Page 8 of Boys Who Taint

“How did this happen?” Aspen asks as she slowly gets up from the ground.

We all look at her as she steps forward, the rage quite clearly contorting her face until even I nearly want to take a step back to avoid her anger.

Something I would never, ever do.

Until now.

“She fell,” Levi mutters.

Aspen homes in on him like an arrow that found its target.

So I fish my phone from my pocket and do the only thing a man with a smooth brain like mine can think of. “I’m calling our parents.”

Aspen

“No, no, no!”My mother’s piercing screams as she huddles Mavis close to her heart rip through me like a thunderstorm, and the tears begin to stream down my face.

“Mavis, please, come back to me,” Mom murmurs close to her cheek, tears rolling down her face. “Please. Please, come back to Mommy.”

Mavis’s dad, Felix, towers over them with balled fists, staring at her body like he refuses to believe she’s really dead.

I can’t even believe it myself.

“Aspen …” My dad, Dylan, places his hand on my shoulder. “What happened?”

I wrap my arms around myself, but no amount of touch will take the cold away. “I don’t know.” My voice is squeaky. Unhinged. It’s like I’m not really here, like my body decided to float off together with Mavis into the dark of night.

“Apollo.” Another car door shuts as his father, Ares, steps forward.

“I take it you called her parents?” Apollo asks him.

Ares nods. “I had to.”

“Please … Mavis, I can’t do this without you,” my mom murmurs, and the cries that follow go through marrow and bone.

Alistair, my mother’s other partner, crouches behind her and wraps his arms around her, holding her tight as she begins to wail. I know those sounds will stay with me forever.

We should never have come here.

“Cecelia,” Ares says. “What happened?”

“Mavis … fell. We don’t know how,” she mutters, clutching her hand close to her chest as we all watch my mother break down in front of us, right there on the very beach where Apollo dragged Mavis’s lifeless body to the shore.

Another car comes driving out of the woods, veering left and right before stopping abruptly where the beach meets the grass. The driver, Nathan Reed, peeks out the window, and a very hasty Lana Rivera steps out and waltzes right over to us.

Levi’s mom.

Another door opens up, and Kai, Levi’s dad, chases her.

“Levi!” Lana growls. “What the fuck? I get a call from Ares and learn you’re not even at the goddamn lake like we agreed?”

“Lana!” Kai warns, forcing her to focus.

She stops in her tracks the second she spots my mom cradling Mavis. “Penelope?” Lana mutters. “What happened?”

“Mavis is dead,” her dad, Felix, growls.

“What?” Lana mutters in disbelief.

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