Sixteen
First Steps
Teresa shared the news with Gage and the others before we left the observation tower, and I couldn’t tell if the joy in his voice was because of the pardons, or because we’d all be going home tomorrow. He missed her, she missed him, and it was much easier keeping everyone safe if we were in one place, rather than scattered across the country.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about going home. I tried to suss it out the entire drive back to Simon’s house, and I still hadn’t reached a conclusion when we arrived. We’d all eaten at the tower commissary, but Luisa still had a spread of homemade cookies and fresh fruit waiting for us.
“To celebrate your victory,” she said with a cheerful smile.
It didn’t feel like a victory yet. We had a long way to go before any pardons were actually signed, and that knowledge tempered our celebration. Marco seemed less dour than usual, which was a nice change. He even entertained Caleb for a while by shifting into his panther form and letting the little boy ride him like a pony. I took a picture and emailed it to Renee. We chatted and played cards and did not turn on the news until after Caleb was put to bed.
Nothing about the prison guard’s arrest had been leaked to the media, so the bulk of the evening stories rehashed the same information. More public opinion polls that showed an interesting divide on how the “Banes” should be handled—while almost half said to just keep them locked up, and 20 percent were undecided, a small percentage actually supported conditional releases. Teresa still hadn’t made a public statement; she planned on doing it tomorrow, after we arrived home.
The most surprising silence was also coming from Governor Winstead’s campaign. His press secretary was keeping a tight “no comment” on everything related to the copter crash and Humankind, probably until he got a better read on the public pulse. Everyone knew he was anti-Meta, but he wasn’t stupid enough to come out in favor of Humankind if the majority of Americans denounced them as a hate group.
Aaron had excused himself a while ago to call Noah—almost an hour ago, actually. Curious, I wandered across the hall to the other apartment, only to find it silent and empty. His phone was on his air mattress.
Fresh air tickled the back of my neck and I pulled it around me. It smelled like tar and summer humidity. A door or window was open somewhere. I followed the current upstairs, past the third floor, to narrow stairs leading to an ajar roof access door. The roof was flat and covered in tarpaper, and someone had put a few pieces of cheap lawn furniture in one corner.
Aaron was sitting on the roof’s ledge, legs dangling over the side, his back to me. The fact that we were three stories up made me a little nervous about his position facing the street, but his Recombinant power would probably help him survive an accidental tumble. He sat hunched over, as if protecting himself from a chilly breeze, even though the air was warm and still.
“You don’t have to lurk, Ethan,” he said without looking.
“Wasn’t sure if I was welcome, or if this was a private party.”
“It’s invitation only. Consider yourself invited.”
The ledge was roughly at waist height, so instead of sitting, I leaned forward on my elbows and looked down at the street. We weren’t the tallest building on the block, but we had a decent view of town, which was dark. And quiet. Except for the lights shining from the windows below us, we could have been the only two people for miles. For some reason, that thought made my pulse jump and my palms sweat.
“I guess the trip is over,” he said. “Homeward bound.”
“It was only supposed to be a few days. They were definitely not the days I was expecting, either.”
“Didn’t anticipate getting blown up again?”
“Among other things.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw him look down at me, and I resisted the urge to look up. I kept my gaze locked on the broken windows of the house across the street.
“You seem different today,” he said.
“Must be the bruises. They’re just not as fashionable as they used to be.”
He made an exasperated noise. “Why do you do that?”
“Make jokes? Deflect with sarcasm?” I stood up straight and angled to face him. We were almost at eye level. “It’s who I am, Aaron.”
“Or who you let yourself be.”
“And you’re the expert on self-identity? The guy with multiple personalities in his head?”
He spun in the other direction and jumped off the ledge to stand facing me. “I don’t know how else to explain this to you, Ethan. I’m not multiple anything. I’m me. Just me, the guy you’ve spent the last few days working with, and who I plan to be from now on. Accept it, or stay the hell away from me.”
I gaped at him, a little dumbfounded by the tirade and the thick layer of frustration in his voice. Pissing him off had not been my goal. “I’m sorry. Sometimes I just . . . still have trouble with what you did to get . . . where you are.”
“You’ve managed to forgive the Meta prisoners for their past crimes, so why can’t you do the same for me? I just want a chance.”
