking haze of red and black. “How could you—”
“How could I?” he asked sharply. “Don’t be naive. I knew what I was doing. I know what I’ve done.”
“You struck a bargain with a demon! They’re the only ones that could have given you that kind of power! Just … tell me it was Matthias. It was Matthias, it had to be … ” I trailed off at Trey’s stony silence, the way his eyes dropped down.
The fight drained out of me like poison from a wound. “There’s a loophole, there’s got to be a loophole.” Lucien wouldn’t make a contract without several different ways to screw Trey over. But there was always a way out. But you don’t have anything he wants anymore, the practical part of my mind pointed out. A month ago, Lucien would have done anything to get me to do what he wanted. But why would Lucien make this bargain? Why now?
“Power has its price,” Trey said, his hands sliding up my arms. “I knew what I was going to have to pay. It’s okay.”
“It’s not! Why would you even say that?” In the last few weeks, I’d felt weak and broken many times. I’d been determined to get my feet back under me and figure out a way to survive. But this … this was something else. There wasn’t any coming back from a demon’s contract. Trey had signed on the dotted line. He was Lucien’s now, and Lucien got to set the terms.
I don’t know if I can deal with this. Why would he do that?
Why would he sacrifice himself? For me.
I bent over and heaved, needing to suddenly vomit out everything that was churning in my stomach. But I heaved, and I heaved, and nothing came out. My face burned, tears leaked out of the sides of my eyes, and once I started, I couldn’t seem to stop. I just kept trying to expel it all.
It took some time, but I finally pulled myself back under control. I sat there, curled up into a ball, my head on my knees and I breathed. Slow, deep breaths, shaky and closer to gasps sometimes, but soon I got close enough to fake it. Trey had his arm over me, and his head pressed against the back of mine, shielding me as best he could.
With my newfound calm, I tried to put things into order. First, Trey had sold his soul to Lucien. Second, Trey was the biggest moron known to man. Third, no really, the biggest moron known to man. There would be documentaries and feature films starring guys not nearly as hot as Trey.
Fourth, I had to find out a way to get him out of it. Because I couldn’t let him do all of this … because of me. That wasn’t the way we worked. Or at least that shouldn’t be.
I stood up, but I didn’t completely break away from Trey. He touched my hands, my face, like he wouldn’t believe I was okay until he actually felt for himself. It was nice, but unnecessary. I wanted to be mad. I wanted to be so mad. But all I could do was wrap my arms around him and pull myself up into him.
“Hey, you’re okay,” he said, like he needed to be consoling me right now!
“No really,” a caustic voice interrupted from behind us, “I’m fine. Don’t trouble yourselves.” Drew’s body could have been sculpted by Michelangelo, with all the perfect little curves of muscle and cuts of bone. But in that moment, I barely noticed. I just held on to Trey and tried to think my way out of what he’d done.
Later, I was going to be furious. But right now I was too busy feeling relieved to hold on to much of anything else.
“Oh, his shirt,” I mumbled, finally pulling away from Trey. Drew’s shirt was still in my hand.
“Hey, that’s … ” Trey said, looking down at the shirt with a quizzical look.
“Drew’s shirt,” I supplied, but that didn’t ease the confusion on his face. I shrugged and walked it over to Drew, who just like he said was fine now. He was dirty, like he’d rolled around in the grass a few times, but otherwise there wasn’t a mark on him. Trey came up behind me, slid his arms around my waist. I know it was a clear sign of staking a claim or something, but Drew didn’t rise to the bait.
The Shifter rolled the henley up and squeezed the last little drips of water out. A side effect of whatever Trey had done—the three of us were almost completely dry. All the water from the storm had evaporated inside the dome. Drew pulled the shirt back on, and managed to do so without a single sexist remark. “Wow,” I said, and Trey’s arms tightened around me, but Drew’s abs of doom weren’t what I was wowing.
