Chapter Two

Growing up in a small town meant that everyone knew everyone. Growing up rich in a small town made that impossibly worse. Add in the fact that I’d signed up to be an unofficial ‘errand boy’ for The Council, and I knew everyone’s business before they did most of the time. People never hesitated to pull me off the street to tell me the newest piece of gossip or call me when they discovered something they deemed important.

Nothing was usually important enough for me to retain it. I wasn’t great with people. I never had been. That was part of the reason I’d become the Youth Liaison in the first place. I’d hoped it would bridge the distance that had wedged between me and the townspeople when I’d been pulled out of school as a kid and my family had done the one thing they’d pledged to never do.

Take the change.

There were a lot of things that were different now. Some good, some bad. I was learning to cope with the pitying looks, the grimaces, the commiserating pats on the back. In some ways I’d gotten the shit end of the stick—that’s what most people said anyway. Behind my back and to my face. What was the point of turning if you had little to none of the benefits? they whispered. What a pity poor Richard took the change at all.

I’d gotten what I wanted though.

Eternal life and the ability to spend time in the daylight with Collin. Everything else was of little consequence. I didn’t want the ‘perks’ if having them meant I would become what my parents had become, what my brothers had become.

My phone buzzed and I sighed, shifting back where I’d been studiously going over a crossword I’d been saving from the Sunday paper. I was stuck on a four-letter word that meant desire. At this point it was either love or lust but I had no way of knowing which.

“Hello?” I answered the call, glancing over at the clock above my stove. It was still early, the moon had barely risen. Most people wouldn’t be out and about until one.

“Hey, Richard.” Ian Mattheson’s quiet rumble filled my ear and I paused, surprised to hear from him of all people. He was off duty today. I only knew that because his secretary down at the station had been kind enough to inform me via text that his deputy would be filling in. Most people had my number nowadays out of necessity, not necessarily because I was much of a talker, or even wanted to be.

It came with the job.

Please the public, be aware, be alert, all of that. Deal with the nuisances.

“Hey, Ian.” I hummed waiting for him to tell me why he was calling. He was silent for a long moment, like he was expecting me to ask how he was doing or something equally unimportant. I didn’t. I didn’t actually care. Not that I didn’t care about Ian, because I did. I wasn’t a sociopath. I just didn’t have time or energy to spend on people I hardly interacted with. Everything I had went into my job and my little brother.

He finally spoke and I huffed a sigh of relief as I listened.

“I was just heading out of town to visit my brother for full moon night,” Ian said, rambling onward while he shared more information than I cared about. I waited patiently, grunting in all the parts I’d learned I was supposed to react in. “Anyways,” he grunted. “There’s a kid stranded out by the town limits sign. I stopped to help him.”

Okay…

My brow furrowed in confusion and I shifted forward, zoning out of the conversation again as I stared at the crossword in front of me. I filled in the next word, skipping love-lust, so I could deduce which one it was. Eight letter word that meant ‘often done out of repetition.’ Hmm. Repetition. I frowned.

“Cute kid. He’s all beat up, bruises all over, these horrible black eyes—and so since I’m curious— I ask him his name,” Ian droned onward.

I tapped the page with my pen thoughtfully, mulling over my reply. Sometimes people called like this just to have a chat, like they thought every single visitor in town was worthy of The Council’s attention (that’s probably why they had a Youth Liaison in the first place). They weren’t. Otherwise, I’d be run more ragged than I already was. It was almost like they all got into a habit of calling me and couldn’t seem to stop—

Oh.

Habitual.

I penned it down, pleased with myself before I registered what Ian was saying.

“Get this. He’s an Evans.”

My whole body grew rigid, flashes of childhood memory blurring through the back of my mind.

“What?”

“Blair Evans” Ian perked up, clearly happy to have my full attention. “Amanda and Victor’s kid.”

I didn’t need him to explain to me who the Evanses were, but I held my tongue, not reacting to his words other than to feel my world tilt on its axis.

Blair Evans.

An Evans back in town—

Shit.

“Thanks for bringing this to my attention,” I said, back in business mode, my crossword only half filled out as I pushed away from the table and immediately moved to grab my keys from where they hung on the key ring. “Did you get his car fixed?”

It had been broken right? Now I regretted not paying attention.

“Nah. I think it’s the timing belt. He’ll need it replaced before he can drive again.”

“So he’s just…?”

“Looked like he was camping out in his car. Sleeping bags and all.”

“Huh.” I grunted, grabbing my jacket and slipping it on, the buttery leather familiar and comforting as I donned it like armor before stepping out into the cool night air.

My head swam as I drove down Main and watched the town slowly begin to wake up. Moonies, the only gas station and favorite hotspot for wayward teens, was packed to the brim like it always was. Cars filled the tiny parking lot as aqua colored neon lights flickered along the surrounding tree trunks that framed the building. The bulb on the giant sign out front would need replaced soon. It blinked at me as I whipped by, the engine thrumming with pent-up energy that mirrored my own.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt this much emotion.

It was exciting and terrifying. Both.