“To do what?”
“Have a life. I know what’s in my head, I don’t need you to remind me of it every time you look at me, like I’m some kind of stain on your shoe.”
“I do not—” I stopped denying it as the truth hit home. I had done it, many times in the past, especially during those first few weeks. Until we came to Manhattan, I had been unable to fathom the idea of forgiving him for the lives he’d destroyed.
Until I’d looked my mother’s killer in the face and seen not a monster, but a Metahuman man with a past, trying to make the best of where his life’s choices had led him. Aaron’s situation was completely different—and yet not at all. Why was I still being so hard on him?
“I’m sorry,” I said. He quirked an eyebrow in a disbelieving (and kind of cute) way. “I’m really sorry for treating you that way. This entire trip has messed with my head, but in a good way. I think.”
“You think?”
Aaron shifted a hair’s breadth closer, and holy cow, I could smell him. I swirled the air a little, ruffling the tips of his spiky blond hair, drawing that spicy scent closer. Creepy, maybe, especially when I still hadn’t told him the whole truth.
“No, I know,” I said. “There’s something else I haven’t told anyone. The main reason I volunteered to come on this trip.”
His eyebrows furrowed. “I thought you wanted to confront Freddy McTaggert?”
“I did, but not just because he killed my mother.” I took a deep, bracing breath. “McTaggert’s also my biological father.”
Aaron searched my face, his eyes shifting so fast they practically vibrated in his head. Probably looking for the joke, but I wasn’t kidding. “You’re serious,” he finally said.
“Yeah.”
“That’s . . .”
“Crazy?”
“Kind of.”
“Welcome to my world.” I relaxed a bit now that the secret was out. Another two-ton gorilla was off my chest, letting me breathe a little bit easier. “My mom told me right before she died. I knew Jinx had attacked her, that he was the reason she was dying. I guess she wanted me to know so I didn’t go after him.”
“And you didn’t.”
“I never got the chance. The War was at its peak, and then everything really went to hell those last few months. Rangers were dying left and right, and we were going into the field younger and younger. By that time everyone had lost someone, and then our powers were gone. I didn’t give revenge much thought at all until our powers came back in January.
“But even then, Jinx was still in prison. He couldn’t hurt anyone else. And then Teresa started talking about working with the warden and getting them released. I probably don’t have to tell you I actively hated her plan.”
Aaron’s lips twitched. “I could tell.”
“I couldn’t stand the idea of any of them being set free after what they did, but especially Jinx. Even knowing Simon and hearing the stories about the War . . . I kept telling myself it wasn’t fair that they got to be free while our parents and siblings were still dead. And I was scared of him.”
Aaron frowned and tilted his head, curious.
“Not scared that he’d come after me,” I continued. “Scared he would say something to someone. That if we met, he’d somehow know he was my father, and he’d tell people. I didn’t want my friends to know.”
“You’re ashamed of having a villain for a father,” Aaron said.
How did he seem to know just where my train of thought was going? I didn’t think I was that transparent—or maybe he was just that smart. “Not ashamed, exactly. Terrified, mostly. You have to understand, Aaron, growing up for us, as depowered Metas, was absolute hell. The country was a mess and everyone blamed Metas for it, whether we were Rangers or Banes. My foster family never hit me, but they were emotionally abusive. They never let me forget that I wasn’t worth the food they fed me.”
Getting those words out to Teresa last night had been excruciating. They tumbled right out of my mouth in front of Aaron. He didn’t comment or offer condolences for a sucky adolescence. Just listened with an intensity that surprised me—and made me want to keep talking.
“I know it wasn’t as hard for me as Renee and Marco,” I said. “I didn’t have blue skin or fur. I blended in and could have faked a normal life, maybe forgotten some parts of my past. My foster parents just wouldn’t let me.”
“You may not have physically obvious powers,” Aaron said, his voice carrying a surprisingly sharp edge, “but your pain wasn’t less than theirs. You all suffered.”
I angled away from him, toward the building ledge, feeling oddly exposed by the turn in conversation. I picked at a loose piece of grout with my thumb. “I learned to keep everything inside. Put that next to sarcasm as defense mechanism number two. My foster parents used my past to hurt me at every opportunity, which taught me that any secret was ammunition. Even after I grew up and got out, I didn’t talk. Still don’t, not even to my friends now. Teresa knows some things about my past. Dahlia has most of the details now.”
