Page 25 of Never Say Die
Shay slid his palm around Aiden’s slender throat and squeezed. “You’d tear easy, you know that? Split like a wishbone.”
“Yeah, just like you did,” Aiden said, and meant it, and hated himself, and wanted to sayI’m sorry.
Shay pulled his mouth shut. Pain came and went, bolting across his black eyes, before he ripped his hand away and fell into the driver’s seat. Aiden subconsciously reached for his throat. Touched two fingers to the place Shay had held him.
One of their phones rang. Aiden didn’t move. Couldn’t move. His heart was a swollen, rotten thing, and he hated how it ached for Shay, to be like Shay, to have what Shay had, to have Shay in every possible way. He knuckled at his watery eyes and put on his sunglasses.
“Yeah, Georgia,” Shay said, holding Aiden’s phone against his ear. “Oh my God, stop yelling. We’re on our way back.”
CHAPTER NINE
Darkness filled the corners of Aiden’s bedroom. Shadows bent along the walls where moonlight refused to touch. The press release had come and gone. Jacob had fielded questions and shooed invasive reporters, and Shay had beamed, seated in the middle of a booth at a bar called Neon, while the band playfully answered questions and pretended to have their shit together. Georgia spoke the most, even though most questions were directed at Shay. Aiden answered with teasing sarcasm whenever someone tried to bait him into anger. Dylan—bless his unwillingness to step into any sort of rage-fueled trap—had slung his arm over Shay’s shoulder and said, “We’re back, and this is just the beginning.” Every time someone mentioned Thomas, Aiden had gone cold. At one point, Shay tapped his shin beneath the table, reminding Aiden to strip the fear from his eyes.
Fear remained, though.
Fear followed him home.
He kicked the comforter away, suffocated by balmy July heat, and listened for late-night footsteps on the sidewalk or slow tiresat the intersection. City sounds went silent. In their place, the wet slip of skin filled the apartment. He stared at the ceiling. Exhaustion warped every thought. Familiar, age-old panic weighed on his chest like an anchor, keeping him pressed to his bed, unable to lift his head and look toward the sound.It’s not real, he thought.It’s not fucking real.Entrapment sealed around his neck. Breath came next, soupy and gurgled, growing nearer. His eyes burned. Heaviness crept atop him, pulled by decomposing hands digging at his bed sheets, covering his body and holding him there, petrified and choked.
Sea water dripped onto his face, falling from stringy black hair and the tip of Thomas’s nose. Putrid breath drifted across Aiden’s mouth. He wanted to close his eyes, but he couldn’t. He stared into pale, dead pits and tried to scream. No sound left his open mouth.
Thomas wore drenched, tattered clothes and soggy flesh peppered with sand. His throat and chest were still torn, raw and white where blood had leaked between Shay’s lips, onto the tile, into the ocean. One of his broken ribs threatened to puncture Aiden’s stomach.
The corpse leaned closer. “Let me make it up to you,” Thomas said, guttural and inhuman. His cold, bloated hand found purchase on Aiden’s hipbone, gripping him there, then shifted to his navel, the scar beneath his right nipple, higher, to his gaping mouth. He said it again, “Let me make it up to you,” and sealed his palm over Aiden’s lips, gagging him with a rock. He forced the stone deep, breaking teeth, jacking Aiden’s jaw wider—deeper—tearing his tender mouth, pushing into his throat.
Aiden had always wanted to live. Defiantly, at least. In spite of all he’d been told and taught. Aiden Moore, who had flashed his middle finger to the world, chose life when life didn’t choosehim. But he had no fangs to bare. No supernatural strength to wield. Unlike Shay, who had defied death and returned fearsome, fearless, unfathomable—Aiden hadnothing. Right then, for the second time, he imagined dying.
It might be easier.
The thought jolted him awake.
He shot forward in bed, clawing at his throat, searching for remnants of the undead. Thomas was gone, but a glinting pair of eyes came and went, watching him from the other side of his kitchen counter. Wind rustled dusty blinds. Aiden’s heart drummed wildly. He touched his cheek and found wetness there. Tears or sea water, he didn’t know. Tried to slow his breathing and grabbed his phone from the floor, unplugging the charger cord.
5:36 a.m.
“Fuck. . .” he whimpered, one hand plastered beneath his chin. He still felt that rock, sinking roughly into his throat.
Instagram lit the screen. Then Facebook. Twitter. He scrolled, glancing at tagged pictures from fans at House of Blues and Staples Center. Swiped the apps away. Tapped the text bubble. Typedare you okay, deletedokayand replaced it withup, deleted everything and tried again.Pancakes?He huffed. Backspaced. Flicked the app away. Opened it again.Thomas was in my apartment. I don’t know if it was a dream. I’m scared. I’m fucking scared.Deleted, deleted, deleted.
Aiden Moore: can’t sleep. wanna get some food?
Shay Bennett: Me neither. Sure.
Aiden slept on the way to Vegas. Once in a while, he’d open his eyes and glimpse green road signs and mauve desert. Watch Dylan sip a joint in the passenger’s seat. Catch Shay scribbling in his pocket-sized journal or napping with his temple against the window. Every hour or so, Georgia would grab his ankle, propped on the center console, and shake him awake, firing off questions likeburritoor quesadillaandcoffeeor soda. After they pulled into the parking garage underneath the sleek Cosmopolitan towers, they unloaded their bags and walked inside, greeted by polished floors and crystal chandeliers.
“We sure this is where Jake booked us. . . ?” Georgia asked. She tipped her head, gazing at the fancy light fixtures and purple ceiling inlays.
Shay tugged his rolling suitcase toward a designated check-in area labeled: Gold Tier. “Just wait here.”
Dylan groaned. “I’m starving.”
“Yeah, I could eat,” Aiden said. He glanced around the luxury resort. A noisy casino stretched past a lifted bar, and people in designer clothes wandered to and from the elevators lined along the nearest wall. “Shay booked this place. I’d put money on it.”
“Yeah, I believe that.” Georgia heaved a sigh. “Selling out comes with perks, I guess.”
“Yeah, damn. I don’t think I’ve ever stayed anywhere this nice,” Dylan said.
Aiden nodded aggressively. “Bet the cocktails are twenty bucks a pop.”
