Finley awoke as the first rays of dawn peeked over the horizon through the thick hotel drapes. He gently got up, careful not to wake up Aidan who was still sleeping next to him - they had rented a double suite for convenience, and RJ had immediately claimed one bed for herself while he and Aidan didn’t mind sharing. The first thing he noticed was that RJ’s bed was unoccupied; he made his way to the bathroom, but discovered the door was locked and the light turned on. He couldn’t help but overhear Jeri’s voice, unexpectedly soft, speaking to the air. It took him an embarrassingly long time to figure out that she was actually on the telephone, and judging from the tone of the conversation, was speaking to their brother.

“. . . It was surprisingly boring,” she was saying. “Not a single fist fight. You would’ve fucking hated it. I hated it. Very churchy. No, I doubt he’d have the guts to show his face. There definitely would’ve been a fight if he had. Fin took it pretty hard, honestly. Aidan was there so it wasn’t so bad. I’m not sure, uh, maybe. Was hoping you’d tell me more about that dream. Yeah? . . . Shit. That sounds totally fucked. No, right . . .”

He felt like he was intruding, eavesdropping on half of the conversation, so he went over to the coffee machine and started quietly going about making a morning brew with the complimentary grounds provided by the Hyatt hotel.

RJ made her way out of the bathroom by the time it brewed and was putting her phone away in her pocket when she caught Fin’s eye. She raised an eyebrow.

“What was—” he began, but then a knock at the door distracted him and he cut himself off mid-sentence. “That?” He finished, perturbed, and watched as RJ opened the door with aplomb.

“Come right on in detective,” she greeted, opening the door wide for none other than Detective Omar Ibarra from yesterday. “We’re just waking up,” she explained as Ibarra took a tentative step inside. “One of us is still asleep,” she indicated Aidan’s sleeping form, and held up a finger to her lips.

Fin gave her a look that implied he was not at all pleased with this chain of events, but nonetheless pulled out a chair at their small table for the detective and fixed the man with a deep stare. When Ibarra made eye contact, a thousand images flew by in his mind’s eye that struck his brain like a whirlwind and left Finley bewildered. It was clear the detective himself was some measure of confused too, and was having trouble that morning focusing on one individual task at a time. Ibarra fumbled for his notepad and cleared his throat lightly.

“Thank you,” Ibarra said. “I’d like to ask you a few questions about your relationship with Félix, and his mother.”

While Fin glared, RJ dumped an entire flask of bourbon into a mug and poured coffee on top of it while making eye contact with the detective, who wrinkled his nose at the sight. “Ask away,” she suggested, and began to put in some eye drops from a bottle in her pants pocket.

Finley sat down opposite Ibarra and nodded. He tried to hone in on the man’s thoughts, but they continued to be an unrivaled chaotic mess. “Yeah, fine,” Fin said, “ask away. Don’t know what more we could tell you, though. She’s our maternal aunt. We flew in for the funeral yesterday. What more do you want to know?”

“How close were you to her, would you say?” Ibarra asked.

“She essentially raised me,” Finley answered. It took everything in his body to remain composed as the thought of her violent death resurfaced. “I’d say we’re pretty close. I try to visit at least once a year, since I moved away.”

Ibarra scrawled something indecipherable in his notepad. “When did you start living with her?”

RJ sat down on the bed a few feet away and lightly coughed. “I was thirteen or so, he was ten or so,” she roughly explained. “She took us in because our dad and step-mom were abusive pieces of shit, and loved us like we were her own kids even though she was already a single mom and had a lot on her plate.”

“What she said,” Fin supplied.

“She didn’t have to, neither,” RJ added with a plaintive note. “She was a good person.”

Once more, Finley felt a swell of tears threaten to spill over. He focused on the images that flashed by through Ibarra’s mind, and felt staggered by a series of photographs of the crime scene. He’d seen the state of the body from Félix’s mind earlier, but Félix had been in a state of emotional shock and was unable to feel much of anything about what he’d seen yet. It would likely take Félix years of therapy before he could feel anything about what he’d seen upon finding his mother’s defiled corpse; Ibarra on the other hand, had seen many crime scenes in his day - some even worse. Mara’s death was just a reminder to the detective of the brutal nature of his job, and Finley could sense the exhaustion that stooped the detective’s shoulders over the course of the years he’d been in the service. The images were of thousands of likewise crime scenes, each one worse than the last - but Mara’s ranked amongst the most brutal, the most perplexing, and the most bloody. It struck Fin that the detective was afraid for Mara’s family, that the killer would come after one of them next. Some part of Finley was comforted by the sheer honest humanity of the man seated in front of him, and softened his opinion of the detective significantly.

