Page 50 of King of Liars

“Date?”

“Can we do that? Even with this stuff with King?”

“Not against the rules,” I noted. “And not something I’d considered before, but I didn’t think I’d ever find anyone who’d excite me as much as you have.”

“That sounds like ayes,” Aiden said.

“It’s a definiteyes.”

We kissed again before he pulled away to say, “What the hell are we doing?”

“Just an extension of the crazy shit we signed up for, I think.”

The moment I spoke the words, his expression shifted from playful to uneasy.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I just… I’ve been thinking a lot about this knights shit.”

I repositioned myself beside him, propping myself up on my elbow. “Wanna talk about it?”

He rolled toward me. “After that other night when I lost it, I just keep thinking…it isn’t right. Maybe not for me, at least. I don’t know that it helps venting all my anger like that. It’s definitely helped me figure out there’s some shit in my brain I don’t know how to deal with, but…”

“Are you having second thoughts about being a knight?” I could hardly process the thought.

He quieted, and I reached out and rested my hand on his hip, stroking his skin with my thumb. “Hey, you can talk to me about this, Aiden. I care about you. I want whatever’s best for you, whether that’s with or without the knights. You got that?”

He couldn’t have known what it meant to me to hear him hurting, in so much pain. In a way, I knew we all needed help.

We were the fucked. The damned.

Part of me wanted Aiden to get out of it. To be free in a way none of us could be.

“If I left,” he said, “would that mean that you and I couldn’t…”

Despite how much I wanted him to be free, I was so fucking selfish. I wanted him to stay, if not for himself, then for me.

“Never mind. Don’t answer that,” he said quickly. “I clearly know the answer from what went down with Corey the other night.”

As I watched his expression, his gaze shifting about, I could tell he was struggling, fighting.

I didn’t want to lose him. I needed him. Not in the same way I needed King, but still, the thought of having him out of my life…that was fucking terrifying.

But as much as I wanted to cling to him and never let him go, a greater part of me wished he would just run, take off and never look back. His life would be better off without us…without me.

I leaned in and kissed him. “We don’t have to figure it out tonight. Just get inside me. We have tonight.”

We fucked again, and once we finished up, I grabbed my journal from the nightstand and jotted some things down.

“You’ve been doing that a lot more recently,” Aiden noted as he caught up on some class reading on his e-reader.

“What? Journaling?”

“Unless that really is your Biochem notebook,” he joked.

“Eh, I’m not that great about keeping up with it, but I don’t know… I tend to want to write about the good things in my life, the things worth a damn, and I suppose you could say I’m finding more good things right now.”

His cheeks flushed.