Page 76 of How to Bare Your Neck and Save a Wreck
Andres sighed. “Hey, Hellbeast.”
“Hey, bitch,” she replied, and threw herself at him.
He caught her on instinct, pulling his baby cousin close as he spun her around. He’d done so a thousand times before, but only now did he realize just how much of his vampiric strength he was putting into it. His chest tightened painfully, the panic taunting him again. As he set her down, he feigned a stumble, shaking out his arms. “You’re not ten anymore,” he grumbled.
Natalie scoffed and shoved her shoulder into his. “Yeah—when I was ten, you woulddropme half the time.”
The space beneath his sternum hurt all the worse. That was love, he figured, ripe and deep and now miserable at the thought of what she’d done and might still do. She was the only person he’d truly loved—the only person until Shane. His little swan watched them with a confused sort of happiness.
Andres gave him a soft smile. “So, um, how do you know my cousin again?”
“Nat’s that friend I talk to online.” He said it like a singularity, which Andres probably should have recognized with how Shane’s chat app always seemed open to one specific DM. Shane’s brow lifted. “Wait, she’s your cousin. So you’rerelated.”
“That is usually how cousins work, yes.”
He made an exasperated noise. “Is there only one family in all of San Salud who actually likes me?”
Andres couldn’t help but laugh at that, regardless of all the less savory emotions still tormenting him, beating against the door of his heart. He tried his best to bar it closed.
“Not even a whole family,” Nat replied. “We’re just the weird ones. Though I still think ifhehadn’t practicallyraisedme, I would’ve been normal.”
Andres huffed. “You would have been boring.”
“Normalisboring,” Nat said, and stuck out her tongue at him.
Andres felt the urge to cry. He forced it down, nailing it to his spine where the tingling panic still threatened.
The miserable lurking fear was only made worse when Anthony finally chipped in. “I take it this is Andres?” He lifted a brow. “And Shane, was it?”
“So youdolisten when I talk.” Nat swatted her boyfriend in the arm, but beneath the grumpy act, Andres could tell she was beaming.
“Most of the time,” Anthony responded and kissed her cheek.
It was so sweet. So sweet and so disastrous. They had based this little excursion on the hopes of persuading Anthony Hilker—with violence, if need be—to sneak them into Dr. Blood’s office before they fled, strangers into the night. But they weren’t strangers now, not with Natalie connecting them. And if Anthony even suspected what Andres was…
He tensed at the thought, his lungs fighting him for each inhale. He could not lose Natalie. He would not.
“Andres?” Shane’s voice sounded hollow, too far away, and the hand that grabbed onto Andres’s wrist felt worse than before—worse than ever—a cold, dead thing pulling him into Vitalis-Barron’s depths.
Andres’s body reacted like he had been hit by lightning, yanking him from Shane’s grasp so hard he tripped over his own feet. He fell. The wind was knocked from his lungs as he hit the ground, but somehow his muscles kept moving, putting another foot between himself and the beautiful man he knew with all his heart and mind he had nothing to fear from.
Shane looked genuinely scared. He held his wrist to his chest, his breathing heavy, and Andres could practically feel his elevated pulse. The awful shame and horror of what he’d done—what he’d never wanted to do in the first place—hit Andres like a physical blow. The guests nearby turned their attention on him, pinning him down with their horrified curiosity. He was the one who was the actor, the one who could sway people to him with enough confidence and the right words, but he had no words now, nothing he could do to convince Natalie and Anthony he hadn’t just thrown his own boyfriend off him in a panic, much less talk Shane out of having experienced it.
His magnificent Cygnus cleared his throat with a laugh, his voice shaky as he said, “Fuck, that thing was huge. How long had it been on yoursleeve? Ew.”
Natalie had saved Andres from enough spiders—bless her—that she seemed not to question it. “What? Oh my god, where did it go—I want to see!”
“I think Andres vaulted it into the stratosphere.” Shane made a face. “We deserve a drink after that. We’ll be right back?”
“Oh, sure.” Nat’s brow tightened, but their cover was saved by a guest who greeted her and Anthony with enough enthusiasm to drag her attention away, sweeping her and her boyfriend intoa conversation about work gossip as the chatter around them returned.
Shane didn’t reach for Andres—didn’t so much as touch him, arms tight at his sides and his expression cordial. Andres climbed to his feet, shakily following him toward one of the bars. The moment they were past the nearest row of flowering plants, Shane veered to the side, tucking them out of view. He turned on Andres with such ferocity and pain that it took Andres like a blade to the heart.
“What the hell?” Shane snapped.
“I’m sorry.” Andres’s voice sounded so pathetic, his whole being slowly crumbling in on itself. His vision blurred and a tear slipped free from one of his eyes. He did his best to quickly wipe it away without upsetting his contacts.
The stony hurt of Shane’s expression broke into gentle worry and he lifted his fingers like he might brush a hand over Andres’s cheek, before stalling and retreating instead. Andres’s heart ached from how much he wanted that touch. Wanted to accept it and lean into it and be taken in by it. And the fact that his own damn body wouldn’t let him—