“I’ve heard a lot of wonderful things about her,” Ibarra said after a moment of silence. “I would have been proud to know her. How long did you live with her?”

“Until I was eighteen,” Finley answered. “RJ left when she was about seventeen, two years prior to that.”

“And how old are you now?”

“Am I being interrogated? I’m twenty-two.”

“And I refuse to answer that,” RJ shot in.

Ibarra cleared his throat again. “I apologize if I’m making you uncomfortable. This isn’t an interrogation. I’m simply trying to get an accurate picture of how exactly you both fit into Mara’s life, and what her life was like.”

Finley felt puzzled. “Are we under investigation? I was under the impression it was someone trying to break in and rob her.”

A cardinal detail about the crime stood out in Ibarra’s mind that changed Finley’s perspective of the entire investigation. “Nothing was stolen from Mara Serrano’s home,” the detective stated. And with that simple statement, it became clear to Finley that someone had murdered Mara with specific deadly intent. There was nothing random about it. The violence of it alone should have been enough of a clue, but for whatever reason it didn’t cement in Finley’s mind until the detective let that detail slip. Ibarra quickly changed the subject, clearly uncomfortable and unwilling to discuss the investigation further. “You said she was your maternal aunt, but she has no living siblings.”

“No, our mother died when I was two,” Finley said.

“Our mother was murdered,” RJ corrected after a long draught of Irish-style coffee. “And the detective here, he thinks they’re connected, doesn’t he?”

This alarmed Ibarra, but to his credit it didn’t appear on his face. Only if you were a mind-reader would you know that he was at all affected by RJ’s assertion; Finley saw another series of bloody and confusing images that flashed by like fireflies, before he heard the distinctive thought: Someone is coming after the women of this family. Finley felt a chill in his spine and glanced over at his sister, who gave him a mysterious look and took another swig of her coffee. Her mind, as always, was an impenetrable black box. “Would you mind telling me about your mother?” Ibarra asked, changing the subject again. “Her name was María, Mara’s younger sister, correct?”

RJ blew a thoughtful raspberry. “I was . . . Oh what was I . . . I wanna say six? Five or six when she died? I don’t remember, man. I don’t wanna remember. All I know is, she was murdered, and they never caught the creeps that did it, just like you’re never going to catch the creeps that did this one. You can look for a connection between the two all you like, but all that rabbit hole’s going to do is give you a headache on the way down.”

Aidan chose that precise moment to rouse himself awake. “Uh . . . Hello?” He mumbled from the bed.

RJ sat on the edge of his bed and grasped his feet on top of the blanket, shaking them with strange ardor. “Good morning sunshine!” She chirped happily. “The detective stopped by to say hello and talk about crimes!”

Aidan stared at her blankly for a few seconds before blurting, “Jesus shitting Christ, why didn’t anyone wake me up?!”

“You looked so cute all sleepin’, we didn’t want to,” she said.

Finley apologized. “We tried to be quiet.”

Aidan grumbled for a bit and searched around the night stand which was cluttered with notepaper and mugs. “Just lemme . . . Aha!” He triumphantly found and donned his glasses and whipped off the covers to go and greet the detective in his pajamas. He stuck out a friendly hand toward Ibarra who shook it gently. “Nice to meet you, officer . . . Uh?”

“Detective Omar Ibarra,” the bald police officer greeted. “A pleasure.”

“I’m Aidan Dearborn. I came for the funeral.”

“Are you family as well?”

“No, Fin and I—he’s my best friend—”

Finley cut over Aidan with a swift explanation, “We’re roommates—” but then felt a little embarrassed. “I mean, yeah, that too.”

“He’s basically family,” RJ summarized for everyone’s benefit.

