Page 59 of Lost and Bound
He shrugged again, as if he hadn’t just taken his story from horrific to worse. “So I found alternatives. The underground fighting pits paid better than my day job, but I had to take an advance against my winnings. A big one. The fuckers I was working for were into a lot more than that, hits and drugs and…it doesn’t matter, Jared. The details really don’t matter. You can imagine. I tried to work it off for years, but in the end, I owed the wrong people, I’d made too many enemies, and I couldn’t get out. They threatened Arik. So I made a deal: they forgot he existed, and I’d work for them without trying to kill them. We both took a blood oath. And I walked away.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” I muttered. “Fuck, Calder. That’s—I’m sorry. That’s not enough, but I’m really fucking sorry. But why shouldn’t you tell Arik this? And doesn’t he already know? I mean, he was sick. He doesn’t remember all of that? You really think he’d think less of you for doing what you needed to do to take care of him?”
“He’d think it was his fault. He was a little kid. He remembers being sick. But I downplayed it a lot. I didn’t want to scare him. It was just us, living in this shitty little apartment. His life was already hard enough. He didn’t know how much it cost to cure him. We’ve talked about it since I’ve been here. But as far as he knows, I just fucked up. And that’s all he’s going to know. He doesn’t need that burden.”
And Calder did? It seemed like more than anyone should have to bear alone.
I wanted to lie back down again, take Calder in my arms, kiss him and comfort him…but he wouldn’t welcome that from me. Or if he’d allow it, tolerate it…I couldn’t stand that any more than I could bear the idea of him pushing me away.
Shit. He’d been, what, nineteen? With a dying little kid, and no way to take care of him. No way out. No one to turn to. Maybe he’d have needed comfort then, but it’d been twenty years since then. That nineteen-year-old boy was gone.
And Calder, hard-eyed and closed-off and cold, had taken his place.
“I—he still needs you,” I insisted. “He doesn’t want you to leave.”
“Doesn’t he?” Calder’s gaze stayed fixed on me, intent and predatory. Hungry. A shiver went down my spine. “He should tell me himself, if he wants me to stay. If—he needs me.”
“Ask him,” I whispered. “Ask him to ask you to stay.”
Calder shook his head. “That’s not a burden he needs,” he said wearily. “I’m not a burden he needs. So I’m not asking.”
I felt small and cold, still shivering a little, lonely and bereft. I wrapped my arms around myself, biting my lip to keep from saying anything fucking stupid.
Calder rolled over again and gently, carefully, pulled me down into his arms again, tucking my head under his chin and wrapping his big body around me. I melted into him, nuzzling his chest. He pulled the blankets up and over us both, cocooning me in safety and comfort, holding me close.
I blinked to keep the tears back. Fuck. That story. And…he’d be leaving. If not now, then soon.
“Go to sleep, baby,” Calder said softly. “Go to sleep.”
Maybe I’d been too wrung out by everything he’d told me—or too worn out by a day’s hard labor and getting fucked twice within an inch of my life—and maybe I’d just gotten used to doing what he told me.
Either way, I fell asleep.
And I woke up alone.
Chapter 16
You Seriously Can’t Go Fourteen Days?
Arik stood up from where he’d been crouched over some weird, spiky little plant at the end of the garden, jumping a step back as I charged him between two rows of trellised peas.
“Jared?” he asked warily. “What’s going—”
“Where the fuck did he go?” I demanded, almost a shout. I knew I looked crazy: red-faced and panting and wild-eyed. But I’d woken up without Calder, and he rarely left the room before I got up. He might get out of bed, but he never went far. He hadn’t been in the kitchen. I hadn’t been able to scent him anywhere. And no one I’d talked to had seen him. Fear had a cold grip on my chest, and I couldn’t quite get a full breath. “Where the fuck is Calder?”
“Um,” Arik said, looking incredibly shifty, like only a fucking cat could. He didn’t have whiskers in this form, but I could practically see them twitching anyway. “Look, he didn’t want to wake you.”
I took another menacing step. Arik stood his ground, his eyes narrowed.
Okay, maybe not so menacing to someone who’d been raised by Calder, for fuck’s sake.
My lungs still weren’t cooperating, so I sucked in as much air as I could and made do. “Where. The fuck. Is he?”
Arik sighed. “He had to go somewhere. No, shut up and stop yelling, I don’t actually know any more than that. He borrowed one of those half-junker cars Luke and Josh and Jenna keep swearing they’re going to be able to finish fixing and sell any fucking day now, and he left. He said he’d be back in a couple of weeks, max, he had something he needed to d—”
“A couple of weeks?” My voice had risen to a very not-menacing screech. “A couple of weeks—Arik, he’s my mate, and he didn’t tell me he was leaving. For a couple of weeks!”
Arik eyed me dubiously, one eyebrow raised. “Max. A couple of weeks, max. And he told me you two were going to be breaking the mate bond soon, anyway.” He smiled, a superior little curl of the lips accompanied by a fucking maddening lift of his pointy chin. “You seriously can’t go fourteen days without getting railed by my big brother?”
