Andrew pushed Thomas’s shoulder until he collapsed back onto the pillows. He lay there, chest moving too fast while Andrew cleaned his cuts. Where Thomas had been brusque and efficient, Andrew worked with a featherlight touch. He splayed his fingers over Thomas’s heaving stomach until the dry sobs slowed.
They’d never had so much bare skin between them, so much blood.
Andrew’s heart felt bruised and weary, but he made his voice steel. “I’ll help.”
Thomas flung an arm over his eyes. “You know how there’s an old boarded-up well in the grove behind my house? I can’t even tell the cops to check in there because it’s as good as a confession. And if I start raving about monsters, they’ll still lock me up.”
“I get it, but there has to be an answer. A reason this ishappening. But you can’t keep pushing me away.” Andrew swabbed the cut harder, and was rewarded with a hiss from Thomas.
“I can’t protect you and fight monsters, too.”
It stung, but it was true. Andrew had been worse than useless tonight, but he’d been in shock. He’d do better next time.
“You can’t figure out why this is happening,” Andrew said, steady, “while you’re fighting monsters with no sleep. Let me help.”
Thomas kept his arm over his eyes and said nothing.
For a vicious moment, Andrew thought about slipping his fingers into Thomas’s cut. Taking hold of his rib andbreaking it. Pulling the soft crumbling bone from his chest and sewing it into his own. They’d be forever together, rib against rib, fused in gore and bone and adoration.
Andrew squeezed his eyes shut.
That wasn’t him. He was infected by this night of woken nightmares and ebbing adrenaline—and the starved desperation of wanting Thomas, Thomas, only Thomas.
He taped a bandage over Thomas’s wound and disinfected all the other cuts he could find.
“Are you scared of me?” Thomas’s voice was small.
“No,” Andrew said. “We’ll stop this. Everything that starts has a way to end.”
Thomas fell asleep in Andrew’s bed.
Andrew thought about curling up beside him and seeing if their bodies fit together like they’d been carved from the same oak. Instead, he stared out the window until dawn blushed thesky and let the truth of last night sink into his bones. Horrors always felt less real in the daylight, but this wouldn’t go away.
Andrew hadn’t asked it in the dark, but the question burned him.
Who was Thomas Rye that he could make monsters?
Whatwas he—
Even though he’d slept for barely two hours, Andrew woke Thomas at the first alarm. They couldn’t draw attention to themselves—they had too much to hide.
Somehow Andrew had been shoved into playing the part of the steady one. That should be Dove’s place, the one who spoke sense to balance Thomas’s fiery impulses and Andrew’s panic spirals. She should be the one drawing up a flowchart for how to defeat monsters and still pass their classes. But he was forbidden to tell her.
So it was Andrew who got them dressed and through breakfast where they drank too much black coffee and ate almost nothing before stumbling to their first classes.
It was like Thomas had been holding himself together with string and Scotch tape, and now he’d crumpled. The walls he’d put up had been punched through and he didn’t have the energy to rebuild.
All day he hovered around Andrew, stood too close to him, found every excuse to touch him with anxious fingers. It felt like he’d crawl inside Andrew’s shirt if he could, sew himself inside Andrew’s skin.
Usually Andrew was the one who lay in shattered pieces needing to be put together, so this reversal at least felt fair. He owed it to Thomas.
Because Thomas, beautiful and harrowed and magical, was falling apart.
They sat in calculus when it happened. Andrew had opened his textbook before he noticed Thomas gripping his desk so hard his knuckles had gone white. He hadn’t brought a single pencil or notebook into class. He stared straight ahead, his eyes blank as his breathing grew faster and faster.
Panic attack.
Andrew’s heartbeat skipped in sympathy, and he leaned over his desk. “Thomas.”
