Page 54 of Never Say Die
“Did you pay with cash?”
Shay nodded.
The RV sat untouched in the parking lot and the blinds in room sixteen were tightly closed. They left the truck in a distant parking space, motel permit dangling from the rearview mirror, room key jammed in the glovebox, car keys in the cupholder, and cut through the shadows toward their room like wraiths. The door was propped on the brass hatch-lock. Shay toed it open.
Aiden almost faltered. Hours ago, he’d stepped inside and faced a gun to his head.They’re dead.Shay flipped the switch. The lamp brightened the abandoned room.See? Dead.He exhaled slowly and found his phone, lying face-down on the bed. 1:09 a.m. No missed calls. No unread texts. Earlier than he’d expected. Had time slowed, somehow? Or was killing faster than he remembered? He set his phone on the dresser, the place Cit had rested her skeletal frame.
“Put your clothes in the bag when you’re done,” Shay said, bustling around the room.
With his shirt gone, Aiden appraised himself. Brown eyes and dinner-plate pupils, broken capillaries and purpling bruises. He pulled the bandage away. Blinked. Held his breath. Stared at the two-inch row of stitches beneath his chin, black and thin and smiling.
“Hey, did you hear. . .” Shay paused in the doorway, holding the plastic grocery bag. His lips slackened, parting and closing as he assessed Aiden’s reflection. “You hit the tailgate on your way down,” he said, and gestured to the bruises on Aiden’s left side, beneath his ribs. “I didn’t get to you fast enough.”
“Just a bruise.” Aiden found purchase on the porcelain sink. “Can I borrow your clippers?”
“My. . . Like, my hair clippers?”
“No, Shay, your toenail clippers. Yes, obviously, your hair clippers.”
“Yeah, I mean, sure. But are you?—”
“Please,” Aiden snapped, startling them both.
Hair held memories and he wanted his gone. It might’ve been impulsive—superfucking impulsive—but Shay didn’t say another word. He rifled through his hard-shell case, handed over the clippers, and leaned against the doorframe while Aiden ran the humming razor across his scalp. Black bits fell away, some coated in texturizer, others unbearably soft, every strand that’d fit somewhere between Cit’s knuckles. When his hand began to quake, Shay took the clippers and sheared the rest, smoothing the metal mouth behind his ears and around the back of his skull.
Aiden blinked at his reflection, palm skimming his buzzed head. His face sharpened: the jaw he’d worked to sculpt, and his high, wide cheekbones, and his straight, Mayan nose. He missed his hair, immediately, but he liked what he saw, too.
They showered separately. Aiden nursed their adopted bottle of Jack Daniel’s while Shay doused the tub with bleach. They stayed quiet until Shay turned off the light and crawled into bed, clutching his journal to his chest. Aiden knew it was coming. Steeled himself and waited, lying on his side, nose to nose with the man he’d killed and loved and wanted and saved, maybe.
“Talk to me,” Shay said, hardly a whisper. “Please.”
“I love you,” Aiden said, because it was a long-held truth. Because loving Shay Bennett was the beginning and ending of everything, anyway. “I’ve loved you since we were kids, and when you left me, I almost died. It scared me—needing you. But I kept loving you despite that. I loved you until I fucking hated you, and I couldn’t stand that my hatred for you wasn’t big enough to smother everything else. Istillloved you, even then.” He paused, swallowing around the rock in his throat. “But it didn’t matter. You had what I wanted. You’d done what I couldn’t. And I thought I’d die anyway, you know? That’s where Iwas heading. I thought if I could dig this love for you out of me and put it to use, maybe I’d get somewhere. But then you were gone, and I was left, and I felt everything ten-fold. I loved you harder, instantly. I wanted you back, instantly. I realized this love was here to stay with or without you, and I wished… Istillwish I would’ve jumped off that cliff.” The confession scraped him raw. True, harsh, unfair, and terribly selfish. “So, I told myself I’d live with it for a while. Tour with the band. See you every-fucking-time I closed my eyes. Overdose again, probably.” He reminded himself to breathe. “That’s it, Shay. I loved you then, I love you now. I loved you when I kicked you off a fucking cliff. I loved you when you bit me in the parking garage. I’ll love you when you kill me, eventually. I’ve tried to make sense of it, and I can’t, but that’s all I’ve got.”
Shay studied his face for a long time. Long enough that Aiden almost yelledplease, say something, say anything. Long enough for Aiden to wish Shay would rip his throat out. End it, right there, in a musty motel after Aiden had hemorrhaged like a splintered artery. Tragic, romantic, Shakespeare bullshit.
But instead, Shay uncurled his hand from around his journal and dragged his finger down Aiden’s nose. “I love you,” he said, simply, as if he’d said it a thousand times. Maybe, somehow, he had. “I loved you when you killed me, I loved you harder when I almost killed you. If you’d tried to jump that night at the trailhead, I would’ve stopped you, knife or not.” He shifted closer. The leather book flattened between their collarbones. “I’ve never been able to stop loving you, Aiden. Even when you were a death sentence.”
Aiden kissed him. He closed the space between them, chest to chest, thighs overlapping, ankles linked, and tried not to tremble.How?He wanted to know, and he didn’t. He wanted to understand what made Shay capable of loving him, enduring him, choosing him. But he didn’t ask. Instead, he said, “Sorry—I’m sorry,” against Shay’s mouth, babbling through kiss after kiss, “I’m so sorry, Shay. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Shay said nothing, and Aiden thought,yeah, that’s fair.
They kissed deeply and slowly, holding onto each other in that dark, cursed room, and fell asleep curled close, breathing life into the witching hour.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Dylan, let’s run through your section,” Georgia said, seated in a chair behind soundproof glass.
The makeshift recording studio wasn’tactuallya recording studio. Not for musicians, at least. Gary Carter, an old friend of Jacob’s, had his very own podcast devoted to—seriously, not even kidding—extraterrestrial activity. Gary had collected a dragon’s hoard of audio-boxes, microphones, studio monitors, pop filters, and bass traps, but rarely welcomed strangers into his dungeon-like singlewide unless the price was right. Jacob had brashly sold him on the band.They’re fuckin’ degenerates, Gary, they don’t give a shit about your moon-man research. Give ‘em five hours to cut a single and I’ll pay you for the full day.
Money talked, apparently.
“Anybody want some of this cheeseball?” Gary hollered.
Aiden leaned around the doorframe and spotted the alien expert in the kitchen, pressing fistfuls of bacon to a gooey sphere. He lifted his to-go coffee and smiled. “I think we’re good. Thanks, though.”
“Your loss, kid.” Gary was a towering, scholarly Black manwith tired eyes and massive hands. He carefully adjusted a pair of dainty reading glasses with his clean pinky and managed to squeeze through his collection of alien paraphernalia without toppling books and boxes. He glanced at Aiden, itching his short, graying afro with a butter knife, and asked, point-blank, “You a believer?”
Aiden sipped his spiked drink. That morning, he’d poured two shots of Jack into the complimentary instant coffee offered in the motel lobby. The woman behind the check-in counter had watched him tip the bottle over his dented paper cup, and when he’d held it out to her, eyebrows raised, she’d pushed her mug across the desk and pretended not to notice whiskey splashing into her tea. Maybe this moment was a little like that one.
