“You know,” he begins as I finally glance down and realize my pancake is in the shape of a dick and balls. My brow goes up as I lift my eyes to meet his brown ones. Seriously immature, but funny as hell. Plus, let’s admit it: that took some serious pancake-ing skills. “We were worried we never going to see you again.”

“Mm,” Aaron starts, sucking his lower lip under his teeth and closing his eyes. “You almost didn’t. Good thing Kali was a fucking nutcase.” He opens his eyes again, but there’s something different in them.

He doesn’t like what he had to do to Kali. We’ve been going to school with her for years. Plus, she was pregnant. With Heather’s half-sister no less. I sigh again and reach my fingers up to fluff my hair. I gave him that look; I did that to him, added darkness to his already dimming gaze.

“Because you’re a coward,” Kali’s ghost hisses at me. I ignore her. Eventually, the drugs the hospital gave me will wear off and she’ll disappear. Like I said, one day, I bet I’ll wake up and her name will be the faintest wisp of a memory, something so fragile a light breeze could take it away forever.

“If ridding the world of my demons was supposed to make me happy,” I start, grabbing a pack of cigarettes from the center of the table. “Then why do I feel so goddamn empty?” I pause for a moment, eyes flicking toward the sliding glass doors. Aaron, understandably, doesn’t like anyone to smoke inside the house.

“Fuck it,” he growls, reaching out to take the pack from me. He withdraws two cigarettes, lights one up, and then slips the other between my lips. I watch him, mesmerized, as he leans forward and uses the burning tip of his smoke to light mine. I couldn’t look away if a hurricane tore the roof off the house and whipped my hair around my head in gale force winds. “We almost died. We get to play around a little, right?” Aaron laughs, the sound dry and caustic. He can’t know that even such an awful sound makes my heart soar.

I sit back, drawing in two happy lungfuls of nicotine.

Surprisingly, it’s Hael who answers my question, instead of Aaron.

“Because whatever it is that was haunting you, has yet to be exorcised.” Hael rises to his feet, taking off the stupid apron he was wearing and chucking it across the surface of the counter. Aaron and I exchange a look as he disappears up the stairs and slams the bedroom door behind him.

In the corner, Kali’s ghost howls with laughter.

Aaron and I take a nap on the couch together, curled in one another’s arms. When I wake up, it’s to perfect darkness and the distant murmur of male voices. I sit up, groaning at the pulling in my stitches and pausing when I hear Aaron chuckle from behind me.

“Look at us,” he whispers, sitting up and then glancing down at the cast on his hand with a scowl. “A pair of useless cripples.”

“Oh stop,” I whisper back, trying not to break the warm quiet of dark. Heather and the girls should be back by now. Hael promised he’d pick them up in the Bronco if I didn’t wake up in time. Based on the state of the house—buttoned up, dark as pitch, and silent but for the whir of the fridge—I know I most definitely did not wake in time. “We’re soldiers, wounded in battle.” I grab another cigarette from the pack on the coffee table and light up.

Aaron watches me for a moment, sitting up and putting his elbows on his knees. The way he’s staring at me, I can’t help but stop and turn to look at him. He’s pretty in the dark, even prettier in the light. Whenever his chestnut hair catches a bit of moonlight, it shimmers a different color. Brown, red, gold. Just like his little sister. Shit, even his cousin Ashley wears the family’s DNA in her hair color.

I bet we have a kid together someday, with hair the color of fall leaves and green-gold eyes.

“Bernie,” he starts, glancing away for a moment. I can feel the tension in him, desperate to be broken but too fragile to come at with a sledgehammer. I wonder if I couldn’t find another way to break it? I adjust myself, feeling a certain slickness between my thighs that promises I was not dreaming of sugar plums and sweet things. Carnal nightmares, more like. Aaron turns back to stare at me, and I can feel his gaze like an arrow through the heart. “When my mind got really dark, you know what helped more than anything?”

I can’t speak. My mouth just feels too dry. Sometimes life is like that. You want to wear glossy lips and a smile, but you’re cursed with a tongue like sand and a mouth that’s cracked and bleeding.

“What?” I ask, my voice husky and strange. Actually, I’m pretty sure I’ve always sounded that way, like some sort of wannabe porn star who’s trying too hard. I take another drag on the cigarette, certain that they’re stolen, positive that they taste better because they were obtained with crafty fingers and tomfoolery. I assume that about literally everything though, don’t I? That it’s stolen. Because nice things are not given to you; they must be taken.

“You,” Aaron says, looking me dead in the face. The shadows make his green-gold eyes hard to make out, but that’s okay. Just as I’ve memorized Vic’s gaze, his smell, his taste, his feel, I’ve memorized Aaron’s. I’m going to carry little parts of their dark souls inside of my own. “Not the girls, not my friends … just you, Bernadette.” He leans in toward me, capturing my chin in gentle fingers. “You’re my endgame.”

“Stop it,” I gripe back at him, trying to pull away. Aaron tightens his fingers on my face in a very un-Aaron-like way and forces me to stay still. His mouth hits mine in a rush of violent heat and teeth and tongue. He takes me with a single kiss, obliterating my thoughts and forcing me to drop the burning cigarette onto the carpet.

The smell of singed fabric teases my nostrils as Aaron slides his tattooed fingers around to the back of my neck, proving with a single kiss that his words are the purest form of truth: the kind that hurts. It isn’t easy to be someone else’s everything. It’s a terrible burden, one that sits crouched inside your heart for eternity. You will always know that your actions, no matter how necessary, are like ripples in somebody else’s pond.

“Come here,” he murmurs against my mouth, his breath warm against my lips. He tastes like maple syrup, from the pancakes we had earlier. And I love that. I love that Aaron Fadler tastes like home and sweet things, like safety and childhood. All of that wrapped up in a boy with hard muscles, an even harder cock, and a blanket of ink … that’s why I’m waking up with wet heat at the apex of my thighs.

Aaron uses his one good hand to encourage me onto his lap. I straddle him on the sofa, like I did the day after Halloween. We’re in a very similar position here. Him, wounded. Me, on top. His hard cock pressing into my borrowed underwear.

“Why are you wearing my boxers?” he asks, eyes half-lidded and gaze thick with desire. He licks his lips. “Because it turns me on like nothing else. You, wearing my smell all over you. Like you’re mine and mine alone.”

“I was, once,” I say, and Aaron smiles. It isn’t a very pretty smile.

“No, never,” he replies, shaking his head. “You were never just mine.”

Aaron pulls me down with his fingers on my neck, kissing me again as I rock my hips against him, wet and dripping and ready to slide down the length of his cock. Fuck the foreplay.