“They to my friends, he to my lovers.”
Maddox still didn’t know which he was—whether he deserved to be called either. He couldn’t think of Diego anyway, not without his heart aching and all his emotions tangling into a mess of want and joy and terror and guilt.
But hecouldthink about that brick.
He was pretty sure whoever threw it hadn’t seen him. He’d been too close to the wall, shadowed by Serina’s large bookshelf. He supposed he’d find out either way, and besides, there was nothing he could do about it now. The Paladins had made their decision, and while they had, he’d been lounging in the vampire’s lair.
Discovery wasn’t the only thing he feared, though. This violence came too soon; he hadn’t expected such an immediate escalation.
Maddox needed more time—more time with Diego. And whatever it took, he was going to get it.
5
The show had to go on.
It was a truth as much as a cliché—the Celestial Club had accepted their customer’s payments for the current event and they couldn’t afford to return them based on a threat bound to a single brick. Instead, they took precautions, keeping the front doors locked and instructing customers to come through the side entrance with their hoods up and faces covered. So far, nothing more had happened.
But Diego was sure it would only be a matter of time.
The club was host to plenty of other tension that month, too, with Maddox appearing promptly every night. He offered to take Diego out for meals, or movies, or anything their heart desired, but they turned him down. Then he offered to help them prepare. They turned that down, too, only to find him helping Valentine instead.
The initial blush of fear Valentine had shown after learning of Maddox’s past quickly vanished as the two men treated the Celestial Club’s backstage area like their personal questing ground, their soft laughter echoing through the thin walls. Were he any other person who made Diego’s heart thud like a war drum, they would have been overjoyed. What was theirs belonged equally to Valentine, always and forever. But the rate at which he was growing attached to Maddox scared them.
On the third night, they pulled him aside while Maddox worked on painting a forested wall panel for one of the upcoming events, noting with discomfort the adorable smudge of green that marked Valentine’s cheek.
Diego squeezed his shoulder. “Please be careful.”
“If it makes you uncomfortable—”
“No,” they cut him off. “I mean, don’t stop on my account. I’m just worried about you.”
“I’m not handing out my heart. How could I, when it belongs to you?” The little cheeky tug of his grin made their own heart do things, soft and warm, entirely platonic but just as full and real as any romantic or sexual urge. His voice softened even further, his gaze darting back to Maddox. “But despite everything I know he’s done, he feelssafe. No one has ever felt safe to me that quickly… no one but you.”
“Just be careful. We don’t really know him yet,” was all Diego could give in response.
They truly didn’t know this new Maddox, but Diego was quickly realizing that there was only so much of the man that they could handle before starting to drown in him—in his sincerity and passion and devotion—and they feared that if they did, their lungs would transform into things that survived purely on his oxygen, and they would never recover from losing him a second time. Despite Valentine’s reassurances, they worried it was already going to happen to him. One of them, at least, had to stay whole enough to help the other move on.
So they restrained themself to short exchanges of out-of-character banter between event acts, trying to piece together who Maddox had become through superficial teasing and small talk.
“I can’t believe you still have that bike. Isn’t she ten years old now?” They asked, as though they couldn’t mark on a calendar the exact date he’d received it, and every ride they’d taken between then and Diego’s turning.
“Don’t insult Juliet.” Maddox lifted his knife threateningly, the juices of his dinner still clinging to the sides. “No one else would love her the way I do.”
Diego batted the blade away. “You really can’t let go, can you?”
They meant it to be a joke, but Maddox took the question seriously. “I can let go of a lot of things. Prejudice, vice, even my morals if that’s what’s needed to make the world better in the meantime. I can let go of anything that holds me back or brings more pain than good. But love? I’ll always do whatever I can to keep that alive.”
He stared so hard at them as he said it that it made Diego’s heart flutter. They tried to let the feeling roll off them with a chuckle. “Then I wish Juliet a long and well-oiled life. Though if you replace enough of her parts, does she become the Motorcycle of Theseus?”
Maddox shrugged. “I think we’ve already established that people are allowed to grow and replace themselves and still be them, so why not personified vehicles?” The corner of his lips curled up. “But you can always touchheragain too, if you’d like.”
Diego might have stabbed him then for the blatant flirtation, if they’d thought they could get away with it.
Over the next few nights, they learned about more than just the ways his life had stayed the same, but also where it had changed, all their friendships in high school running dry, his relationship with his mother straining almost out of existence during his college years before his lack of income had left him crawling back to her.
“We’re still not as close as we’d been, but she’s slowly letting go of her vampire biases, so that helps.”
“She’s still living in that house by the lake?”
