“I don’t care if you’re pining for me from a distance. I need you next to me,” Aiden said. “I’m done giving you chances.”
The lightning-sharp pain in his chest was so acute Thomas thought his heart might have stopped beating. What the fuck was that supposed to mean? Aiden had said months ago that he was giving up on Thomas, had told him not to call, not to text, to just leave him be. He’d said he was sick of him constantly martyring himself. But Thomas had thought they’d gotten past all that.
Was he wrong?
“I’m not leaving you. And I’m not letting you leave me. I can’t,” Aiden said. “I know myself. And I know if you deny me again, it will literally become my villain origin story. I will go full-on scorched earth, Tommy. I’ll become the monster you feared your sons would be.”
It wasn’t said as a threat, more like a dire prediction. Thomas knew Aiden meant what he said. For better or worse, Aiden always told the truth. Thomas had admired that about him. Aiden knew himself, knew what he was capable of. That was how he was different from all the others.
Before Aiden, Thomas had thought that the essential element of psychopathy was a lack of empathy. When psychopaths killed, they did so with a clinical detachment that allowed them to play with their victimsbecausethey lacked the ability to put themselves in the victim’s place.
But Aiden had taught Thomas there was something far more terrifying than a psychopath…and that was a dark empath. A rather gimmicky new age buzzword that hid a very real, very twisted darkness. Aiden was empathetic. He felt things deeply. Hurt, sadness, guilt, remorse. He felt them so deeply in fact, that he easily picked up on even the subtlest of tells in others. He was practically a human lie detector. It let him hone in on the things that scared people most. The things that scarred them deeply. It let him look into others’ psyches with an almost Lucas-like level of insight. But while Lucas used this gift to create profiles, Aiden used it for a much darker purpose. He used it to create a weapon, one custom-made to inflict maximum physical and psychological damage on his victim before he ended their life.
Aiden exercised impeccable restraint on most days. But Thomas believed him when he said he would become the monster Thomas created. Because that was what Thomas had set out to do all those years ago. Create monsters to do his bidding, just for good instead of evil. And, for the most part, he’d succeeded.
But he couldn’t let Aiden off his leash. He loved him too much. The Mulvaney code was unbreakable. Kill without permission and you die. But Thomas knew he could never kill Aiden, no matter how bad he got. In that way, Aiden was like Shane. Thomas didn’t know what that said about him. Nothing good. But Thomas was only human.
“Don’t say that,” Thomas begged.
“You know it’s true. Are you going to turn me away again? Send me back to Washington? Pretend none of this ever happened? Was what you said last night a lie?”
Thomas shook his head. “I wasn’t lying. I’m not sending you away. I’m not. Ishould. I don’t deserve you. I don’t deserve this. But, this time, I’m going to be selfish. I’m going to be selfish with you. I’m going to keep you. Here. With me. Forever.”
Aiden’s gaze went wide, like he’d expected he would have to fight like hell for Thomas to agree to be with him. But there was no sense in fighting the inevitable. And they were inevitable. They were destined to come back to each other again and again because the truth was nobody could ever truly understand them but each other.
Aiden ducked under Thomas’s arm, his cheek pressing against Thomas’s chest, directly over his heart. It took a full thirty seconds for Thomas to realize Aiden was just…holding him. Tightly. His arm locked around his waist, one leg thrown over both of his. He hated how natural it felt, how right it felt. Aiden and him just fit, like torn paper, edges frayed, but still perfectly matched.
Thomas swept his knuckles along Aiden’s bare back lazily, content in the silence. He was almost dozing again when Aiden asked, “Why were you holding that gun last night?”
Thomas opened his eyes, glancing down at the top of Aiden’s head. He took a deep breath and let it out. Whyhadhe been holding the gun? “I just needed to feel like I could protect my family. Like I’d called you all home to keep you safe, not to use you as human shields to protect myself. I guess I was just feeling…vulnerable.”
“There’s nothing wrong with calling your family home to protect you. We protect each other. That’s what family is for. You’ve been saving those kids their whole lives. Let them do the same for you. It makes them feel better. Especially the feelings faction. If they had their way, you’d be tucked away in a panic room, swaddled in a blanket burrito and forced to listen to nature sounds or monks chanting.”
“A blanket burrito?” Thomas echoed.
Aiden nodded against Thomas’s chest. “Yeah, it’s like a straitjacket, but fuzzier and full-body. Like thunder jackets for dogs.”
Thomas sat in stunned silence, imagining his children holding him hostage in blankets. “Aiden?”
“Yeah?”
“Please don’t let my children put me in a fuzzy straitjacket for dogs.”
Aiden snickered. “I’ll do my best, but they’re hard to resist when they’re all heart eyes and Care-Bear stares.”
Thomas chuckled. “I always wanted one of those.”
Aiden craned his head back to look up at Thomas. “Heart eyes?”
Thomas shook his head. “No. A Care-Bear. My father said they were for children.”
“Weren’t you a child?” Aiden asked.
A deep sadness settled over him. “No. I really never was.”
“Is that why you built a palace for the girls filled with toys they’re far too young to even enjoy yet?” Aiden asked.
Thomas smiled thinking of the two girls sleeping peacefully in their beds.
