Page 117 of Once a Villain
“Yeah, andIlove that we can just exist in an awful fug of misery before that,” Aaron said.
“Is that how you feel?” Nick asked him. He’d been eyeing Aaron since the comment about his room size.
Aaron opened his mouth to say something flippant, but his true feelings flitted across his face, and he closed his mouth again.
Joan’s chest felt heavy. “That’s how I feel,” she admitted. She sensed more than saw their gazes turn to her. She swallowed around the sudden lump in her throat. “This is my fault,” she said. “I know. I’ve made all of us so unhappy.”
“I don’t think,” Nick said, “that’s an accurate characterization at all.”
Aaron stretched his leg slightly, until his foot was almost touching Joan’s. And that was horrible too—none of them could even touch each other anymore. “It wasn’t supposed to be likethis.” His voice always softened when he was talking to her. “Itwasn’tlike this in the true timeline.”
“Eleanor took revenge on you too.” Joan heard the sober note in her own voice. “You were always supposed to be the head of the Oliver family, and instead your mother was murdered and you were... well...” Aaron didn’t like to talk about his father’s treatment of him, she knew.
“You were what?” Nick said to Aaron.
Aaron was still blinking at Joan, as if he hadn’t quite made that connection. Now he looked at Nick, a little wide-eyed. “Areyou going to react to that stuff from earlier?” His tone was half a dare. “Are you going to say anything at all?”
“About which part? The part where you slept with Joan, or the part where you apparently slept with me?”
It was Aaron’s turn to flush red. “I don’t know.”
Despite Aaron’sI dare youtone, he was scared of Nick, Joan realized. Not just because Nick had been the legendary monster slayer from his childhood stories, but because Nick was big and dangerous and difficult to read, and because it was so complicated between them all.
But Nick had never laid a finger on Joan, and she knew—she didn’t know how, but sheknew—he’d never hurt Aaron either. She found herself remembering when they’d captured Aaron to interrogate him. The others had pushed him around, but Nick had been almost gentle with him. And wasthatsome remnant feeling from the true timeline? From when they’d all been allies?
“Both,” Aaron said now. “Either.”
“What does it even matter to you whatIthink?” Nick said.
Aaron opened his mouth to say something, and then stopped, as if he wasn’t sure why, but itdidmatter to him. He wanted to know what Nick was thinking and feeling.
For some reason, the look on his face made Nick frown thoughtfully, as if hehadn’tdelved into his own feelings. As if he might not have if Aaron hadn’t kept asking. “I—I don’t know how I feel,” he said slowly. “Pretty fucked up, to be honest. It’s not just all the stuff between us. I think I actually did die yesterday. And that’s really messing with me.”
Joan swallowed. She still could barely believe Nick was actually alive. She wanted desperately to touch him, to comfort him, but she didn’t have the right anymore. “I’ve never felt relief like that,” she said to him shakily. “When you took that first breath after being in the stasis...” Even now, she could have just sat here and watched him breathe forever. She felt Aaron react to the emotion in her voice, and she swallowed again, her throat tighter this time.
Nick met her gaze, and Joan’s breath hitched just at the eye contact. If he ended things after this conversation, she’d never get over it. She’d never get overhim. She’d felt the same when Aaron had pushed her away at the pub.
Nick’s gaze turned to Aaron. “You and me in another lifetime, huh?” It was a bit shaky.
“Hard to believe, I know,” Aaron said tightly. He’d gone tense again.
“A little,” Nick admitted. The silence was filled by the rush of water through the bridge’s supports. Even here, in the atticabove the fourth floor, it was as loud as a storm.
“I don’t understand it,” Aaron said. “Your counterpart and mine couldn’t have been from more different worlds. And...” He hesitated. “You’reyou. The mythical hero from my childhood stories—the one who kills my kind.”
“That’s not Nick anymore,” Joan said. “That wasn’t who hewas.Eleanor turned him into that.” And Joan had undone her work. She’d turned him back into something like the guy he’d have been in the true timeline.
“But I must have still beenme,” Aaron said. His tone said:a piece of shit.
Did Aaron really think of himself like that? Every now and then, he hinted that he did. But Joan had seen the heart of him. She knew what his sharp edges concealed. “Haven’t you seen the pattern?” she said to him.
“The pattern?”
“You and Nick are so similar. You were both part of the peace talks in the original timeline. And inthistimeline, you were working together to rescue humans. And now you’re both about to break into the Monster Court—to try to save the worldagain.”
Aaron’s mouth opened slightly. He hadn’t seen it like that at all. He started to speak and then frowned, as if trying to think it through. “I wouldn’t justdothat, though. I know myself. I would have fallen in love first, and then wanted to do right by them.”
“You weren’t in love with either of us in the true timeline,” Joan said. “And you still agreed to stop taking human life.”