Ibarra scrawled something in his notepad. “What’s your relationship to Félix and his mother?” He asked of Aidan.

Aidan scratched his head. “None really. I went to Félix’s wedding a while back, with uh. Our other friend,” he said delicately, “and that’s when I met Mara for the first time. No relationship beyond that. Can I get you coffee, detective? There’s complimentary breakfast downstairs, too.”

“No thank you,” Omar Ibarra politely declined. “Honestly, I think I have everything I need, unless there’s anything else you care to share.”

Finley and RJ exchanged a look that spoke volumes silently. Internally, Finley was still reeling from the shock of his mother’s death being potentially connected to Mara’s - the detective seemed certain of this, even if he didn’t verbally express it. Finley knew that if Ibarra had his way, the entire family would have been placed under protective custody until they could prove it was a serial killer, but with the lack of evidence . . . His hands were regretfully tied. Ibarra was full of worry - worry for Angela, Félix’s daughter, worry for Félix’s wife, and worry for RJ - and there was a shade of suspicion too over what RJ had said regarding their mother’s death, which made Finley want to hit her over the head. The last thing they needed was to be investigated by the police while random teleporting guys dropped mysterious portents on them.

“Well, if you can think of any additional details regarding either your mother or your aunt’s deaths, call the station and leave me a message immediately,” Ibarra said with finality, and offered a hand for Finley to shake, and then RJ and Aidan. A line appeared in his brow as he gave them all one final parting glance and wave before departing out the hotel door, and Finley and his sister both exchanged sighs of relief.

Aidan started to pour himself a mug of coffee. “So did we learn anything new this time?” He asked of the air.

“Not a fucking thing,” RJ answered as Finley said simultaneously, “quite a lot, actually.”

“Really?” She perked up and glanced at him furtively. “What’d you pick up from his head?”

“He suspects a connection between mom’s death and Mara’s,” Finley reported. “He’s all but certain they’re connected, something about the way the bodies were arranged. It was definitely a murder, not just someone trying to rob them. Better question: why the hell didn’t you ever tell me before yesterday that Mom was murdered? I went my whole life thinking she’d died in a car accident!”

“Hey, whoa,” Aidan cautioned, “let’s tone down the aggression, alright? I’m sure she had her reasons.”

“Not really,” RJ shrugged. “It was just never really convenient to correct you of that assumption. It’s not like it hurt you to think she’d died in an accident. And it didn’t really come up before now.”

“You and Sal both lied to me,” he accused.

“So did Dad,” she reminded him. “And Dana. And Mara. I mean, maybe this hasn’t occurred to you or whatever, but it’s not exactly the kind of fucking thing you bring up casually in a conversation. You were too young to remember and maybe we just didn’t want to hurt you with the reality of her death. Whereas me and Sal, we both had to live with it.”

“Were you there?” He wondered. “What really happened?”

She glared at him fiercely. “I don’t want to remember.”

“So you were there,” Fin assumed.

Her surface thoughts and expression betrayed nothing beyond boredom with his assumptions. “Drop it, Finny.”

He grunted. “I saw a few images in Ibarra’s head of crime scenes, but nothing distinct. A lot of it was just chaos. He’s worried the women of the family are being targeted, and now so am I.”

“I would be too,” said Aidan around a sip of coffee that he accidentally spilled on his pajamas. “Aw, shit.” He observed the stain passively and shrugged it off. “Ah, fuck it. What makes him think there’s a connection, though? Beyond them being sisters?”

“The gruesomeness of the crime scenes,” Finley explained. “Like I said, a lot of what was in his brain was just sheer exhausted chaos, but he’s all but certain that there’s a direct connection even if he can’t prove it with evidence. I gather mom’s case went cold years ago, and Mara’s will probably go the same way if they can’t catch the sick fuck.”

“They’re not going to,” RJ cautioned.

“What makes you so certain of that?” Aidan asked. “I mean, you speak as if you know for certain.”

She scoffed. “Call it intuition, call it a premonition, sixth sense, whatever shit you use to justify these kinds of coincidences that crop up around me, but they’re not going to catch them,” she said.

