“Why…?” Darren said once more, looking at Aiden yet not seeing him at all. The air around him charged with something foreboding and Aiden felt it across his skin and at the pit of his stomach, slithering and crawling and seeping inside him, too.
It clutched his heart, his lungs, his everything, unbearable in its embrace, yet also necessary.
“Because what you’ve done is to separate yourself from the pain and grief. You’ve shoved them as deep down as you can. Instead of facing them.”Just like me. “Because you never let yourself mourn the sister and family you lost, when both meant so much to you.”Because you are running away from that reality and refuse to accept it, just like I don’t want to give up the anger and the hate and their familiarity.
“You don’t know what you are talking about,” Darren accused, his teeth bared and his jaw clenched.
“On the contrary. I saw the way you looked at Sara. I’ve noticed the way you talk about her, Howe.” Aiden shook his head when Darren opened his mouth to speak. “Don’t try to deny it.”
“What do you want me to say then, Kesley?” Darren roared, loud enough so it echoed around them. His eyes turned fierce, blazing as they bore into Aiden. “That I miss my parents and my sister? That a day doesn’t go by when I don’t think about Sara?” Tears fell down his cheeks as he heaved, but he didn’t look away from Aiden, didn’t drop his gaze. “She wasn’t just my sister. She was my best friend. The one person that meant the entire world to me. It—” Darren’s voice cracked on a sob, the sound crashing into Aiden’s galloping heart. Stabbing it. Ripping it open. “I should’ve never let her hide me. I should’ve been out here, protecting her instead of clutching onto her necklace and pretending I couldn’t hear her screams as they slit her throat.”
Aiden’s chest burned, his entire being crying alongside Darren. He’d assumed Sara had been shot, a clean, merciful death. Or if not, knocked out and taken away for questioning, then killed quickly and swiftly, so at least she wouldn’t have suffered.
Darren buried his face in his palms, hiding the tears, though unable to stop his tortured wails and gasps for air. “She wouldn’t tell them anything, Kesley. She tried to fight them, she shouted at them and threatened them and I just… I just stoodand listened because I was too scared. I wasparalyzed. And when they… killed her”—he looked up, his face contorted in pure agony—“all I could think about was that the screaming finally stopped.”
Long overdue sobs broke out of Darren with those last words, unrestrained and uncontainable. His whole body quacked as they left him, shaking from the force of the suppressed emotions finally emerging from the depths of his being. Years of unvoiced sorrow were spilling out in the form of ugly cries and gasps and near-shouts, a display of intimate vulnerability that made Aiden’s own heart scream and thrash in his chest.
In this moment, there was no separation between Darren Howe and the eight-year-old Ren Valrais. They were one and the same, the boy who was stuck reliving that night of terror no longer denied his existence as the man he had become finally accepted him.
Aiden watched in awe, unable to tear his eyes away, as Darren acknowledged Ren as one equal half of him. Hidden, suppressed, and now that he no longer refused it devastatingly irresistible, because it made Darren Howe truer. Complete.Flawed. A whole self that had no barriers left around him.
And only Aiden knew this real Darren. He belonged to Aiden alone.
The realization surged through Aiden, unstoppable like the devastation of a dying star. But he didn’t have time to let it settle as another realization followed, a truth deeper and darker than his obsession. More messed up, a betrayal he couldn’t come back from, just like he couldn’t stop it.
This simple truth, that he cared andwantedto be the one to break and rebuild the man across from him, rammed into Aiden. Speared through him, destroyed the already turbulent equilibrium within him. Annihilated the logic, the reason,smashed the last hinges of his iron-clad resolve, leaving only a raw and visceral need for Darren Howe. To have him, to claim him, to ruin him, to save him, to rebuild him and to surrender to him.
Chaotic euphoria thrumming in his veins, Aiden acted on instinct. He lunged the few steps between them, incapable of fighting the urge to comfort. The blinding ache for Darren overruled all his carefully constructed walls and rules, too strong to be denied. The moment he crashed into Darren and embraced his trembling body, Darren’s hands shot up, clawing at his back and fisting the material of his jacket like a drowning man fighting to stay afloat. The physical contact between them seemed to undo Darren completely and he let himself really cry, bawling incoherently and cutting himself off as waves of grief coursed through him and flowed into Aiden, each one more unbearable than the last.
