“Shannon…” Aiden swallowed his name. It was a question, Shannon thought. Aiden’s eyes, honey and coal and sparking flames hidden beneath dark blond lashes, darted this way and that, across Shannon’s waist, down his legs.
Spread out on the bed with a blush creeping from his chest to his face, Aiden was still a cluster of knives. Shannon’s willingness to bleed defied every shred of control he had left.
Shannon took his time crawling up Aiden’s body. He counted each set of ribs with his teeth, drawing soundless breath from Aiden’s lungs. He chewed on the arcs of his collarbones, left blooming marks on his chest. The long slope of Aiden’s neck extended, he dug his nails into Shannon’s scalp, and held him down. The indentions from Shannon’s incisors could spell out their love story, if they had one at all.
“You all right?” Shannon asked.
Aiden pulled Shannon’s face down, craned forward, and sealed their lips together. They stayed in that kiss for as long as they could and stole gulps of air between interludes of teeth and lips and tongue. It wasn’t until Aiden made a sound in the back of his throat, a growl or a moan or a little bit of both, that Shannon finally broke away. He started at Aiden’s jaw, placed his lips there, and trailed them down his neck, over his chest. Aiden squirmed when his teeth scraped the top of Aiden’s hipbones, then latched onto the smooth flesh on the inside of his thigh.
According to Shannon Wurther, Aiden Maar was the best kept secret in the universe. Being in his orbit was like being pulled toward the sun, melting away, falling back to Earth, and slamming against the ground without any complaint. Aiden’s chest heaved. Instead of placing his hands on Shannon’s shoulders, or the back of his head, or his jaw, or anywhere Shannon wanted to feel them, he buried them in the sheets. His neck was a long line of white, stretched back. His lips were red and bitten where he pressed them down in attempt to mute himself. Shannon crawled back up Aiden’s body. Aiden’s eyes squeezed shut, and whimpers, barely under his breath, fluttered from him.
“Stop being quiet,” Shannon said against his mouth, trying to catch his breath. Aiden grasped his face and kissed him. It tasted like smoke, and salt, and copper. Shannon reeled back and found the cut on Aiden’s mouth torn open. Drops of blood left cherry streaks on his lips and darkened his mouth. Shannon swiped it with his thumb, licked it clean. “I mean it,” he said.
Wide, defiant eyes scanned him in the dark and watched Shannon disappear down the length of his body. Aiden listened, reluctantly, but he listened. His legs tightened around Shannon’s ears, and he gasped, low, throaty groans turned tender and shaken. His hips rose off the bed and Shannon forced them back down, gripped Aiden’s waist hard, watched his bloody mouth tremble.
Aiden’s back arched. He said Shannon’s name as if it might have been a prayer or a plea or the only name he knew, and Shannon swore he’d never heard it spoken until then, until Aiden let it slip past his lips.
20
The shower in Shannon’s apartment was small. He had a shallow tub and a shower head that sprayed a little too hard for Aiden’s liking.
Hot water scorched his back as Aiden rested his forehead against the white wall with his eyes closed, trying to coax his body to stop reacting to phantom touches. Tremors danced on his skin. His knees wobbled. Shannon’s fingertips were ghosts, their bruising grip on his waist a whisper, and the way his voice rasped—Stop being quiet—was the tumbling of dry, autumn leaves.
He hadn’t expected it to happen like that. He hadn’t expected to be torn up, to be cracked open.
Memories flashed behind his eyelids. He saw Shannon’s wide baby blues in the gallery and the disbelief that honed his face into the personification of skepticism. Aiden remembered the first night. He remembered losing the battle against his better judgment and testing a kiss. That could’ve proved the Clock was wrong, that fate was just another fad. But when Aiden stepped off the ledge, he’d forgotten how long the fall could be. He’d made the mistake of being sure Detective Wurther wouldn’t kiss him back.
That was months ago, and it seemed as if it’d only been a week.
His tongue darted along the edge of the small gash on the side of his mouth. Aiden squeezed his eyes shut tighter, but all he saw in the darkness was shadowed skin, wet lips, and Shannon hovering over him, sucking blood off his thumb. I mean it.