I exhaled through my nose, releasing tension. Curiosity and anticipation burned inside my chest in a way it never had before as I sped down rain-slicked streets and towards the long stretch of road that led out of town.

I spotted Evans the moment my car crested a hill barely a minute from the city limits. The car he was hiding inside was tiny, the paint a soft well-worn blue. It was an older model, though I had no words to describe it other than…cute.

It was cute.

I wondered if he’d look the same as he did in my memories.

 I’d only seen him once— when I’d been young enough he’d become little more than a fantasy in my mind. He’d been smaller than me, even then. His big green eyes had blinked up at me from where he stood swallowed by wildflowers at the bottom of our treehouse. The glass between us had caught with the waning sunlight and I’d been entranced as I stared down at him. His hair was a nest of wayward curls, and he flinched when he realized I could see him. After what looked like an internal battle he’d waved shyly up at me, an awkward flash of his tiny dirt-smudged fingers that shouldn’t have cut me down the way it had. My heart had been racing as I raised my shaking hand to mirror the movement.

He hadn’t stayed long.

Like a forest creature himself he’d skittered off, and I’d watched him go—stricken by the feeling of warmth that fluttered and squeezed tight around my heart.

I knew now that what I’d been feeling was the beginnings of a crush, my first and only crush.

I’d never seen him again.

I pulled to the side of the road across from him and exited my car, my body buzzing with adrenaline as I crossed the abandoned road. Pine needles stuck to the wet soles of my boots and I waited, nerves tingling up my fingertips.

I expected Evans to exit his car.

I wasn’t sure what I expected when he did it.

Would he be as unhinged as his mother? Would I be able to see the sickness behind his eyes? See the depravity bled through his bloodline like poison? Would looking at him remind me of what I’d lost? Or would it wake up the parts of me that had been killed by years of pain and responsibility, just as it had that first time I’d seen the way his nose scrunched up and his eyes glittered with mischief?

I shook my head to clear it, staring at his foggy back window for a moment before I squinted to see past the condensation. Evans didn’t exit.

He didn’t exit because he was asleep.

This was obvious even to me. I stepped closer to see better as I listened to his heartbeat. That should’ve been the thing that alerted me first, the sluggish thud thud of it as he exhaled and his narrow shoulders rose and fell with each breath. I watched him move for a moment, fascinated by the lithe man in front of me before my gaze snapped to his face for the first time in sixteen years.

Looking at Blair Evans was like staring into the sun. Too long, and I was sure he would blind me.

He was as beautiful as I remembered, his dark hair spilling like ravens’ feathers against the worn back seat. He had a sleeping bag zipped up to his middle, exposing his upper torso. I watched him with fascination, surprised by the way my body reacted to his petal-pink lower lip and the flutter of his lashes like spiderwebs against his cheeks. His fingernails were painted black, his hands covered in the most beautiful set of blue veins I had ever seen as he clutched at his sleeping bag like it could shield him from the world.

He looked exhausted.

Even I could see that, as unobservant as I usually was when it came to other people. Ian hadn’t been lying when he mentioned the bruises. They marred his delicate complexion, the broken skin flared through with splashes of olive and grape, spiraling outwards in a cruel caress beneath both his eyes like watercolor painted by the brush of misfortune. Somehow the presence of bruises only managed to add to his already devastating sort of beauty.

Something in my chest shook loose and a feeling overcame me that I had never in my twenty-five years experienced.

Blair was a hurricane, a storm, a natural disaster. Beautiful and world-shattering, with the power to rewrite the future and repaint the past. He looked fragile like that, the paper-thin veins on the insides of his wrists spreading out like cobwebs as he shifted to get comfortable.

He didn’t notice me, even though I was a predator. I stared, and stared, and stared—

And then, he shattered me.

Something glittered on Blair’s cheeks, pearl-like and infinitely pretty. It took me an embarrassing amount of time to figure out that what I was staring at were his tears. I broke down in that moment, my legs unsteady for the first time in my life, as I watched this beautiful boy—no, man—leak his sorrows privately onto polyester.

He was cataclysmic. He was beguiling. He was…vulnerable.

This boy wasn’t the little boy I’d seen in the woods all those years ago. He wasn’t the man I knew the town would fear either—that much was clear.

I hadn’t earned his tears so after one last lingering glance I stepped away from the window to inspect the rest of the car. He hadn’t properly shut the hood. I was going to fix it, but froze in my tracks as my fingers met chilled metal. I could see Blair from the front of the car again, curled up and shivering. My hands flexed and I balled them into fists, confused by my own emotion.

I wanted to take him home with me.

That was madness, wasn’t it?

Yes.

I shook my head and headed back to my own car, leaving the man undisturbed as I tried to stop the shaking in my fingers. Tiny and vulnerable. Sweet and sharp. Blair was…

He just.

He…was real. Real in a way nothing in this small town had ever felt before. I didn’t know how to describe the way I was feeling other than completely unsettled as I headed back into town and towards the local mechanic shop, anticipation like a noose around my heart.