“No one will even know the darlings are there,” he said sweetly.
“Riiight. Like Mary at the office. Totally inconspicuous.”
“Exactly,” Wren said, missing the joke and being completely serious. “Did you find who you were looking for?”
“I did, yes.”
Wren let out a little chirp Fix knew meant he was excited. “What happened? Is he safe? Did you help him?”
The questions brought everything back up again.
Fix gripped the steering wheel of his truck harder and pushed the gas pedal until the tires screeched against the worn-out road. Driving fast along the empty road let off some steam, but he wasn’t feeling any calmer.
“No, Wren.” He forced himself to slow down. To be careful. He couldn’t afford to get hurt because then there would be nobody to take care of the people he cared about. “I did as much as he’d let me. I broke one curse, but he has more on him…”
“He wouldn’t let you break the others?” Wren asked, sounding utterly confused.
“He’s stubborn,” Fix murmured, picturing Liam’s pointed chin jutting out. “And proud.”
“But he looked for you,” Wren said. “That day when he showed up he wasn’t just looking for any cursebreaker, he was looking foryou.”
Fix wanted to drink those words in. He’d felt Liam’s eyes on him and seen the tumultuous shift when Fix stood close. It made him question and hope that after all was said and done, there might be a space for Fix next to Liam.
It had been so long since he’d felt this way about anyone. Since he’d looked at a beautiful boy and wanted him to be his. It was more complicated than that though. Finding partners who could deal with a cursebreaker was hard enough, but finding a boy who was willing to deal with the split attention was like gold dust.
Liam looked like gold to him.
“Well, he must have changed his mind.” He tried to shake his head free from the tangle.
Wren was quiet for a moment. “I’ve seen that look in his eyes before, like he was being hunted, or running from a predator. He was tired and scared. He needs someone to protect or support him, even if he won’t ask, and I can’t think of anyone better to do it than you. Don’t give up.”
With that he cut the call, leaving Fix to wallow in his guilt and recount all his mistakes.
It wasn’t the right time though. He had to get his mind off Wren and Liam. He needed to focus, then he’d allow himself time to figure out what to do.
Just get through the day first, he coached himself.
He turned right and drove through the ornate metal fence surrounding the cursebreaker training facility.
Nexus.
He drove up the long driveway, the building looming in front of him, even from relatively far away. Smoke billowed from the various metal parapets, a clock tower with a rounded roof the highest point that glinted in the sun. The whole building was a relic of an older time, added to and expanded over countless decades.
It resembled the steam trains and tracks that came from the same era, all exposed beams and cogs holding the sturdy bronzed beast together instead of wood or bricks. Windows covered its surface, a balcony wrapping around the entire second floor, and then a few private offices higher up.
An elevator and its mechanisms could be seen from the outside along the left face, just to the side of the longest part of the building. The cursebreakers’ dorms. It was there Fix’s gaze fell and stayed, a lifetime of memories bubbling to the surface and making his chest ache.
He’d spent more time here than he had anywhere else in the world.
Twenty-eight years.
His time with his brothers hadn’t even reached half that number yet.
He parked and got out of his truck, breathing in the familiar smell of smoke and oak from the trees littering the grounds. Nostalgia threatened to eat him alive the longer he stared. It was the same every time he came back. Old wounds and sadness; a loneliness that was hard to bear as he waited and waited for something that never seemed like it was destined for him.
A team.
Family.