“Fucking hell, Wurther…” Aiden whispered. He swallowed, freeing his mind of the repetitive memories, and grabbed a bottle of shower gel off the shelf.
The door opened. He heard Shannon’s bare feet against the tile. Jeans hit the floor. The shower curtain crinkled as it was pulled away. He glanced at Shannon, ran a soapy hand over the back of his neck, and struggled to keep his composure. A part of him was embarrassed, unsure of what to do, how to act, what to say, and another part of him, a larger part of him, was itching to reach out and touch. Shannon did that for him. He stepped in and blocked the water, then ran his hands through the soap lingering on Aiden’s shoulders.
“Gardenia?” Warmth pooled in Aiden’s abdomen, spreading out into the rest of him like unruly vines. “They don’t give you cop-scented soap with your uniform?”
Aiden felt Shannon’s smile pressed between his shoulder blades at the top of his spine. “You don’t like it?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“What do you use? Ice Pick? Eagle Screech?”
Laughter punched from him, abrupt enough that his lip stung. Water made for slick bodies, and Aiden liked the way his skin felt against Shannon’s. “Organic vanilla,” he admitted and laughed again, at himself mostly, “and sandalwood. I get it at the crystal shop downtown.”
“Here you are buying organic bath products and you have the nerve to question my gardenia body wash.” Shannon snorted, nosing along Aiden’s neck.
There it was again: the length of his vowels, the drop of his “ing” and the top-heavy beginning of “gardenia.” Aiden glanced over his shoulder before he turned around to lean against Shannon’s broad chest. He fought the urge to let his eyes wander and focused on his face, the tilt of his nose, the water that clung to his lashes. Shannon Wurther wasn’t just cop-handsome, Aiden decided. He was the kind of handsome people swooned over, the kind of handsome other men envied. Not rough, but lacking finesse, he fit somewhere in-between, walking the line that separated hard and soft.
“Thank you for covering for me with the whole gallery-case thing,” Aiden whispered. “For a second there I thought you might not.”
Shannon hummed and kissed Aiden’s shoulder. “You think I’d let them take you?”
“I don’t know.”
“You should know by now,” Shannon said.
“You ever gonna tell me where you’re from?”
Shannon tensed. His jaw fell slack and he gave a subtle shake of his head.
“Oh, come on.” Aiden squeezed shampoo into the palm of his hand and threaded his fingers through Shannon’s hair, which was something he thought he would never do, not in this life, at least. He scraped his nails against Shannon’s scalp. “Criminals have to be smart to be criminals. And we aren’t deaf. You gonna tell me, or what?”
A shared shower was an intimacy Aiden never imagined he’d experience. Shannon’s forehead rested on his shoulder, and his fingers made patterns through the water low on Aiden’s back. Aiden couldn’t dissect the peacefulness, an occupying of space and skin and being that dulled his senses.
Aiden thought he could breathe, and maybe he didn’t have to be a phoenix, because here, relaxing in a cloud of steam with Shannon sighing against his ear, he didn’t feel like dying.
Shannon sucked in a breath and paused, obviously resisting the answer. Finally, he said, “Georgia.”
Ah, he knew it.
It had to be somewhere in the south, but Aiden hadn’t been able to place just how south. It wasn’t the gentlemanly drawl of Virginia or the gruff clip of Texas. It was willowy and round an
d small-town. Georgia made sense.
“Why do you hide it?” Aiden set his hands on Shannon’s chest and gave him a little push, forcing him to stop hiding in the slope between Aiden’s shoulder and neck.
“I moved to Laguna when I was seventeen and I was afraid of sounding stupid. I wanted people to take me seriously at the police academy, so I learned how to hide it. Kept getting better at it as time went on; sometimes I forget I have it at all.”
“Why would you sound stupid?” Aiden’s eyebrows pinched together. “That’s a ridiculous thing to be afraid of.”
Aiden’s gaze finally darted away to creep across the contours of Shannon’s body. He was typical Laguna Beach, with cliché shadows beneath his hipbones and a long torso where the skin was stretched over tight muscle.