“So my dad’s a total psycho,” he offered a few moments later, his tone dismissive. “That just makes me one of the cool kids. Everyone in Belle Dam’s got a fucked-up family tree. Psycho dad is probably a step up from plain old dead dad.”
“Drew—” But he held up a hand before I could continue.
“Your turn to play chauffeur. I’ve suddenly come down with a need to go raid that legendary Thorpe liquor cabinet.” Drew nodded at me once and then headed for his bike. Trey and I watched him go, and waited until he pulled out of the harbor parking lot before we moved again.
Trey spoke first. “Do you think he’s going to be okay?”
I shook my head, unsure. I pulled away from him, sliding in to his side and wrapping my arm around his waist.
“You always do that,” he chuckled.
“Do what?”
Trey shrugged. “Nothing, I just thought it was funny.”
“What was funny?”
“You’re always,” he struggled to find the words, “jockeying for position. You don’t like to be touched unless you’re the one doing the touching. If I grab your hand,” he made a point of pulling away long enough to take my hand, “you’ll let go, then take my hand again.”
Did I do that? Maybe. It was hard to say. Just to prove a point, I didn’t let go of Trey’s hand, even though I definitely felt a little uncomfortable. It was just because Trey called attention to it, I told myself. I don’t really do that.
“We should get you home,” Trey said, looking towards his car. He’d parked on the street, I was surprised no one had hit him yet. “Before anything else happens.”
“Let’s go somewhere,” I said suddenly. “Just us.”
He laughed like he thought I was kidding. When I didn’t laugh too, he turned to look at me, his expression heavy. “Like where?”
sixteen
By the time Trey caught up to me, I was already climbing into the passenger seat of his truck. “You’re serious,” he said flatly. “What’s going on, Braden?”
“I don’t know!” I snapped. “I just … I don’t want to go home. Can we just go somewhere? Or are you going to keep making this difficult?”
“We need to talk—”
“No! We’re not talking about it. As far as I’m concerned, it didn’t happen. Not for the next few hours. I … can’t. I just can’t.” Right now, the idea of Lucien having his hands all over Trey’s future made me want to go catatonic, vomit, and scream until I lost my voice. Probably all at the same time.
He didn’t say anything else, and a chilly silence crept into the car with us as Trey drove. I leaned my head against the glass, letting the chill seep into my skin. Too much kept happening, and the better I thought I was getting at dealing with new blows, the faster and harder the next set came. I couldn’t keep up.
My heart started racing, and I couldn’t seem to catch my breath. A couple of times I went to take a breath and it was like I just … couldn’t. Like my lungs had forgotten how to inflate. Like there wasn’t enough oxygen in the world to make the next breath okay.
Trey gripped his hand against my knee, and I flinched so hard I slammed my head against the window in an effort to get away.
“Pull over.” My eyes were blurring and the world had gone askew, but I felt it when he took his foot off the gas. My head throbbed, and the panic subsided by degrees, but each of those things was only a distraction. I might have been the passenger in a car someone else was driving, but I was still running.
And it was time to stop.
“He’s not going to kill me,” Trey said once he’d pulled the car over to the berm and cut the engine. “I got it in writing.”
“He won’t.” The brief wash of relief through my veins only cleared the way for a fresher, darker hell. Because if Lucien wasn’t going to kill him, he was going to do something even worse. Something unforgivable. “He’s going to drain you,” I said slowly, pulling away, my voice wooden and flat. “He’s going to leave you the same way he leaves all of them. With an empty future.”
“But alive,” Trey said, trying to make it sound lighter than it should. “So I don’t become the businessman I figured I’d be some day. So what? I don’t save the world. I don’t win the lottery.” His smile was sad, but selfless. “You’ll be able to do those things. I made sure of it. That’s the other part of our deal. He can’t hurt you, either.”
I couldn’t handle this. Trey had sold himself to Lucien.
I needed air.
“We should talk about this,” Trey said.
