Page 93 of Covenant

I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. I’m so fucking confused.

All I know is that we’re a million miles off the ground and… I turn my head and see the expanse of the sea, the small islands littering the water, and oh my god, it’s beautiful.

I lose the ability to speak, to even be afraid. This is incredible. I’ll never see anything like this again, I’m sure of it. Our fingers link as I stare out at the passing scenery, taking it all in, reveling in it, and when the pilot flies us over the top of a volcano I gasp, my hand moving up to my throat.

I turn to make sure Matthias is seeing this, that I’m not the only one experiencing this, but he’s just looking at me.

Only at me.

“It’s beautiful,” I whisper, and he nods, swallowing roughly.

“It is.”

21

WYATT

That evening we drink wine on the patio, picking at a charcuterie board he had delivered from a local business. When we got back from the helicopter ride, we spent time in the pool, lounging in the warm afternoon before I spent a significant amount of time playing with Matthias’s ass. Now we’re watching the sunset. Purples and pinks splash across the sky.

“Can we stay here forever?” I ask, and Matthias studies me.

“Does that mean I get to keep you?”

I scoff. “I mean…it’s just a turn of phrase. But if we can live here and watch you get assaulted by bananas, I’d consider it.”

It’s meant to be a joke, but Matthias doesn’t laugh.

He just sighs and looks off into the distance. He doesn’t look at me again until the sun has completely set. And when we head inside, thunder on the horizon, he moves to a small room off the living room and stands there, watching as rain starts to fall from the sky.

It hits the glass roof, making such a ruckus.

“What’s up with you?” I ask, approaching carefully. The brewing storm is far enough away that it doesn’t bother me. “You’ve been ignoring me all day.”

“I haven’t.”

“Well, I guess that’s a bit of an exaggeration. But you’ve been ignoring me since I said that thing about forever.”

He peers over at me and then turns back to face outside. He can’t really see much. The darkness is thick and piercing.

My stomach twists. “Youdoknow that this gig is up in a year, right?”

He keeps his back to me. “I know that. You don’t need to remind me.”

“I feel like I need to. Because…well, I don’t want to keep messing around with you if you’re getting ideas.”

He scoffs, and I double down. “It’s just temporary—what’s happening between us. It’s just attraction and a whisper of memories past. It doesn’t mean anything else.”

“Is that all?” he asks, his hands twitching beside him. There’s a dangerous note in his voice, but it doesn’t scare me. Matthias would never hurt me. “Or do you have more to say?”

I feel suddenly hollow, the words I spoke sitting awkwardly between us. He’s still not looking at me and I hate it. I hate how tight my skin feels. “I think that’s all. I’m just setting expectations so when we walk away from this neither of us gets hurt. I can’t be hurt again.”

He finally turns. I flinch at the dead, cold look in his eyes. The Matt who’d laughed with me all day is long gone now. “Understood.”

He stares at me for a long moment before he walks down the hallway, leaving me to follow after, hating that he has me on a string like this. That he can just tug and I follow like some kind of pet. But then again, that’s how it always was between us—me enamored with him, wanting to be with him always.

Until that night when I realized I was nothing more than trash to be discarded. Something to be forgotten and ignored. It was then that I understood I was wrong, that I should have never let myself be that vulnerable with someone like him.

It’s something I carry with me even now.

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