You’ll ruin this. Aiden heard himself, a rasped whisper in the back of his mind. You know you will.
Looking at Shannon brought an eerie sense of his own vulnerability, and he tensed. The sudden urge to shrink away was almost as strong as the urge to curl his hands into fists.
Shannon’s lips pressed together in a gentle smile, as if he might be looking at a loaded gun, or a wounded coyote, or something beautiful. Aiden wasn’t sure which.
“It is a ridiculous thing to be afraid of, isn’t it?” Shannon said. The water was going cold. He twisted the knob, and the water trickled to a stop.
Shannon’s remembered words were a crack of thunder in Aiden’s mind—Because I’m scared to death of you, Aiden!
Before Shannon could step out of the tub, Aiden snatched his arms and closed the space between them. Their lips were wet and slick, sliding together in smooth, quick motions. The water was off, but Aiden pressed Shannon against the still-warm wall.
Shannon, pulled in by the tide, licking the sand. Aiden, crashing against the shoreline, sinking ships at sea.
It was a ridiculous thing to be afraid of, Aiden thought. But all the while, even as he tried to catch his breath, it was apparent that what Shannon Wurther was afraid of most was Aiden Maar.
And Aiden was just as scared of him, and his eyes, and his power, and everything about him that made Aiden feel alive—as though he might not need to rise from his own ashes after all.
21
Citrine was Aiden’s favorite stone. Variations of yellow beams went every which way when he twirled the jagged crystal in the light. He’d fished this stone from a black-bottomed dish at a store he rarely visited. It was a little smaller than the tip of his thumb, a tiny mountain range of ridges in the shape of a teardrop. Transparent gold hues shot from its center—a firework miniaturized and contained in crystal.
His hand twitched, and he scooped it into his palm, flicking the citrine under the sleeve of his leather jacket. He picked up a similar stone and dropped it into the pile; the sound masked his thievery. In an identical bowl was a pile of purples. Shades upon shades of amethyst were balanced in a heap. Some had gray spines and violet teeth; others were spherical, fading from deep eggplant on one side to watery lilac on the other.
The sign above the bowl read: Amethyst—for clarity, detoxification, and spiritual protection.
Perfect. He grabbed a piece like his citrine, jagged and raw, slipped it into the sleeve of his jacket, and moved on.
On the other side of the store, next to a display of Himalayan salt lamps, an assortment of chains, some long, some short, some gold, and most silver, dangled from hooks. Aiden plucked a dainty medium-length chain from one hook, and a shorter, thicker chain from another.
These, he would buy. The stones themselves were less expensive than the chains, but it wasn’t the need to steal that drove him to it. It was the itch under his skin, the act in itself: hiding something and walking out with it, a mediocre little secret. The crystals were not paintings or rare jewelry. He wasn’t fascinated with them as he was with the other things he stole, and the two tiny stones pressed against his wrist weren’t going to a rich buyer in Costa Rica, either. Money or no money, Aiden loved the tension that bloomed in his abdomen and the heat that swelled around his wrist where the stones dug into his skin.
“Will that be all?” The woman behind the counter had a hawk nose and small eyes. She squinted at him from behind gigantic round glasses.
Aiden nodded and used the hand concealing the stones to give her his debit card. They bit into his wrist, and he smiled. “Yeah, that’s it.”
She sighed through her nose and gave Aiden another once over. He wasn’t their typical flashy, suburban customer. A woman who did fit that description walked around analyzing massive hunks of stone, pieces of amethyst the size of his head and black tourmaline carved in the shape of lotus flowers.
He rolled his eyes when the clerk refused to hand him his card and instead placed it on the counter in front of him. He slid it into his wallet, which was kept together by ample amounts of duct tape.
“Thank you,” he cooed.
The shopkeeper ignored him completely, and Aiden laughed all the way out the door.
00:00
Laguna Beach Canvas & Sculpt was different during the day.
Shannon hadn’t given it a look since the night he’d timed out, but he’d driven past it at least a hundred times. It never ceased to tease at his attention; he was curious about Aiden’s treasure. He thought of the name again and again.