Aaron seemed to puzzle through the mess of information I’d thrown at him in the last five minutes. “So Teresa, Dahlia, neither of them knows that McTaggert is your father?”
“Dahlia does. Teresa knows he killed my mother and that’s it. So far, you’re the only other person I’ve told that he’s my father.”
“Why?”
“Why haven’t I told anyone else?”
“Why are you telling me and not one of your friends? Why not Teresa?” He seemed genuinely perplexed.
“Because I want to tell you.” Tired of the sideways conversation, I angled back toward him. The air between us was charged with something—tension, maybe. “I can’t change who my father is, Aaron, but I can change how I feel about it. I don’t have to see him as a weakness anymore, or to see myself as weak because of him. He doesn’t deserve to have that kind of power over my life.”
“You don’t want to hide who you are anymore.”
“Exactly. My foster parents took everything about me that made me different and twisted it into a weakness. And that made me think I was weak for being who I was.”
“Meta.”
“Yeah, that.” I took a flying leap off that metaphorical cliff, and for the first time, didn’t care what I found at the bottom. “And being gay.”
Aaron went perfectly still for the space of three heartbeats (yes, I counted, but my heart was kind of racing, so those beats went really fast). Then he looked at me like a stranger might, taking in the details when you see someone for the first time and want to make sure you remember everything later. He didn’t say anything as he worked something out in his mind. His expression cleared and his eyes brightened. He smiled, and my heart kicked a little harder.
“Ten years is a long time to finally get my head on straight about myself,” I said, “but my foster parents were wrong. About a lot of things. I’m just glad I finally figured that out.”
“And that you got your head on straight?” he asked with a wry twist of his lips.
I rolled my eyes, but smiled at the unintentional pun. “You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I do. Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Trusting me enough to tell me your truth. It can’t be easy when you’ve spent your whole life hiding it.”
“Honestly? Making the decision to talk about all of this wasn’t easy. Actually doing it was easy, and now I feel . . . lighter. I mean, all of the external bullshit is still there, but my internal bullshit has left the building. I’m not ashamed or scared anymore—of any of it.”
Aaron’s smile got a little wider. “So you’re ready to be an out and proud gay superhero?”
I laughed. “Despite my grandiose storytelling abilities when small children are present, I’m not really a hero. Not like Teresa and Gage and the others.” He opened his mouth to reply, so I plowed on ahead. “I don’t see myself as heroic because I’ve never let anyone see me. The real me was always too afraid to show himself.”
“You wore a mask even when you were out of costume.”
“Exactly.”
“Now you have something to prove to yourself?”
“Yeah. And I will, starting with the Warren.”
“How’s that?”
“Five days ago, all I wanted was to leave every Meta on that island right where they are, bagged, tagged, and under armed guard. Now I want them free. I want their kids to have a safe place to live where regular people won’t taunt them or bully them. I want the Metas in hiding to have a haven, where they can be among friends.”
His smile melted into something more thoughtful. “You want to stay in New York?”
“No, I do want to go home tomorrow, but I’m coming back. If McTaggert allows it, I want to build a relationship with Andrew. I’ve never had a brother before.”
Aaron’s eyes flashed with pain. “Being a big brother isn’t easy, especially when you fail them.”
Without thinking, I touched his left arm at the shoulder and gave it a firm squeeze. He met my gaze and didn’t pull away. “You did not fail Jimmy,” I said.
“I should have done more to protect him from Deuce.”
“Half of you was tied to a pole and the other half was unconscious on the floor. You, Noah, and Dahlia did everything you could to save him.”
He shrugged off my hand, then turned to look out over the street. “Just . . . take care of Andrew, okay?”
I didn’t know what else to say. Aaron was determined to blame himself for Jimmy’s death, despite the fact that a long parade of events and circumstances had led to the tragedy. I understood guilt. I carried a lot of my own guilt around for the people I’d failed to save—my mother, Angela, Janel, William—and people I’d let get hurt, like Renee.
