I feel Flint pause his ministrations on my knotted hair and look up to see Alder’s eyes on me. He really is a strikin’ specimen with that bright yellow hair and cool lilac skin. “Lonely?”
“Yeah, I mean, it’s just the two of you havin’ to constantly watch the gate and run the bar, and you probably can’t visit Hell very often, right? Isn’t that where y’all’s family lives?”
“Yeah, they live in the Unus Ring,” Flint supplies, his fingers pickin’ back up where he left off on strokin’ my hair lightly. I feel so damn comfortable with his presence already.
“We don’t have to babysit the gate every minute of every day. Like right now, it’s perfectly fine for us to be away for a while,” Alder explains. “We just have to make sure we’ve fed enough power into it and that it’s stable before we leave. It has plenty of juice for the time being.”
“Yep, unless a horde of demons try to push through, all’s well,” Flint says jovially.
I make a face at him. “A horde of demons? That can’t be good. What happens then?”
He lifts a shoulder. “We fight them off.”
I nibble on my lip. “And if I were to become a Guardian, I’d have to do that too?”
Flint dips his fingers lower, lightly tracin’ over the curve of my neck and givin’ me an involuntary shiver. “Just by adding another Guardian, it would strengthen the gate even more. It would make it less likely for hordes to make their way through,” he tells me.
That response really doesn’t answer my question, but I’m gonna let it drop for now, because the thought of me havin’ to help fight off a horde of demons is laughable, even ifDeltadid do somethin’ similar. I’ve got my pride, but I ain’t stupid. I’m gonna have to work my way up to somethin’ like that.
“So what about you? We’ve talked a lot about us and what we do. I’m tired of my own voice at this point. It’s your turn now,” Alder tells me.
“Not much to know really,” I say with a shrug. “What specifically are you wonderin’ about?”
“Well, when we met, you’d just lost your job, so what was your plan before we showed up on your doorstep?” he asks.
I snort. “The only plan I had come up with was to drink at your bar until I came up with somethin’ better,” I admit. “But then that went to shit, so…”
“No big plans for what you wanted to be when you grew up?” Flint asks curiously.
I shrug. “I did at one point. I went to college and everythin’, but that didn’t work out. Next thing I knew, I’m grown and still haven’t figured out a better way to go about life aside from floatin’ wherever it seemed it wanted to take me.”
“What happened with college?” Flint presses, and I study his face for a moment, debatin’ on where to even start with that.
I reach up and take hold of the stones on my necklace, rubbin’ one between my finger and thumb to help ground me. “At first, nothin’. I was truckin’ away at my business degree, thinkin’ about applyin’ to some MBA programs.”
“MBA?”
“I wanted to be one of those consultants that companies call in to fix things. I’ve always had a level head and a good mind for seein’ possibilities and solvin’ problems,” I explain, and Flint nods as he wraps a strand of my hair around his finger.
“I can see that about ya,” he observes, and it makes a smile tilt up one corner of my mouth.
His eyes drop to my lips for a second before reconnectin’ with my gaze, and there’s a palpable heat that simmers up between us. I shake it off and look to find Alder’s eyes watching me in the rearview mirror again, and there’s no mistakin’ the fervor I see in his gaze. Heat trickles down my spine, and I breathe deeply through the longin’ his stare seems to be callin’ out of me.
I blink and look away. Whatever’s happenin’ is a little too intense for this early hour and with demons I’m just startin’ to get to know. I focus back on what we’re talkin’ about.
“Anyway, everythin’ was fine until my roommate, Mackenzie, and I went to a party one night. Some football players were chattin’ us up, and Mackenzie had doe eyes for Channing Phillips. He was very popular around campus, and she just kept lookin’ over at me like she couldn’t believe he was talkin’ to her.”
I sigh and look down at my hands. I pick at the already chipping nail polish that I just applied the day before, and prepare myself for the memories I wish weren’t now stitched into the fabric of who I am.
“We were drinkin’ and chattin’ and havin’ a good time, but at some point I looked back, and Mackenzie and Channing weren’t there anymore. I didn’t really think much of it, but when it got late and things were startin’ to wind down, I messaged her and didn’t hear back. It was unusual for her to go off like that and not let me know, but I told myself to relax, that she was probably off havin’ fun with a football star and to just rein in the mother hen in me.”
I shake my head as a weary exhale leaves my lips, and emotion prickles my eyes. The guys are so quiet and still, waitin’ on my every word.
“When Mackenzie came home the next evenin’, I was fumin’. I had been so worried about her, and all it took was one look to see that I had good reason to be. She ran right into the shower, and I followed after her. I saw...bite marks and bruises all over her body as she stripped out of her clothes. She was frantic as she got under the water, and she started scrubbin’ at her skin and sobbin’ so hard she could barely breathe. When she turned around and screamed at me to get out, I saw the initials C.P. carved into her lower stomach.”
I hear one of them suck in a breath, and I pause, breathin’ through the rush of emotions that slams through me like a tidal wave. Even though it’s been years since it happened, or since I even spoke to her, I try to blink back the images of my best friend cryin’ a soul-deep kind of cry as I begged her to get out of the shower and come with me to the police instead.
Like it was only yesterday, I recall cradlin’ her on the floor as she flatly told me the pieces she could remember of what happened. I tried to hold her together as she broke, cryin’ endlessly until we were both wrung out and hollow.
