Se connecter**Aiden's POV**I stretched with my eyes still closed, one hand draped over my face while the other swept across the empty space beside me. Cool sheets brushed my skin. Soft morning light filtered through the curtains, painting thin gold stripes across the bed.I finally opened my eyes. I was in Macmillan’s room. The bed was empty, but I could hear low voices drifting up from downstairs, familiar tones mixed with the clink of cutlery and the faint aroma of whatever was being served for breakfast.Jordan must have carried me back here last night after I’d fallen asleep on the couch.Dragging my feet lazily out of bed, I padded to the bathroom. Steam curled around me as I showered, the hot water loosening the last knots in my shoulders. I dressed in something soft and comfortable, then headed downstairs.After my talk with Jordan, I felt lighter. Ready for whatever my boyfriends had to say. Ready even for Macmillan’s father.“Good morning, everyone.” I smiled brightly at them.They were
**Aiden’s POV**I gasped, my chest tight and crushing, the air in my lungs thin and useless. I was soaked in blood, my parents’ blood. They lay dead in front of me, eyes wide and glassy, staring at nothing. The metallic tang of it filled my nose; it was sticky and cooling against my skin, seeping into the fabric of my clothes. I scrambled backward on my hands, palms slipping in the wetness, until my back slammed into the door. Tears burned hot trails down my cheeks. I tried to stand, but my legs refused, trembling and weak. When I looked down, I was still gripping the bat, the same one I’d smashed into my stepfather’s skull. “I didn’t mean to,” I muttered, voice cracking. “I didn’t mean to do it.” I kept repeating it, staring at the bodies. “It wasn’t my fault.” The words tore out of me. “I was only trying to protect myself. He would have killed me. He tried to kill me.” The more I spoke, the harder the tears fell, blurring everything into red and shadow. My eyes flew open,
Aiden's POV They took the handcuffs off and carried me back to the interrogation room, Harlan the investigator was there with me. He stood by the door with his arms crossed, watching the paperwork get signed the way a man watches weather he can't stop."The case has been ruled as self defense, it was signed and documented by the judge," he said, mostly to the room, though his eyes stayed on me. "Judge Alvarez reviewed the file this morning, no charges were filed. You are free to go Aiden."It should have felt like relief. It felt like static, a kind of ringing quiet where relief was supposed to be."That was fast," I said."Faster than I've seen in twenty years on the job." He didn't say it like a compliment. He said it like a man setting something down carefully because he suspected it might be hollow underneath. "For what it's worth, the evidence was strong on its own. You didn't need anyone's help to walk out of here."I didn't answer that, because I didn't know which version of t
Aiden's POV The sleep never came, not really. I lay on the thin mattress bolted to the wall, wrists finally free of the cuffs but still feeling their shape, and watched the small window near the ceiling turn from black to gray to a flat, indifferent white. Someone brought a tray of food I didn't touch. Someone else came to take more photographs, this time of the bruises around my throat, close enough that I could feel their breath. It was almost noon when they moved me to a room with better light and a woman waiting behind a table stacked with folders that weren't Harlan's. "Aiden." She said my name like she'd practiced it. "My name is Renata Cole. I'll be representing you." "I didn't ask for a lawyer." "No," she agreed, sitting down slowly, the way you'd sit near something that might bolt. "But someone retained me on your behalf, and given what I've read in the preliminary report, you're going to want one whether you asked or not." I knew whose money had bought her before she
Aiden's POV The back of the police car smelled like old coffee and disinfectant that couldn’t quite cover the metallic tang still clinging to me. My hands were cuffed in front of me, blood already drying in the creases of my knuckles, under my nails, in the webbing between my fingers. Every time the car hit a bump the cuffs bit deeper but I didn’t flinch. I just stared at the dark smear on the seat in front of me and tried to remember how to breathe without tasting copper.They’d taken the bat. They’d taken the knife. They’d bagged the letter. They’d left my mother’s body floating in the tub like something that didn’t belong to me anymore.At the station they processed me like evidence. They collected my fingerprints, too my photographs and swabs under my nails. Someone cut my blood-soaked clothes off with scissors and handed me a paper jumpsuit that scratched. They left the cuffs on while a nurse cleaned the worst of the blood from my face and arms. She didn't ask me any ques
**Aiden’s POV**My eyes darted around for anything I could use. Under the bed sat an old cardboard box, the one that held the things I’d once wished I could do with my step dad. Inside it was a baseball bat. I stretched for it just as he came down on top of me, trying to force himself on me.I snatched the bat up and swung hard. The wood cracked against his skull with a wet, sickening thud. He collapsed on top of me, palms pressed flat against the place I’d struck. Warm blood rolled down his face in thick, sticky streams and dripped onto my skin. The metallic scent hit me immediately, sharp, coating the back of my throat.I shoved him off and scrambled for the door for the third time, but his bloody hand clamped around the fabric of my joggers. The bat was still in my grip. I swung again. And again. And again. The impacts jarred up my arms. Splinters of wood mixed with the wet slap of blood. Everything I had ever said about wishing my parents would look at me with love in their ey
Jordan's POVI don't know how long I've been sitting here on this toilet seat, holding Aiden's boxer briefs.For a while now I've been concealing my feelings for my roommate. I know I am not his type, I know he won't accept someone like me.So I hid my feelings and suppressed them, dying in silenc
Mysterious Stranger’s POVThe boy was light, carrying him was no sweat. Slender and fragile, just how I like. Once I got him out from under the bar’s neon haze and into the back of the cab. His head lolled against my shoulder the whole ride, breath shallow and uneven, lips parted like he was sti
Aiden’s POVThe city felt like it was pressing in on me tonight, every streetlight too bright, every shadow too deep. My head was a storm, replaying what happened in the bathroom with Jordan like a broken record, the hollow ache in my chest that had been growing for two weeks. I thought I had suc
Aiden's POVI have always hated mirrors, they always told the same story, thin shoulders, a narrow chest and messy red hair that refuses to lie flat no matter how much water I use on it. At twenty one, in a school that I never really belong to, I still look like the type of guy teachers asked to c







