“They said goodbye.”
“Oh.” He hadn’t noticed. Obviously.
“Would you like to take a bath?” Flix suggested. “You can wait here, and I can draw one for you.”
Ani frowned. “You can’t get your injury wet. I don’t care how good of a job Baikal did patching you up.”
“I won’t,” he smiled. “I’ll sit on the side.”
He couldn’t help but pout. “Are you trying to baby me?”
“Aren’t I always coddling you?” Flix said. “This doesn’t have to be anything different than what it usually is.”
“But it is though.” He closed his eyes and tried again to sort through how he was feeling, but it was like staring at an empty field filled with nothing but fog. “You don’t have to comfort me. I’m pretty sure I’m okay with everything that happened today. As awful as that sounds.”
“You aren’t awful, Ani.” Flix took his hand, playing idly with his fingers as he spoke. “Maybe you’re in shock, maybe you’re not. You’ve already done this dance before. You’ve felt everything socially acceptable about your brother’s death once. That’s more than enough.” His brow furrowed. “It’s more than he deserves.”
“You were friends,” Ani remembered. “Are you okay?”
Flix snorted. “We haven’t been real friends in a very long time. The only reason I stuck around as long as I did was because of you. That’s the only reason I kept his secret for him as well.”
“You really shouldn’t have.”
“I see that now,” Flix agreed. “But hindsight is twenty-twenty. If I could go back, I’d take you from that place the moment I first laid eyes on you.”
Ani smiled. “I wouldn’t have gone with you then.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’d take you anyway.”
He hummed.
“Bath, Ani?”
“All right.” It couldn’t hurt. He went to get up, but Flix stopped him.
“It’ll take a few minutes for the tub to fill. Take a break. I’ll come get you when it’s ready.”
He grabbed onto Flix’s wrist when he stood. “I’d rather go with you.” Even though they were safe and in the house, he didn’t like the idea of Flix out of his sight. “You could have died earlier and there was nothing I could do to stop it.” Hell, he hadn’t even known Flix was in danger at Vail until after the fact.
“That’swhat you’re upset about?”
“Yeah.” He pulled Flix closer until he was standing between Ani’s spread thighs, and then he dropped his forehead against his stomach. “I can lose anything else, anyone else, but I can’t lose you. I only just got you. I can’t—”
Flix hushed him and ran his fingers through Ani’s hair, his other hand resting on his shoulder to keep him close. “I’m not going anywhere, baby.”
“Promise?”
He captured Ani’s chin and tipped his head back so their eyes could meet. “I’ll never leave you, Aneski. I promise. You?”
“You’re stuck with me,” he said, wrapping his arms around Flix’s waist and clinging for good measure. “For forever. That’s what I want. What I need.”
“I can do that. I can take care of you for forever. Gladly. It’s what I should have been doing from the start.”
“You were,” Aneski reminded. “I know it was you, paying the bills, buying the groceries whenever Russ forgot.” Which had been practically every week. “Back then, if I noticed, I pretended not to, in part because I wanted to believe in my brother, and also because…”
“You thought I was doing it for him,” Flix figured, “because you thought we were dating.”
“Forgive me?”