“I don’t really feel like it,” I sneered. “Why not go talk to Lucien about it? But then I’m sure he already knows what a completely idiotic ass-bag you are.”
“Do you want to hear my side or not?” His fingers traced the lines of the steering wheel, but he didn’t make a move to cross the aisle again.
“I—I can’t,” I said quickly, and threw the door open. It took me a second to remember how to undo my seat belt before I slid out. Coming back out into the cold was bracing but welcome. I couldn’t trust myself to speak more than that. I couldn’t decide how I felt right now. I was frustrated, desperate, fuming, terrified, depressed, fatalistic, and on the verge of tears. But none of that was going to help me right now.
Trey came around the front of the truck, resting his hand on the hood.
“I want to punch you,” I admitted. “And if you really understood what you’ve done, you’d punch yourself, too.”
But Trey wasn’t so easily swayed. “You were going to die,” he said calmly. “Bennett won. Game over. Lucien may hate your guts but he needs you alive. So we made a deal.”
“So Lucien showed up with a convenient threat and suddenly you’re on board?” I slapped my hand down on the truck, and damn that was a bad idea. I winced, cradling my hand against my chest. But the pain only made the anger that much stronger. “Why the hell would you trust him? He lies. It’s what he does.”
“Do you think that I don’t know that?” Trey’s jaw tightened. “But this way I can help you. I can keep you safe.”
“You’re giving Lucien exactly what he wants. Control over you. God, have you always been this stupid and I missed it?”
“Better that I pay that price than you,” Trey continued. “You keep trying to sacrifice yourself for everyone around you. You think I don’t know that? You wound up in the hospital because of me. If I hadn’t followed you through the portal that night, maybe you’d have been able to save your uncle. You lost everything that night.” He looked down at his hands. “And I was just happy that you were alive. I know that’s selfish, and stupid, but it’s true.”
“You sold your soul, you absolute fucking moron!” I screamed, my voice deafening in the night.
“I knew what I was doing,” he snapped.
“Really? Because if it acts fucking stupid like an idiot, walks into danger like an idiot, and tries to be so fucking noble like an idiot, it’s probably an idiot. The king of idiots.” No, there were not tears in my eyes. I refused to cry over this … this … .jackass.
“Braden—!”
“I get it, you want to talk! But I can’t do this. Especially not right now. And fuck you for doing this to me. Do you know what it’s going to be like, knowing that the reason you got turned into a drooling jackass is because of me?”
“I’ll still be me,” he said in his stubborn voice.
“You’ll be less. That’s the point. You won’t be Trey anymore. You’ll become the smallest, most insignificant version of yourself. That’s what happens. That’s why you should know better than to strike a deal with the devil.”
“And I’d do it again.” Trey’s body was shaking in anger, and I swear for a moment I could see the air rippling around him. “Do you think that tonight was it? Do you really think you’ll be safe for the rest of your life? This wasn’t about tonight, Braden. It’s about tomorrow, and the day after. And the year after that.”
I turned around and walked to the end of the truck, just to give my feet something to do. Because right now all they wanted to do was kick Trey in his stupid, fat head.
“You’re not going out there by yourself,” he said, and it was like the starting shot at a race, because I whipped around and ran full speed at him, not stopping until we were nose to nose.
“No,” I said sharply, “you don’t get to make any decisions. Not anymore. Because you can’t be trusted not to be a stupid fucking asshole. So we’re done with that, and I’ll figure out how to fix this.”
“Don’t you get it? I don’t want you to fix this. Lucien can’t go after you. I got it in writing.”
“I DON’T NEED YOU TO PROTECT ME!” I screamed so loud they probably heard me in Maine. “I’ve never needed you to protect me. You’re not my knight in shining armor. I thought you got that!”
He crossed his arms in front of himself, closing ranks against what I was saying. “I’m not going to apologize for what I did.”