Darren’s face was a mess, tear-stained and raw with emotions. They overpowered him, broke out through every fiber of his body as he unraveled in Aiden’s arms, intense and violent and robbing Aiden of everything but the need to hold him. Aiden was entranced, transfixed, existing in this moment for one sole purpose: to be here for Darren and not let him go. He forsake everything else, betrayed the hate and anger yet again, and this time even that unforgiving side of him stayed silent, spellbound by what he was witnessing.
Because Aiden was and would always be the only person Darren let see this side of him. Aiden didn’t know how he knew it, but it was true all the same, an inherent conclusion of the darkness that connected them, that chained them together. The knowledge of that calmed his own nerves, made him feel alive and drunk and high, and for the first time since he could remember, he felt like he truly wasn’t alone. He had Darren, as much as Darren had him, not by choice, not at first, but by a sicktwist of fate that he was done trying to fight. It won, he couldn’t change it, he was too exhausted and too deep already to resist Darren’s crying soul.
“Darren, it’s going to be okay,” Aiden whispered the first name he’d never intended to say, simply because he needed to let Darren know he was there for him. That he would listen and hold him through this and past it. “I’ve got you.”
Rubbing soothing circles along Darren’s back, Aiden felt the warmth of tears where Darren’s face was buried at the junction of his shoulder and neck. His body absorbed each shudder and gasp that left the man, accepted every muffled sob, and Darren just let it happen, exposing all of himself.Because he felt safe with Aiden.
“I miss her. Aiden… I miss her so much,” Darren croaked softly, his raw voice gut-wrenching. He dug his fingers into Aiden’s back and inhaled sharply. “I should’ve tried to help Sara. And I… I should’ve died here with her.”
Aiden’s whole being felt the truth in Darren’s words. The conviction. He didn’t have any siblings, but he understood it then, how strong such a bond was. Irreplaceable and not something you could outgrow, like how you needed your parents less as you became older. Its loss tormented Darren the most and no matter how much time passed, that would never change.
Aiden tightened his hold, pressing into Darren as closely as was possible. If Darren had died that night along with the rest of the Valrais, then Claudia would still be alive. Married to Aiden, laughing and smiling and working her ass off to make Marcus proud. Maybe there wouldn’t have been lies between them then, maybe she would’ve told Aiden or been equally unaware of the horrors her father had committed. Aiden would’ve had it all, the perfect life he’d always wanted.
And yet… he couldn’t imagine it. Couldn’t picture it anymore. Because it would’ve been built upon a lie all the same.Yes, maybe it wouldn’t have come from Claudia, maybe she would’ve been just as clueless as him, but everything he knew now would’ve remained forever forgotten, an unpunished crime against two siblings that not even history would remember.
For a long time, Aiden embraced Darren in the middle of the ruined mansion. He said little, simply being there for the man until his sobs and wails changed to whimpers and sniffles and his rigid body stopped trembling. That was when he let go.
They didn’t talk on the way to the rendezvous point either, aside from Darren giving Bea the coordinates, but the silence was comfortable, bringing with it a calmness in the small space of the shuttle that lulled Aiden into restless sleep. The few hours he caught were filled with thoughts and images of Claudia and his childhood, of a dog barking then whimpering, of a raven-haired girl sacrificing herself for her brother and of the brother forever blaming himself for not saving his sister.
Suffocating regret marked them all, though mercifully Aiden was able to move on from them and dream of the mansion in Sara’s VR world. He was asleep there too, curled up on an armchair by her bedroom window while Sara sipped tea with her teddy bear and blabbered on about her day. Darren hovered nearby, watching and nodding mostly. Occasionally he would pace over to Aiden and bend down, brushing his knuckles along Aiden’s cheek or jaw, then he would smile fondly and return his attention to the conversation he was having with his sister.
The dream ended there. It circled back to its beginning after that though, playing all over again until eventually Darren did things differently. He came over to Aiden but didn’t stroke his cheek this time; he bent down and kissed Aiden softly on the lips, whispering a quietthank youAiden knew he would remember even when he woke up.