Maybe I couldn’t convince myself to let go of that guilt, but I’d be damned if I’d allow someone I cared about to wallow in his own pool of it. “Deuce killed Jimmy,” I said.
Even in profile his face changed, going instantly dark and angry. Weeks ago, Dahlia had commented on the flashes of anger she’d seen in King before he joined with Aaron permanently. The way he’d lash out when his loved ones were threatened. That night on the roof, I saw it, too.
“Deuce killed Jimmy,” I said again. “Not you.”
His eyes glimmered, shifting from green to brown to black in a kaleidoscope of colors. A muscle in his jaw twitched, and I swore I heard his teeth grinding.
Deciding that tact and self-preservation could go f*ck themselves, I grabbed him by both shoulders and turned him to face me. “You did not kill your brother.”
“F*ck you, Ethan.” He shoved against my chest harder than I expected, which did two things at once. First, the push made me let go of his shoulders and stumble backward. Second, the blow itself landed right on my CPR-induced bruise, which sent a stunning bolt of pain through my chest. Both things combined to make me lose my balance and fall over on my ass.
The jarring thud woke up every latent ache and pain from yesterday’s explosion, and my vision swam in murky colors. Disorientation shoved my protective instincts into high gear, and I drew a rush of air around me like a shield while I blinked the world back into focus. Dirt and grit swirled in the air cyclone, creating a barrier between me and Aaron.
He’d sat down with his back to the ledge, knees up, fingers tangled in his hair. Not that I’d expected to find him hovering over me, ready to fight, but the retreat confused me. I released the air and a cloud of dirt settled on the roof in a gray ring. Neither of us moved.
“You didn’t kill Jimmy,” I said again, softly this time.
His fingers tightened and I half expected him to rip huge chunks of hair out of his scalp. I should have left it alone, but I wasn’t the only one on that roof who needed to get his head straight about a few things. And now that my eye was on the target, I wasn’t letting this go.
“I could name any of fifty things that somebody could have done differently during that investigation, and maybe Jimmy would have survived. Maybe you would have died. Or Noah or Dr. Kinsey or Teresa. Maybe me.” His shoulders tensed—good, he was listening. “But I don’t have the power of time travel, and neither do you. All the what-ifs in the world won’t change what happened, or that you need to live with it and stop drowning in guilt.”
“Don’t you think I want to?” Aaron said. He looked up, cheeks flushed, his face a mask of furious misery. “Jimmy’s death hurts so bad, physically hurts. King lost Joker. Aaron lost Jimmy. However you look at it, a third of me is gone.”
“And a third of you is still left. Noah’s alive.”
“And he’s got a permanent guest in his body. He changed so much, too, when Jimmy died, and not just because of Dahlia.”
“Grief changes people.”
“I don’t want this. I made a conscious choice to become Aaron Scott, but sometimes I hate that choice because of all the damage it’s done. I actually considered shedding Aaron completely and leaving. Getting rid of his emotions and pain and attachments, so I don’t have to deal with them anymore.”
The grief in his voice made my heart ache, as did the admission of wanting to change his identity to stop the pain. Maybe our situations were completely different, but we were both dealing with the same basic issues. He was just much better at hiding his.
I scooted across the dirty roof to sit next to him, not quite close enough to touch. “You don’t really want to do that,” I said.
“Sometimes I do. I can’t wear this face in public. I can’t be myself because I don’t really know who I am. The Changeling doesn’t understand emotions like grief and lust, and Aaron understands them too well. I never imagined integrating would be this hard.”
“Because you thought you’d have both of your brothers to rely on and help you through it.”
He turned his head to look at me, his eyes so vividly green they didn’t look real. “Yeah.”
“But Noah’s got his head full of Dahlia right now.”
“Right.”
“And everyone else at Hill House, including me, treated you like an unwanted houseguest we had to tolerate, rather than a friend who deserved our help.”
“I understood it, though. In your eyes, I’d killed four people, and nearly got half your friends killed, too. Hell, I’m the one who shot Teresa.”
“Because Queen and Deuce were blackmailing you.” Blackmailing him with himself—and if I spent too much time thinking about the duality of the whole situation, I was going to break my brain. “Look, you told me once that this is who you are, and this is the last identity that you’re ever going to take. Was that bullshit?”
