Even in his house, Aaron wanted to be surrounded by memories of his found family.
My chest ached as he left me to explore while he went into the kitchen, grabbing water and pain pills from a cabinet.
“I love it here,” I told him softly, keeping my head turned away as he approached so he wouldn’t be able to see the scar across my face.
Dr. Arora had stitched it closed properly with a delicate hand, promising that the scaring wouldn’t be so bad if I took care of it with her detailed instructions. She’d also fitted me with areal brace for my hand, declaring that even without an x-ray, it was clear my pinky, ring, and middle fingers were broken.
Aaron had bracketed my back on the couch the entire time she saw to me, and I’d been grateful he couldn’t see the extent of the damage on my face. Even in the car he’d borrowed from the club to take me home, he’d been focused on the road, and it was dark enough to obscure the ugly mark.
But now, in the warm light of his home, there was no avoiding it.
As if sensing my distress, Aaron only placed the glass and pills on the table before kissing my temple and moving back into the kitchen.
I swallowed the lump in my throat, loving him so much it was hard to breathe beyond the swell of it blooming at my centre.
“Gonna make you somethin’ to eat,” he muttered as he started banging around in the kitchen. “You shouldn’t take those meds on an empty stomach. Why don’t you take a shower while I fix it?”
He was careful to keep his eyes focused on the pan he was putting on the stove when I turned to look at him, and I felt gratitude warm my chest. “That would be great.”
“Up the stairs. Use the one in my en suite at the end’a the hall. Towels on the rack. Call if ya need anythin’, yeah?”
“Thank you,” I told him as I moved toward the stairs, trying to convey how much it meant that he was giving me space to sort through the complicated feelings rioting through me as adrenaline drained through my pores, leaving me exhausted and bewildered.
Photos lined the stairwell, and everyone in the club was represented in the frames. At the top, I noticed a large canvas depicting Aaron as a little boy. No tattoos or silver jewellery or that distinctive haircut, just a skinny boy with the same eye-crinkling, wide grin and mischief in his eyes. He had his armslung around a little girl with pale hair and the same dark, wide-set eyes as him.
His sister.
The one who’d been abducted by the Chinese triad because of her skills as a hacker.
He hadn’t gone into details yet about the story, but I didn’t press. If I knew anything, it was how hard it could be to speak about the pain of loss and wounds that would never heal, no matter how much time passed.
“She would love you.”
His voice startled me into springing away from the photo.
I untucked the hair from my ear so it swung over my face as I looked down the stairs at him.
“Yeah?”
“Oh yeah.” He leaned against the banister with a soft smile. “You two’d get up to know good, I’m sure. Curtains and I’d be fucked.”
“I hope that happens someday,” I admitted softly, tentatively, because now that I washerewith Aaron in his home, Grouch safe, half our enemy vanquished, our future actually seemed possible in a way that terrified me.
Because I wanted that ever-after shit with Aaron more than I wanted anything else.
There was no remorse in me for the lives of the White Raiders that were no doubt ash in the remnants of the farmhouse. They had shown no kindness in life, and they deserved none in death.
Instead, I was filled with hope like a new dawn after a violent storm had passed.
“Me too,” he said with a little nod, gaze lost to thoughts playing out in his head. “Go wash up, and the food’ll be ready when you are.”
I turned back around without saying anything, ghosting down the hall to his bedroom.
It felt a little strange to enter it for the first time without him, but it also gave me time to appreciate it.
The first thing I noticed was that the walls were painted cobalt blue.
I didn’t have to wonder if they’d always been that colour because there was still tape against the baseboards and an empty can of paint beside the open door.
