“So… will we be back for lunch?” Kieran asked, thumb poised over his phone.
This was it. Fairytale over, back to the real world. Right?
“Yeah,” I said. Better to rip the bandaid off quick. Hurt less that way. “Yeah, we can leave in the morning. I already accepted the invitation last week, it’d be rude not to turn up.”
“Carter’ll be relieved to hear that,” Kieran said. “He wants you to like him.”
“Idolike him,” I said, and it was the truth. I could see why he and Kieran had hit it off and I was over my little surge of jealousy over Kieran having a replacement best friend.
Kieran had never practically begged to suck Carter’s cock. I was fine with my place in the world. Even if it was bound to come to an end.
I watched Kieran send a response, then smile at whatever Aiden sent back.
Dammit. Ididlove him, and thiswasgoing to hurt.
22
Kieran
“Oh, hey, before I forget,”Felix said halfway through breakfast—breakfast he’d been eating like he’d never seen food before.
Some part of me was proud of wearing him out. All that experience was paying off.
I watched him get up and go to the laptop bag he’d been carrying yesterday, pulling a brown paper-wrapped package out of it.
“I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get you one of these,” he said. “It’s, umm. Well. Open it and you’ll find out, I guess?”
I took the package from him and flipped it over to where it was tied with string, wondering when the hell Felix had time to both find andwrapsomething for me.
“I’m not responsible for the knot,” Felix said. “The publishers have interns for that kind of thing. I should stop talking.”
He was nervous. Why was he nervous?
When I finally got the package open, I realized. The wordsuncorrected proofwere written across a plain white cover in red, with Felix’s name under it, and then the title of book six.
“I know it’s already out, you could get a final copy, but… these are rarer. Wanted you to have one. Sorry I can’t get them for the rest of the series.”
I turned the book over in my hands. Under other circumstances, this might’ve come across as a weird gift, a little ego-centric on Felix’s part, but…
He’d remembered my joke about the collector’s value of books signed in his own blood. He knew that this was the first series of books I’d sat down and read through in years.
This meant something to me.
Morethan something. I could only have gotten this from Felix, and that…
It’d be nice to have a souvenir.
“Thank you,” I said, rifling the pages out of habit, just to hear the sound they made. “I’m gonna need this. I’ve only got like twenty pages of book five left.”
Felix’s smile lit up his whole face, and my heart lurched in my chest.
I kind of wished it wouldn’t do that, but it wasnice, too. Nice to care this much, tofeelthis much. I never had before, not since I was little and I’d loved Felix with my whole entire heart.
… oh no.
Shit.
Shit.