He blinked slowly and some of his intense anger seemed to dissipate. “No, it wasn’t. I’d never do that to Noah.” His lips twitched. “And I know if I did, Jimmy would be pissed.”
“Sounds like the perfect reason to stick around, then.”
“Unless a better one comes along.” The tentative question in his eyes sent my pulse into overdrive.
I swallowed. “Do you have something in mind?”
“One thing has recently crossed my mind.” He leaned closer. “If you’re interested.”
Oh, I was interested all right. If I was honest with myself, I’d been interested for days, even before I knew there was a chance.
This is a really bad—oh, f*ck it.
I don’t remember if he kissed me, or if I kissed him, or if it even matters who did what first, because hot damn, it was a fantastic kiss. A crap ton of pent-up emotions on both sides went into it, along with generous amounts of lips and tongue and hands. I never put my time or energy into kissing before—getting off fast and furious had always been my goal. But this was different. No rush. No fear of being found out. Just touch and smell and taste, and holy hell, he tasted good—like nothing I could describe past “wow” but wanted more of, and I took everything he gave me.
I was half hard by the time we paused for air. My hands were clasped behind his neck, and his were bunching my T-shirt around my shoulders like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to pull me closer or push me away. Looking at him now, breathing hard and lips wet, I acknowledged the attraction that had been nudging at me for days, trying to make me pay attention. Strange chemistry, to be sure, but I so did not care. I wanted—
“This isn’t right,” Aaron said.
“Huh?” I let go, stunned by the abrupt comment.
He held tighter to my shirt when I tried to pull away. “Hey, no, that’s not what I meant. We’re on a roof, Ethan.”
Okay, not a brush-off. “Our nearest neighbors are probably stray cats, and I doubt they’re sitting in the apartments next door with binoculars hoping to catch an eyeful.”
Aaron chuckled, his breath warm on my face. “Thanks for that visual.”
“If semipublic roofs aren’t your thing, I could fly us somewhere.” Hell, I’d fly us all the way to Pennsylvania if it meant he’d keep kissing me like that. Aaron was different than anyone I’d ever been with—being with him felt real. Passionate. Right.
Cheesy, I know, but there it is.
He considered my offer a moment. Then his eyes narrowed and his lips twisted into a cocky grin—challenge accepted.
I sent a quick text to Teresa, telling her we were stepping out, we’d be safe, and not to wait up. Then I hauled Aaron close with my arm around his waist—and yeah, that felt good—and lifted us up on a heavy gust of air. We flew west, away from Manhattan and the prison observation tower. Toward the Hackensack River. Below us, the occasional home was lit, but in this mostly abandoned section of New Jersey, we had the night sky to ourselves.
I had no destination in mind and found myself flying aimlessly. Aaron didn’t complain about our travel time. He just held on and took in the sights. A strip of green came into view below, with a nice pond in the center and several stone buildings. I took us in low, unsure of the location. Half a sign remained, with the beginning of a word: Weequ. I didn’t know enough about New Jersey geography to guess at the rest of the name.
We landed at the shore of the tree-lined lake. The water smelled tepid without being stagnant, and the sharper scents of grass and leaves and dirt drove away the harsher odors of gasoline and oil we’d left behind on Communipaw Avenue. A little slice of nature in the middle of a battered urban area.
Aaron walked down to the edge of the water and peered out over its smooth surface. He squatted down and scooped up a handful. Sniffed it. I was about to ask what he was doing when he stood back up. He tossed me a grin that was very much a challenge.
“How do you feel about skinny-dipping?” he asked.
Despite a bruise on my chest the size of a dinner plate and scars on my feet that would make small children cry, I felt really damn good about skinny-dipping. I answered him by tugging my shirt over my head and off. Aaron’s grin widened, and his shirt followed mine. Thirty seconds later, we were both naked and diving into the water.
The pond was warm, it smelled a little funky, and the bottom had a slimy, algae-like texture—but it didn’t matter. We swam and splashed and wrestled like kids, free for a little while from the horrors of our lives, and from all the problems waiting for us when we woke up tomorrow morning. Tonight, none of it mattered. The only thing that mattered was finding a little peace in our otherwise chaotic lives.
And in each other.