Aidan eyed her suspiciously and put down his coffee. “Does this have anything to do with what Ramiel said?” She clammed up and took another swig, this time directly out of her flask. “I’m going to take that as a yes,” Aidan said brightly. “So, to summarize, what we have is a potential serial killer targeting the women of your family and a mysterious teleporting guy telling us that a guy with a demon’s name is responsible. Did I miss anything?”

“Whatever this Ba’el Moloch is,” Finley continued, ticking off on his fingers, “the Prodigal Son, and oh yeah, those people that tried to fucking abduct my sister the day before yesterday. Yeah, that about sums it up!”

“Anything you care to add, sweetie?” Aidan directed to RJ, who frowned and sat on the edge of her bed and stared at the wall stubbornly in silence. He sighed tiredly and rubbed between his brows. “I have a feeling it’s going to be one of those days.”

“What do you mean?” Finley asked.

“You know, the kind of day that can eat shit and die.”

“Welcome to my life,” RJ greeted, and downed the rest of her coffee with a loud burp. “Try not to worry your pretty head about it. I’ll be fine, sunshine. As long as I manage to refill this flask before we hit the airport in the morning.”

“Oh, I’ll worry about it all I damn well please,” Aidan promised cheerfully.

Because their flight didn’t leave until around the morning and RJ refused to talk about the matter of the murders further, Aidan and Finley spent their time during the day in the hotel room knocking out schoolwork while RJ noodled on her old guitar for a few hours. She left her mother’s in the case, untouched. It was pleasant enough background noise to their tasks, and he took comfort in the fact that she had ceased drinking after the events of the stressful morning. His own mind kept recalling the images he’d seen in the Ibarra’s mind, no matter how hard he tried to concentrate on mathematics. Eventually Finley gave up after doing the bare minimum and getting a lower score than usual on his homework, as he was simply unable to focus on line integrals or calculating parabolic arcs with Mara and his mother’s deaths hanging over his thoughts like grim specters.

“Are you alright?” Aidan asked, drawing his attention momentarily.

“I’ll be fine,” Finley answered distractedly and started rifling through the hotel’s room service menu. “Anyone hungry? I’m starved.”

“Oooh, lemme have a look,” Jeri demanded, suddenly looming over his shoulder. He passed the menu over to her after giving it a once-over. Within half an hour they had placed orders and had them delivered up to the room, and at least with food in his belly he was able to think about something other than horrific and bloody death.

“So,” Jeri began around a mouthful of a burger. Finley glanced her direction curiously. “What crawled up your ass and died?” She asked indelicately.

“I would’ve phrased that differently, but I’m curious about that too,” Aidan shot in from the bed where he sat propped up with his laptop on his lap.

Finley didn’t quite know how to explain that what was on his mind wasn’t something he could ever erase. He doubted he’d ever be able to wash those images that he picked up from the detective and Félix. They had been seared permanently, carved like petroglyphs that no amount of conceivable time could erode away. He worried Angie would pick up on them too, and have nightmares for the rest of her life. He was afraid to go to sleep, for fear that they would haunt his dreams. The only real mother he’d ever had had died in pieces, in a pool of blood, with strange sigils carved into her body parts that had been arranged into a disturbing, dismembered display in the kitchen where she’d lovingly made empanadas for her children. Her head had been kept by the feds, because it had been removed and ‘contaminated.’ The notion that his own mother died in similar straits gripped his heart with acute despair; moreover, there was the thought that his sister or brother had been witnesses to it.

“I just can’t erase those images from my head,” he summarized, finally able to put the feeling into words. “Félix found Mara’s body, and Ibarra - the detective was there at the crime scene. He saw everything.”

“Oh,” was all Aidan could say.

RJ stared at him and chewed on her burger. After swallowing, she had the gall to ask, “so what happened? I had a dream about it but I don’t remember it very good. I got the impression it was pretty fucked.”

“Fucked is a word for it. She was dismembered, and they rearranged her limbs and head, and carved symbols into the pieces with a knife. The detective had the full report in his head but it was . . . Scattered. He saw up close images too, some ligature marks, some . . . Some . . . I-it was a struggle.”

“Yep,” RJ agreed with a nonchalant nod, “that’s pretty fucked. Sounds about right.”