Fortitude Smashed—how contemporary.
It sounded urban and chic and expensive, which was fitting since the painting had space in an esteemed gallery in the middle of a tourist town. He circled the staircase toward the far wall. Sketches of sleeping wildlife spanned each massive space: a lion drawn with smudged charcoal, a koala whose fur was dark fingerprints, an elephant with black handprints for ears. Lining the right wall, where the backdoor was closed and locked, a collection of photographs showed scenery from Laguna Beach via helicopter, wide expanses of beach after beach, opaque summer sunsets over the water, glittering lights from downtown, and streets packed with the blurred lines of fast-moving cars.
He glanced at the door. Aiden’s stuttering breath filled his mind, and he remembered his cocky introduction. Aiden Maar. Shannon thought about that moment more than he should have. It filled the spaces where rational thought would be.
“Sir,” a tidy woman said, as she leaned across a black desk just inside the double glass front doors. Her silver hair was arranged in a tight bun on her nape. Wrinkles spanned her face, edging from the sides of her eyes and the corners of her lips. “May I be of any assistance?”
“I’m looking for a piece called Fortitude Smashed.” Shannon sounded out the title with as much delicacy as he could muster. He’d never browsed through artwork of this caliber. “Is it still featured here?”
The gallery associate clucked her tongue and smiled. “Oh, yes, what a fantastic little piece it is! We have it, but only for a few more days. It’s been purchased.”
Shannon frowned. The thought of buying it hadn’t occurred to him until she mentioned it was no longer available. As soon as it wasn’t within reach, Shannon wanted it. Typical.
“You’re welcome to take a look, though. It’s right this way.”
He followed her around the back of the black metal staircase. She gestured to a four by four canvas, if it was a canvas, hanging on the wall in a thin glass box.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” She crossed her arms over her chest and sighed.
It was, in the oddest way, beautiful. Fanned across the middle of the canvas, a lily burst open; petals exploded from its center. Bright tangerine and sunshine yellow pollen stained the spaces between each pink and white petal. A green stem, dried and withered, curved down alongside pressed baby’s breath and uncanny magenta dandelions. It was violently expressive, a containment of life and death in one place.
“Gorgeous,” Shannon agreed. “Does the artist have any more pieces like this?”
“Yes, in fact, she
does. We’ll be getting a few close to Christmas. Would you like to give me your information? I’d be happy to call you as soon as we begin showing them.”
Shannon, focus stolen by the flowers, nodded. “What’s something like this cost?”
“Fortitude Smashed was set at a comfortable twenty-five hundred, sir. Most of Miss Scott’s work is priced in that area, some climbing into the three’s and four’s.”
Aiden had taste, Shannon gave him that.
“Is it for your home? Office?”
Shannon handed her his card and shook his head. “No, ma’am, it’s for someone else.”
“A Rose Road, then?” Her eyes creased around a smile.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Lucky,” she cooed, patting Shannon’s shoulder as she walked back to her desk and filed his information.
Reminds me of myself.
The lily’s stem was snapped from the rest of the petals, which gave the flower a sense of detachment. It was nature’s grenade in the midst of detonating, a slow-motion explosion blasting out from the center. Pollen sprayed, blood and fire, the very moment bottled and pressed, torn limb from limb and arranged to make a peculiar brand of beautiful.
No wonder Aiden was reminded of himself, Shannon thought, scanning the piece again.
They were one and the same.
00:00
“Mercy, will he even wear this?”
Mercy rolled over with a corner of the sheet stuffed in her mouth. She scrambled to scratch at the bed with all four paws.
“Don’t—hey! Don’t do that; you’ll ruin my comforter. I asked you a question.”
Mercy’s tongue stuck out between her teeth; her fur bunched up around her ears. She meowed, short and to the point.
“Yeah, well, I don’t exactly know what else to get him,” Aiden said. He wrapped a bit of wire around the slender tip of the amethyst and looped it through a bundled piece of silver that slid along the medium-length chain. “So, he’s getting a necklace.”
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