Page 23 of How to Hack a Hellhound
“I mean… I guess it would sort of be like having him as a roommate. He’d be in the common areas but not in my personal spaces. And I want you safe, Q. I can’t have something happen to you. I’ve lost enough already. Losing you… I just want you safe,” he reiterated.
I blew out a breath. “Ok, then. And you know we can always change our minds.Nothingis set in stone. If we hate it, we can totally move back into the apartment. You always have choices, Aiden, and I want you to know that.”
Aiden smiled at me, and he turned toward the tv. “Great British Baking Show?” he asked.
It was totally his comfort watch, and I was down with that. It put me to sleep half the time, and I was still feeling groggy. I was sure we’d get ourselves together to cook some dinner, since I knew the fridge was stocked, and at some point we’d need to go over and get our stuff from the apartment, but there wasn’t any rush, and I honestly still felt like shit.
Aiden and I both got comfy and watched some British people make biscuits, which are weirdly not actually biscuits, they’re cookies—who knew? Tomorrow would be soon enough to deal with the logistics of moving and everything else.
It was probably around two in the morning when Aiden came into my room to sleep. I was pretty sure I hadn’t been having a nightmare, so it must have been him. He didn’t come in every night, but I expected with the new place it might be more frequent for a few days. He fell back asleep pretty quickly, but I was wide awake. Too much sleeping during the day, probably.
Still, I didn’t mind that he woke me. It was kind of nice to know someone was next to me in bed, and that way I knew Aiden was here and safe.
Yeah, so, we were both a little fucked up in worrying about each other. We might have been slightly codependent (I almost snorted, because it was probably more than slightly), but we’d been stuck together after we’d both undergone trauma. I thought it was pretty natural to become a little attached. Sometimes I woke up in the night and I had to go check on him.
I knew the guy who kidnapped him was dead, but in the middle of the night, you could have all sorts of crazy thoughts. I worried that somehow maybe he wasn’t dead, and at three in the morning that seemed possible. Scary shit was always possible in the dead hours of the night. Like, what if he hadn’t been human, either, and couldn’t die? Crazy thoughts, but no crazier than my life actually was.
I also knew that the people who had taken me would just love to get their hands on someone like Aiden. He would’ve been perfect for them—no one had missed him for a year, and he wasoff the radar even now. He was cute and had this air of innocence about him, even after what he’d gone through.
And I’d brought trouble right to our door by going back to the club.
I resisted the urge to get up and research—I didn’t want to wake Aiden—but I started cataloguing all the bouncers and bartenders at the club, thinking about who was most friendly with James. It was sort of like counting sheep, apparently, because before I knew it, daylight was streaming in through a crack in the curtains, and Aiden was missing from bed.
And I smelled coffee. Thank god.
I got out of bed and felt a soft, plush carpet under my feet. Huh. That was new. How had Aiden gotten it in here when I was sleeping? And where did he get it from? I grabbed my phone from the nightstand to check the time, but it was only nine in the morning. I didn’t think he would’ve had time to go shopping this morning already.
Yes, he got up early as hell most days for the coffee shop, but from the noises in the kitchen, it sounded like he was still here.
I groggily made my way out into the living space, phone in hand, and then I stopped short. Aiden was sitting on a stool at the kitchen island eating some breakfast and drinking coffee, which was fine and normal.
What wasn’t normal were all the boxes in the living room. I walked over, flipped one open, and saw… my clothes?
I turned to look at Aiden, who just shrugged at me.
“Did you—” I started, but he was already shaking his head.
“Nope. I woke up and it was all here. And there’s throw rugs on the hardwood floor, too, which is actually nice, but I gotta admit it’s a little creepy that there was one in your room and neither of us woke up,” he said.
He didn’t look panicked, but I was still bewildered. “They just… In the night…” I couldn’t seem to get my brain to function, and I stumbled my way over to the coffee maker.
Perhaps caffeine would make it all make sense.
Aiden just watched me. I had no idea what he was thinking.
“You ok?” I asked.
He shrugged, which I took to mean he mostly was.
“Cassius called, too,” he added. “He was pissed.” Aiden smiled at that, so I took it to mean he wasn’t pissed at us. No one wanted Cass mad at them. Still, he wasn’t at work…
“He didn’t, like, fire us or anything, did he?” I asked. I had some money saved, and we would get by without the jobs, but it was reassuring and gave us a level of stability I think we both needed in life.
“Nah. He did tell us to take the day off, though, in order to get settled. He was super mad that we’d been ‘rehomed,’ which I guess is what Dexter told him.” He chuckled. “I would have loved to have heard that conversation. Cass had just gotten off the phone with him and was ranting about how Dexter couldn’t just give him people to adopt and then steal them back, and how we were his and Kushiel’s now, and we didn’t have to go anywhere we didn’t want to. It was like they were fighting over who got to keep us. Cass did make a point of saying all decisions were totally ours, and he didn’t mean it to sound like anyone owned us or anything, but I let him know it was actually kinda sweet that people cared about us and our well-being.”
I had poured myself a cup of coffee and was leaning against the counter, listening and sipping the caffeinated goodness. “I guess it is kind of sweet. We have people who care about us. I didn’t really have that before. I mean, I had friends, I guess, but… I don’t know. They were party friends. I was kind of lost after my parents died, and I didn’t make a lot of connections.” I just shrugged, and Aiden nodded.
He knew my parents had died a couple years ago and that it had thrown me for a loop. We’d talked briefly about our families, although all I knew about his was that they were no contact because they were toxic assholes, apparently.
