Page 71 of Lost and Bound
Eventually I curled up against his shoulder and slept. Time enough to think about it later. For now, I had Calder, and I was home.
***
That nap caught up to me later in the night, as I lay in bed sleepless and staring at the faint shadows of the tree branches outside cast on the ceiling by the moon. I’d woken up a few hours after my conversation with Arik and crawled out of bed for a shower and all the other bodily necessities. Getting clean felt like heaven, but I hurried—even the ten or fifteen feet separating me from Calder felt like too much.
Matt had replaced Arik at our bedside sometime while I’d slept, but when I came out of the bathroom, Arik had returned, Nate and Ian with him. They all crowded into the room, along with a twelve-pack of beer and a pile of water bottles. And seven pizzas, which Ian proudly presented to me as if he’d hunted them himself, spearing them on the plains and dragging their carcasses home.
“From Marty’s,” he said smugly. My mouth watered. I fucking loved that place. “I drove extra fast on my way back from Laceyville so they wouldn’t get cold.”
Nate shuddered and muttered something about dying for a fucking pizza, but I ignored him. My viewpoint on what was and wasn’t worth dying for had evolved a bit recently, but seven everything specials from Marty’s still topped the list.
I ate on the bed, sitting cross-legged by my mate so that I could be touching him at all times. It was a little weird, eating and talking with him lying inanimate in the middle of it all, especially since Nate had perched at the end of the bed and seemed to be resting his beer on Calder’s ankle. But it felt like pack, and the bond thrummed contentedly, reassuring me that Calder was alive and well and healing.
I ate two pizzas all by myself, drank a beer and three bottles of water, and finally collapsed back on the bed, holding my stomach and groaning, while Ian laughed at me—around a mouthful of a slice of his own second pizza, the hypocritical dick.
Once we’d all gorged ourselves, Matt filled me in on what I’d missed, the others chiming in as necessary—or not so necessary. (“I told you that magic barrier wasn’t going to respond to your tree-hugging energy thing!” — “Shut the fuck up, Nate!”)
But the story wasn’t all that complicated, luckily, or I’d have gotten confused by all the interruptions. Ian had called Matt and then Calder once he realized I was gone, and so Calder had already been on his way back—from where, they didn’t actually know—when I’d sent my unwilling message through the bond. At that point, he’d been able to pinpoint my location, and he’d called the others. The warlocks had taken me into Nevada, a couple of hours from the border, to an old factory they had set up for times when they needed to kidnap and murder people—or at least that was the only function it seemed to serve.
Matt hadn’t been able to question anyone, of course, since both warlocks were about as dead as it was possible to be, and then some, by the time he arrived.
Calder had been closer, and he’d refused to wait. And by the time the cavalry got there, Calder and I were lying on the floor unconscious, with the magic barrier still up and keeping any of them from coming into the room.
They all did their best to skip over the details of that part of the story, and I didn’t blame them. I could only imagine what it’d been like, standing in that hallway over the half-melted corpses of the warlocks and watching Calder and me dying, just out of reach and right in front of their eyes, while they frantically worked to undo the warlocks’ magic in time.
Nate had eventually gotten the barrier down, and then they’d hustled us out. Arik worked to heal us both, Nate checked the place out to make sure it didn’t have any other nasty secrets or anyone in need of rescuing, and then Ian blew it up as they left. (“Where the hell did you even get C4, Ian? And you didn’t tell me you had it hidden around, Christ, you’re so fucking irresponsible sometimes—” — “I had C4 because I’m just that awesome, dude. Don’t ask. You know you’d rather not know.”)
It’d taken about four hours to drive home, with Matt going carefully so as not to jostle us too much. And then they’d cleaned us up and put us in bed.
They all filed out an hour after dinner, all of them looking like they hadn’t slept in weeks. Arik offered to stay, but I promised him I’d call for him if we needed anything. He hesitated, but Matt wrapped an arm around him and whispered in his ear, and Arik drooped against him like a wilting plant and let himself be led off to bed.
I pissed, and brushed my teeth, and climbed back in bed with Calder, turning off the light because that was what you did in the middle of the night, right?
Only I couldn’t sleep.
I’d thought I’d had enough trauma that a little more simply didn’t matter, but it turned out that, A, what had happened wasn’ta little moreeven by my jaded standards, and B…I needed Calder. Matt and Ian’s presence comforted me, and Arik’s healing skills and Nate’s magic reassured me.
But I still stared up at the ceiling, Calder’s near-death and the echoing agony of the amplified bond replaying over and over again like the world’s shittiest clip show.
I needed Calder’s arms around me. I needed to hear his voice. Not just because I yearned to know for certain that he’d be all right, but because nothing in the world felt right anymore unless I had him to tell me it would be. He’d seen value in me when no one else had, even myself. He’d saved me twice over. Confided in me…told me he loved me.
A horrible thought struck me, and I stared up at the fluttering branch shadows wide-eyed and frozen.
He’d thought the bond had influenced me into thinking I loved him. That his love had been leaking through and making me feel emotions that weren’t mine.
But what if it’d been the other way around? What if he’d been influenced bymyemotions?
The bond sizzled between us, my fear and worry and pathetic longing lighting it up like a string of firecrackers.
And Calder stirred beside me, breathing in deep and letting out a hitching sigh.
I was up in an instant, reaching across to switch on the bedside lamp and leaning over him, staring down at his face, watching his eyelids flutter.
His eyes opened, and that familiar silver glow had returned, shining up at me.
Chapter 20
Screw the Bond