“Do you remember any details about Mom? Anything that could help the detective?” Finley found himself asking, even as he regretted the words coming out of his mouth for fear that it would push his sister further into her rotten mood.

She stared at him blankly. “Nothing that would help,” she said.

He gave her a long look before returning to his food without a word. He had lost his appetite, but he knew he needed to eat, so he forced it down.

“There was a lot of blood,” she suddenly uttered quietly, arresting his attention. His eyes met her own, but gathered nothing from them. Not a single image, not a single thought or impulse. The black box.

Aidan cleared his throat, getting their attention. His eyes were only for Jeri. “You mean to say you saw it?”

“. . . I think . . . That I saw the body,” she corrected gently in a tone Finley had never heard from her before. It sounded weak and childish, completely atypical of her. “It was so long ago, dude. I can’t remember clearly. Like I said, it doesn’t matter. Fin, if you want to know more about Mom, you should talk to Sal. He remembers her more than I do.”

He didn’t want to push her in her vulnerable state for fear of what she might do. “Okay,” he said, and let the conversation lapse into silence. She put down the rest of her food and claimed she wasn’t hungry, and went back to her guitar to absently play at it further. He noted that the songs she played had a slower, melancholy feel to them, but it still made for pleasant background noise and it kept her occupied, so he couldn’t complain.

Finley found himself at one point rifling through the photo albums he’d taken from Mara’s house. The urge to cry was gone, replaced by the urge to pick at the emotional wound. Aidan eventually loomed over his shoulder and all but demanded to know what he was doing and rather than bother him it comforted him, to show his best friend all the memories he’d only ever spoken of without any visual reference. After a few minutes, even RJ stopped playing to quietly join them, though she still said not a word and chose to passively observe their trip down memory lane through heavily lidded eyes.

Aidan stopped him when he came across the picture of their mother in the book, with her guitar next to Mara. “So, she was a musician, huh?” He commented with a smile and looked RJ’s way. “Guess that runs in the family.”

“Dad always said I took after her the most,” she reported blithely.

“He talked about her?” Finley wondered.

“I think only to me, but yeah,” she said. She looked down at the picture and traced it almost lovingly with one finger. “He said she was married to her guitar, and not him.”

“Sounds like you,” said Aidan.

She smiled weakly. “I like to think so.”

“Finley, you look a lot like her,” Aidan observed after staring at the picture closely for a few seconds. “Coloring-wise, I mean. Not the eyes. Jeri, not so much. Though you both have her bone structure, if not her nose.”

“I take after Dad more,” said RJ. “So does Sal, although he’s got Mom’s brown eyes. Fin’s always been darker. You could’ve mistaken him and Félix for brothers, really.”

“It’s that spicy Mexicana blood in me,” Finley joked. “It runs hot.”

“Ah yes, your fiery Latin temper,” Aidan laughed.

Eventually he managed to return to his schoolwork, but it took every ounce of focus in his body. By the time dinner time rolled around, Jeri complained loudly about being cooped up that they all voted unanimously to go out to eat somewhere locally.

Within walking distance of where they were staying (within spitting distance of the airport) at the Hyatt, was a Chinese restaurant called the Red Palace. They were served by a smiling girl and all ordered some sake since it had been one of those couple of days, according to Aidan, and they deserved the break. With a ‘kampai’ they all downed their shots and awaited their orders of food eagerly.

Or rather, Aidan awaited his food eagerly while the Ravara siblings sullenly stared into the distance, each tormented by their own thoughts.

“Jeri,” Fin spoke up, drawing her attention away from where it was occupied picking at the hem of her long sleeve.

“Yeah?” It was an answer that curled up at the end questioningly, but nothing about her tone suggested she was willing to answer.

Still, he had to know. It pressed on his mind, the need to know about their mother. It had tied him up in mental knots since the detective’s visit that morning, and after hearing what few spare nuggets of golden intel she felt keen on sharing, he couldn’t suppress the need any longer. The truth was there, somewhere in Jeri’s mind, and she refused to open up to him. He had to push it. The idea that his mother’s killer was still out there and the detective was looking for him was too tantalizing to just ignore in favor of satisfying his sister’s mental peace.

