Page 68 of A Study of Blood and Ichor

I sat with my legs between both of his, and the heat that radiated off him through his sweatpants warmed the bareness of my legs. Goosebumps washed over me as Rory moved to wrap one arm across the small of my back and let it rest against my waist.

I took his hand in mine and raised it to inspect the ridges of each knuckle. He was right; the wounds were little more than bruised and inflamed skin, the cracks had stitched together almost entirely after only a few short hours, no doubt thanks to Vain’s supernatural healing. But the further I traced up his arm, I hesitated when I grazed the uneven, textured ridges running across the skin beneath his tattoos. One, two, four, seven. Bisecting them was one line that ran especially long, the skin more raised than all the others.

My fingers stilled and I stopped counting. My heart sank low in my chest as I realized I may have crossed some line by revealing something so deeply personal that I had no right knowing.

“It’s okay,” Rory said gently. “That was from a long time ago.”

Releasing my lower lip from between my teeth, and in an effort to change the subject, I asked, “Did you…choose the tattoos?”

“No, Vain had them done. I didn’t even know that he had gotten them until I came back into control one day and they were just there.”

Rory spoke about it so casually as if it didn’t bother him at all. But if I put myself in his position, there was nothing that terrified me more than becoming conscious in my body only to discover someone had had their way with it.

“At first, I thought he did them because maybe he liked the pain. But now I think he knew how much I hated looking at the scars, so he turned them into something I could learn to live with—showing me that I didn’t have to love them, but it also didn’t make me any less because of them.” He laughed softly to himself. “I never pictured myself as a full sleeve guy.”

“You pull them off well,” I said.

We stared at the city skyline and as time passed my heartbeat grew less pounding, even as Rory’s hand continued to brush at my waist.

“How is Dru?” he asked.

“As good as she can be, I think,” I said. “She’ll be okay.”

“What you did to help her was brave.”

His words caught me off guard. “I thought you were going to call it stupid.”

“Maybe I’m getting used to all the stupid ideas you have,” he said, biting back a small laugh. “But it was brave, Ava.”

Worrying my lip between my teeth, I said, “I should have been able to help them all. There were more people I—”

“Don’t go down that road.” Rory’s hand at my waist stroked up and down, a gentle, soothing motion. “If you think about all the things you could have done differently, it will only do more harm than good. You did your best.”

I could feel his eyes on me, steadily searching my face as I stared into the distance.

“My best is never good enough.” My eyes welled with tears as I turned away from him. Rory didn’t need to see me this way. Not to mention, crying in front of him meant crying in front of Vain too. And I wasn’t ready for my vulnerabilities to be laid bare for him to witness.

Rory caught my chin in his other hand and forced me to fix my eyes on his. The piney scent of rosin clung to his fingertips, and I found myself inhaling deeply as I leaned into his touch. He looked at me with such emotion that my whole chest ached, wishing to close the gap between us and wrap myself up in him.

My heart raced, and I wondered if Rory’s did the same.

“You are enough,” he whispered. “More than enough.”

Our faces were no more than a hand’s breadth apart, and I was transfixed by the uneasy tug in his throat as he swallowed, his lips set slightly apart.

“Ava, what I said to you the other night…about you not being able to fix anything. I was angry…and drunk. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean any of it. I’m sorry.”

“But you were still right. I can’t fix everything.”

“No one expects you to.” His thumb lightly swept across my jaw. “Why go through all of this? Why do you care so much?”

“I’m the reason my sister is dead.” My breath hitched the moment the words escaped my lips. My eyelids fluttered closed to fight back the tears. “I’ve always been fascinated by demons, ever since I was young. As a kid, I was overambitious and deluded myself into believing I could contain one to study it and prove to my parents I could be just as powerful as they were. But I had no right to play around with dark magic.”

When I reopened my eyes, Rory was staring at me with an unmatched intensity burning in his irises.

“The demon possessed my sister before my parents were able to exorcise it from her, but they were too late. She didn’t survive.” My lower lip trembled as I struggled to push away the memories that haunted my nightmares, the horrors that stared back at me whenever I closed my eyes. “I see her in you, Rory. I see her in all of them…every possession I’ve ever been assigned to. And each of them breaks me a little more, especially the ones I can’t save.”

Rory let my admission hang between us. His only response was the light trace of his thumb across my jaw.

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