Page 92 of Never Say Die
Shay’s breath came in awful, giant puffs, and his voice hitched, wrecked and terrified, as he said Aiden’s name.
Copper filled Aiden’s mouth. He blinked. Clung to life, to lucidity, to Shay. His body reached for breath, gasping in hot, sticky air, and through the strange, throbbing dark, he found Thomas, standing on the porch, and Cit with her shoulder propped against a pillar, watching him. He dug his fingers into Shay, listened to him sob and call out his name. But slowly, the world around him faded.
Aiden wanted to take his hand. He wanted to speak—I love you, bring me back, I believe in you, I’ll come back—but he couldn’t move, and he couldn’t stay awake.
Like always, he thought,Shay, and everything went dark.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Aiden died being held.
You cradled him against your chest and listened to a creature—like you, but not, like you, but worse—die with him. He’d looked small, hadn’t he? For someone who’d filled a room with his laughter, halted people in their tracks with his smile, Aiden Moore had stopped breathing while being held byyou. The man the sea had tossed onto shore, who hadn’t loved him enough, who had loved him too much, who couldn’t save him from himself.
Love was a strange, overgrown thing, rooted inside you, vital and fervent. You’d seen it pass through candlelight and gild his skin. Watched it wake on his eyelashes when he’d stirred in the night. Found it on his breath, gusting in your mouth, and hammering through his pulse, guiding hot, sweet blood to your lips. There you were, holding him.
Baby, you thought,wake up.
Stillness didn’t suit him, and yet he’d gone still against you.
“Aiden,” likeno, no, I’m here, I’m right here, c’mon, don’t?—
But Laura was limp, too. She lay strewn on the grass with a fungal rock propped beneath her head—smaller, like him,younger, like him. You didn’t look at her for long, couldn’t look at her for long. You’d naively wiped her from your thoughts after New Mexico. Whatever she’d wanted from you, he hadn’t let her take it. And, god, remember that? Feasting in an endless desert and watching him fall. You’d thought, so clearly,I’ll catch you. You hadn’t then. You didn’t now.
Eyes burning hot, you placed quivering fingers around the knife and loosened the blade from beneath his ribcage.
How many times had you thought to tell him?Aiden Moore, I love you.
How many days had you spent pacing in your bedroom, knowing he would hate you for leaving? You’d been a fool to think he’d follow you.
How many nights had you spent typing and retyping messages, searching for the courage to hit send?Can we talk? I screwed everything up. I’m sorry. I miss you. Fuck, I miss you.
You cried onto his bloodied shirt, onto the bruises you’d printed on his throat, onto his curtained eyelids, and prayed to the God you’d known in church so, so long ago. Not the God you’d taken to your tongue on a sour cracker. Not the bearded, pale-skinned prophet, son, father—whatever—depicted on Bible dust jackets. You held him, and you prayed to the God you’d found in the hard, empty silence of a church after midnight. Hollow pews left open for you and whoever worked the night shift. Whoever listened. You prayed to a nameless, faceless God, to the faith you’d found in music, to the hymns you’d discovered at the bottom of a bottle. You prayed to the God living in the grooves on Aiden’s palms, pressed to your cheeks, beneath your clothes, brought to your mouth in the early mornings. You prayed wholly, and you prayed viciously, and you asked God to give him back.
Maeve King—like you, but not, like you, but stronger—kneltbeside you, and him, and spoke with conviction. “You must act quickly.”
Letting him go might’ve been the hardest thing you’ve ever done. You draped him on the grass, and something caught in your throat. Grief shaped like coal. The sounds scared you, the ones you made after black stormed your eyes. That severe, animal pain. You thought,is this how a lion mourns?
Near the porch, Kelly Angelica Crawford held a pillar candle. Maybe she was praying, too. Her lips made fast, clipped words, and she swayed rhythmically, speaking to the silence in a way you didn’t understand, but needed. She was a light-worker, after all, and you craved yesterday’s sun, and a new day, and the way firelight licked shadows across his blushing skin.
Maeve handed you a clean kitchen knife and showed you where to cut, there, deep into the belly. You sank the silver blade into a sad, naked bird, half-plucked and gone cold. The heron didn’t make a sound, just bled for you like it was supposed to, in a circle around buried feathers. When you pressed ink to the torn corner of your journal, you hadn’t expected the words to shatter you. But they did. You wrote:Unfinished Future. Each letter landed like a fist.
“Yes, honey, like he did,” Maeve cooed, and gestured to your mouth.
You burned that intent, that wish, that unfathomable truth, and swallowed the hot ashes. You leaned over him, held in stillness, and kissed the wound on his torso. Tasted him again. Prayed to a God who’d never answered and begged for Aiden Moore.
Come back to me,you thought, and drove the hunting knife he’d pushed into you and taken into himself into the earth.Come back to me.
All at once, the world went silent.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Sunlight glowed against gauzy curtains in an old, familiar bedroom. Aiden cracked his eyes open. Listened to wheels scrape the sidewalk, and a vendor holler, “Mango, mango, mango—chile mango!” Death hovered in his peripheral. Danced at the edge of his own, private infinity.
Where the fuck am I?
But he knew. Recognized wood floors and happy, yellow walls, the colorful throw rug and the framed portrait of the Weeping Mother hung above his abuela’s altar. Lit wicks popped atop votive candles, and a hungry fly landed on a plate of cut fruit. Distantly, car horns blared, and backyard birds chirped in the lemon tree. Nearer, mole scented the air and chicken popped in a hot skillet.
Aiden imagined his limbs might not work, but he slid out from under a quilted blanket and stood, trailing his hand along the chipped doorframe. He touched his flat, unmarked stomach, and knuckled at his tired eyes. Flexed his bare feet on the floor and followed the hallway to a brightly decorated kitchen. Blue cabinets crowned with houseplants lined the wall above avintage sink with a long-necked faucet. Cumin seeds, peanuts, and black pepper were scattered around a mortar and pestle on the countertop, and his abuelita stood at the stove, stirring thick, brown sauce.