“You are the most frustrating, arrogant—”
What I had been about to say was interrupted by Trey crossing the small chasm between us, and simultaneously grabbing the front of my shirt and pulling me towards him. His hand slid under my jaw, tilting my mouth upwards, even as I was berating him, his lips captured mine and claimed my anger as their spoils of war.
Because it was a war. Our hands vied for position, bodies shifting, limbs blocking the way, fingers tangling in hair, in cloth, against skin. Trey kissed me like it was the last time, and I kissed him like it was the first time again and again.
And I wanted to hate him. I really, really did.
But I cared about the ass-bag.
One of the public beaches passed us by. Trey had driven us through the rest of town and was heading past the turnoff for his own house. But he didn’t slow down and instead kept following the road south, away from the water and from Belle Dam itself.
Just as signs for the highway started cropping up, Trey turned onto a dirt road that was nearly invisible in the twilight. I didn’t ask any more questions, since it was clear he knew where was taking us. I took the opportunity to watch the scenery and pretend today had been anything other than what it was.
When we pulled up in front of a cabin, almost completely swallowed up in the trees, I hesitated for a second. It had a certain “this is where the serial killer hides the bodies” quality to it. The sun was setting and the wooden structure was crime-scene dark. There was barely a five-foot gap between the house and the woods. A recently escaped mental patient could appear at any time.
“Relax,” Trey said, climbing out of the car. “It’s perfectly safe.” He walked around the car and opened my door for me. “I come down here when I need to decompress.”
“Or when you don’t want anyone to hear the screams,” I muttered under my breath.
“Dirty,” Trey said, flashing me a full-wattage smile. “Come on, the temperature’s dropping. It’s going to be freezing tonight.”
He was right. A cold front had followed the storm in, and it was at least twenty degrees colder now. Neither one of us was dressed for this, and the sun hadn’t even fully set yet. Trey slung an arm around my shoulder and led me up to the door. He pulled a key from his key ring, prompting a raised eyebrow from me, and led me inside.
The first thing I realized once he started turning on lights was how messy the place was. I’m not the picture of a perfectly clean anything, but I’m not entirely a slob. Trey, on the other hand, didn’t seem to fit that mold. There was a collection of shirts tossed ov
er the back of the barstools lining a breakfast bar, the kitchen table was covered in papers and books, and a small stack of bowls filled the sink.
“How long have you been staying here?” I asked, biting down on my lip. I’d been apprehensive just seeing what the place looked like, for some reason seeing that Trey was actually staying here made my stomach start doing somersaults.
“Ever since … ” he trailed off, and then his voice hardened. “Ever since.”
Jade had said he hadn’t been home since that night. I guess she hadn’t been lying. I shuffled a stack of papers so they were more in order. Trey looked from me to the mess and back again. A faint blush started creeping up on his cheeks and he took the papers out of my hands and started to do it himself. “You said you wanted to get away. If I’d known, I would have … ”
He’s nervous. It was almost cute. I let him take a few minutes to try and clean up, staying out of the way. I certainly wasn’t about to help. Besides, seeing Trey struggling with uncertainty made me forget for a time that our lives weren’t normal.
I built a fantasy world while he cleaned his real one. A world where John and I had moved back to Belle Dam, and there were no such things as witches, and Trey and I could just be … Trey and I. No lawyers, no curses, no lighthouses. A world without a feud.
He’d probably take me on a date to the beach, and when it started raining just as we got there, he’d just laugh to himself. Then instead of a picnic on the sand, we’d eat in the car, each taking turns to find the most ridiculous songs on his mp3 player and listen to them. Jade would probably text us about a hundred times each, furious that we weren’t giving her the play-by-play as it happened. And then at the end of the night, he’d drop me off at home and insist on walking me to the door, and Jason wouldn’t even pretend not to be waiting up. And since Jason would ruin the moment at the end of the night, the next time I saw Trey, he’d offer me a handful full of chocolate kisses, because he didn’t want to miss out on it again, and then he’d smile and say—