“I want to ask you this just one more time, and feel free to stomp on my face if you don’t want to answer . . . But is there anything at all you remember about Mom that we can tell Ibarra? Any detail at all is better than the sheer lack of details he’s operating on.”

She fixed him with a blank, frightening, and hopeless glare. Her ocean eyes turned into sheets of ice. “I said I didn’t remember anything that would help,” she bit out.

“And then you said you saw ‘a lot of blood,’” he reminded her, “which implies—”

She cut him off. “It implies jack shit!” She hissed, withdrawing from the table and standing up.

“Hey, calm down,” he told her, taken a bit aback.

“Don’t tell me to calm down, I told you to drop it!” She said accusingly.

“I’m just asking!” He defended himself.

“Well, stop fucking asking then!” She hissed.

He wanted to roll his eyes at her, but was afraid that would push her even further over the edge. Still he wasn’t able to stop his mouth from muttering, “Christ, what is your problem today?”

“My problem?!” She scoffed, drawing the attention of a few other families that were seated nearby. They pointedly looked at her, and then down and away. “Where do I even begin—you know what, no,” she stopped herself, and sidled out of the booth. “You, Finley. You are my problem. I’m not doing this. I’m outta here. Fuck this shit!”

Aidan stepped up to the plate. “Jeri, hey wait, come on—” he made to grab at her arm, but she pulled away violently and shoved him from her with such force that he sat back down in his seat.

“Don’t fucking touch me!” She practically shrieked. “Fuck you both!”

“Jeri—” Finley stepped around and made to grab her, put her in a hold, anything that would stop her from running off and potentially getting herself killed by whatever or whoever was out there targeting their family, but she was too fast and jumped back.

“Shut the hell up, Finley!” She seethed. “Leave me alone!”

“Where are you going?!” He shot back. “You can’t just run off on your own right now, we’re—”

“The hell I can’t?! You always treat me like a goddamn child! I’ll see you back at the hotel, assholes. Don’t wait up.” And with that, she stormed off in a huff.

They waited for their food in silence. The server was kind enough to take Jeri’s order back and box it up for them so they could take it to her later. Finley picked at his food, finding that his appetite had been lost.

“Well, that was a disaster,” Aidan finally spoke up. Finley met his hazel eyes next to him and sighed. “I hope she’ll be alright.”

“I don’t know,” Finley said. “Honestly, I’m getting kind of fed up with her bullshit. She’s acting like a temperamental child.”

“And that’s normally your job,” Aidan joked.

“Hey.” He knew Aidan wasn’t being serious, but it stung a little.

“Sorry,” Aidan said without any enthusiasm.

“No, you’re right, it’s fine. I just wish . . . I guess I pushed her too far. I shouldn’t have done that,” Finley realized, tracing back the conversation mentally. He didn’t know what precisely had pushed her to the edge, but he made a mental note to never bring up their mother around her again if that was how she reacted. Clearly, it was too painful a subject to talk about.

“No, you should not have,” Aidan scolded gently, “but what’s done is done. I just hope she’ll make it to the hotel okay and that aren’t any kidnappers milling around.”

“I mean, probably not?” Finley offered with a shrug. “But who really knows.” At that point, he wasn’t worried so much about RJ getting abducted unless she was dumb enough to run into her captor’s arms. Though he still wasn’t sure how the people who had tried to abduct her had found them in the first place, they weren’t immune to his mental abilities; that, and the hotel was right across a decently busy street. There were too many witnesses, and he internally calculated the unlikely odds of them following her all the way to Virginia.

Aidan said in a tone dryer than the Sahara, “there’s a potential serial killer targeting the women of your family and she just stalked off on her own.”

“Yeah, but the hotel is right there. She won’t get far. She’s not stupid.”

“I hope not,” Aidan said dubiously.

Finley was scatterbrained; the reality of the past few days sank in and exhausted him. Too much had happened in such a short span of time that he hadn’t really had time to fully process how he had felt about it. Sitting next to Aidan in that moment, he realized that this was the first time they’d been one-on-one since he’d come back from Salem with his sister in tow. Aidan’s thoughts beckoned on the surface of his mind like a light to a moth, and Finley had to concentrate to fortify his mental walls against a subconscious invasion. He hated violating his friend’s privacy, even if Aidan never seemed to mind it.

They picked at their food almost absently while Finley tried not to worry about his sister, and let his mind wander toward more greener pastures. Aidan’s presence was always a comforting balm, but in that quiet in the restaurant, alone together for the first time after such stressful days, Finley began to recognize that there was something between the two of them that had never been addressed. That warm, complex feeling remained; the need to know itched at his skin.

“. . . Can I ask you something kinda . . . Really personal?” Finley asked tentatively, not really sure if he wanted to know but needing to.

Aidan swallowed a mouthful of curry before answering flippantly, “hey, you know me. No subject is too personal.”

“You say that, but you may reconsider when you hear what I want to say,” Finley began slowly.

“Let’s hear it.”

“It’s about that night.”

Aidan’s brow creased in puzzlement. “What night? . . . Ohhh. That night,” he stated after a few seconds of consideration. Then, he lightly laughed. “I was wondering if you’d ever have the courage to talk about that again. What about it, Finley?”

It was a strange night. He, Teegan, and Aidan had all gotten fairly drunk together when the subject of sexual kinks came up. Two drinks later, and they’d wound up in a messy threesome; it hadn’t ruined any of their friendships, but Finley had always assumed that it was because the subject was too uncomfortable for anyone to broach ever again. Certainly no one had brought it up, though the event had certainly pressed on his mind. He knew he’d been attracted to Aidan since they day they’d met, but didn’t know what to do with the feeling or what it amounted to. He didn’t want it to change their relationship, so he’d kept it to himself. For years, that was how they’d functioned.

After receiving celestial portents, saving his sister from an attempted abduction, and watching his aunt lowered into the ground, Finley started to come around to the idea that he didn’t really have much to lose anymore. With Teegan gone, there was still this lingering question in the air - what are we?

“I guess . . .” Fin began with trepidation, but gained confidence as he went on: “I was wondering where your head was at. I was pretty toasted, but not so much that I wasn’t cognizant of my decisions. I was wondering . . . Do you regret it, or wish it had gone differently?”

Aidan shook his head definitively. “I don’t have any regrets. I try to live my life without any. You?”

“No,” he answered quickly. If there was one thing he was sure of about that night, it’s that he didn’t regret it. Only that he’d never spoken of it until now. “No I . . . I don’t. I don’t know though. I still think about it a lot, and sometimes I wish I didn’t.”

Aidan’s face grew concerned as a crease formed in his brow. He twisted in his seat to face Fin better. “You seem upset by something. You know you can talk to me, right?”

Finley struggled with the words he wanted to say. “It’s just hard to articulate. And it never seemed like a good time to talk about it, but with everything else going on right now in my life, I just wanted to get it all off my chest, because while I’m holding all these feelings in, at times it feels like . . .” And how to define the feeling that weighed on him whenever he and Aidan were alone together? He could sense the love the man held for him and it burned so brightly it almost hurt Finley. Whenever he was alone and thought of Aidan, his thoughts inevitably became wistful, even romantic. Finally, Fin said, “It’s like I can’t breathe when I’m around you. And you’re still my best friend, and I can’t afford to lose that. Especially not right now.”

Quite seriously, Aidan grabbed his hand and his hazel eyes were filled with assurance, “Finley, I promise, whatever you have to say will never get in the way of our friendship. That would be impossible. I care about you too much to allow that.”

“That’s part of what I’m worried about, but it’s nice to hear you say that. And I know you mean it.”

Aidan let his hand drop and adjusted his glasses on his face. “You know you can read me, right? I don’t have anything to hide from you.”

“I know that,” Fin told him. “I know. But you can’t read me, so it’s different. And I hate invading your privacy. Even if I can’t help it sometimes.”

“Okay. Well, take your time. Say what you have to say.”

He took a deep breath, and began slowly. “Alright. Here it goes. I’ve had these . . . Feelings for you. Probably since the day we met, if I’m being totally honest with myself. But first, there was Teegan. And what I felt for her - I’ve never felt that way for another person before. I was closer to her and you than I’ve ever been to anyone. And with the both of you there, I felt like my life was complete for once. I felt whole. Connected. With her gone, half of that connection disappeared and I felt broken again. But you were there to pick me up. To stitch me back together. You, Aidan. You’ve always been there. You’ve never judged me, never punished me, you . . . I love you. I just . . . I wanted you to know, in case something happens. And I cowed out of saying it. I don’t want to live with any regrets either. I don’t regret that night, and you have no idea what a relief it is to hear that you don’t either. I was, uh, a little worried all this time that the two of us pushed you too far. But you never made a fuss, never brought it up, so. Well. I guess I said what I had to say, huh?”

Aidan’s answering smile was slow and warm. “Finley. It’s alright. I never talked about the threesome because it seemed like a one-time thing. You and Tee were a solid unit, and I sometimes felt like a third wheel, but it didn’t bother me. I was content with what I had.” He sighed and turned away for a moment as his eyes grew distant. “To be totally honest, I haven’t gotten out into the dating scene because no other guys really cut it for me. There’s only you.”

A feeling much like an ice cube melting into a tumbler of scotch welled in Finley’s gut. “Oh,” was all he could say.

“Yeah.”

“I . . . didn’t know you felt that way.”

Aidan laughed, and there was a slightly brittle quality to it that hurt Finely a little to hear. “I’ve always kinda felt that way. But I know how you are with empathy, and how naked other people’s thoughts are to you. I didn’t want to push my feelings onto you and make you uncomfortable.”

Fin shook his head. “You never make me uncomfortable. You’re like, the only person I’m completely comfortable around,” he assured Aidan.

“Well, that’s a relief.”

“I guess we needed to have this talk then. To get it all out in the open.”

Aidan nodded. “Yeah. We still cool?”

Finley laughed. “Yes, we’re still cool.”

Aidan sighed with intense relief. “Good. Do you . . . Are we . . . “

“Are we what?” A part of Finley wanted to know the answer to that, too.

Aidan’s brow furrowed again. “Well. I’m normally the emotionally intelligent one between the two of us, but I’m sort of having a hard time defining what we are, anymore. What are we?”

“We’re still best friends,” Fin stated slowly. “And, we love each other. And, we’re kinda gay.”

Aidan laughed brightly. “We’re very gay.”

Fin grinned right back. “Which makes me pretty happy to think about, honestly. So, if you’d like, maybe sometime when my sister isn’t busily going off the deep end and we’re not in some kind of cosmic conundrum, would you let me take you out on an actual date?”

Aidan grabbed his hand and gave it a light squeeze. Once more that warm, scotch-tumbler feeling came through. “I’d like that. Speaking of your sister, we really should try and find her before someone tries to abduct her again.”

Fin dropped Aidan’s hand and sighed depressively. “I’m not sure what to do about her. I want to support her but—”

“Not support her drinking herself to death?” Aidan completed the thought.

He nodded. “You know how much I struggle with sobriety. Alcohol numbs everything for her, and me, but we can’t afford to be numb right now. I’m hoping she has the chance to get her shit together before she gets back together with her band, since that was one of the reasons they broke up in the first place.”

Aidan seemed surprised. “I thought that was just because she went to prison.”

Finley snorted back laughter. “No, that’s not really a deal breaker with rock bands. The actual issue was her excessive drinking. And the drugs. I don’t know all the details, but I imagine it’ll come up when we visit.”

“There’s gotta be a balance somewhere between being there for her and supporting her bad habits. I’m sure you’ll find it. Just don’t push her too hard - that might end up backfiring badly like it did today. Your mother is just one of those subjects you can’t push. By the way, you think I could get Sugiyama to sign my tit when we go?” He added with a chuckle.

“I’ll put in a good word for you. I’ve got connections. And Aidan? Seriously, thank you.”

Another hand-squeeze. “You don’t ever have to thank me, love, because that’s what I’m here for.”

The conversation didn’t erase the hurt of the last few days, but it eased it significantly for the both of them. Aidan and Finley finished their food together and walked back to the hotel, feeling a little lighter in step than they did before. When they entered the hotel room, RJ was already passed out on the hotel couch with her hand clutched around an empty mini-bottle of Smirnoff, which Finley removed carefully with a sigh. He threw her comforter over her, and got ready for the night.