It was Elijah who led them through the storm with Chase’s limited mumbled directions toward a campground he thought was a couple of miles away. They got turned around twice, but after the initial exchange of information, Elijah didn’t ask again. He forged ahead through the trees as the snow went from steady flurries to a near blinding whiteout.
Chase distantly thought that if Nate or Holden were here, they’d find a way to the camp using their empath powers. Latch on to a memory from the summer camp by the now-frozen river, follow some strong impression left by the children who visited every year, and go in a direct path. But all Chase had was his memory, cognitive abilities that had grown quiet in his brain, and telekinesis that apparently sparked at random and killed people.
He stopped walking and stared down at the snow. It stretched out white and pure for miles around, untouched until he treaded through it with his stumbling, dragging footsteps. There had to be a metaphor there, something that would key into him being a fucking murderer, but he couldn’t think of it. His mind was blank of everything but flames and smoke, and that last moment when he’d looked at Beck.
“Burn it all down.”
How the fuck was it possible he felt so much guilt for snuffing out someone who’d killed his brother? And someone else who’d intended to kill him? But it hadn’t just been them. It’d been the drivers as well. They’d died just for being there.
“Chase!”
He looked up blearily to find Elijah standing right in front of him. His face was bright red, hair soaked as his hood was swept off over and over by the howling wind. It created tunnels of snow and blasting frigid air. Chase was half convinced they’d walk until they became delirious from hypothermia and died out here.
“Are you okay?”
Chase tried to say something reassuringly flippant, something Chase-like, but no words came to mind. He could only blink away the snow as the flakes collecting on his clothing seeped in to freeze him even deeper to the bone.
Elijah reached up to put one gloved hand on his face. “We’ll be there soon, Chase.”
“Okay.”
It came out in such a weak croak that Normal Chase would have hated the sign of distress. But Normal Chase had been left behind with the wreckage, and this version of himself was slowly letting the spiderweb cracks spread until he felt like crumbling.
They continued walking with Elijah gripping his hand. He clung to it like Elijah was his lifeline. It helped him get through the rest of the trek. Eventually, when he felt close to keeling over, they spotted the welcome sign for a lake summer camp that butted up against the Hudson River. It was majestic even in the snow, with the wooden cabins crusted with thick layers of fluffy whiteness and icicles hanging from the awnings of the welcome center.
In the middle of what had seemed like a vast desolate wilderness, it was a haven for him to curl up and process everything. And Elijah had brought him there while his own brain had shut down.
“Finally,” Elijah huffed. “Let’s go.”
Chase nodded and followed as Elijah picked his way around the welcome center and toward the cabins. He seemed to know exactly what he was looking for, and made a relieved sound once they approached sets of smaller cabins set apart from the rows meant for campers.
“I bet these are for staff,” he said, stopping in front of one of them.
“Okay?”
Elijah shook his head. “Never mind. Can you break the lock or something? I’d pick it, but my hands are frozen, and I have nothing to use.”
The request drew Chase a little out of his fog. “Break it? How the hell would I do that?”
Elijah huddled under the awning of the door, blinking up at him. His face was bright red from the lashing wind and snow, eyelashes wet clumps around his expressive eyes. “You know,” he said softly. “Use your telekinesis.”
“Elijah, you know I can’t fucking control—”
“I know you always said that, but . . .” Elijah shuddered, teeth chattering. “But you used it back on the road to protect us. So maybe you can use it now to keep us from freezing to death?”
The question struck something inside of Chase. The part of him that had been screaming that he was a killer and a freak just like everyone had always said. The part that was scared of a gift he couldn’t control but that was powerful enough to snuff out five lives in an explosion of gasoline and fire. The question made him wonder whether he could make the talent work for a good reason. A nonviolent reason.
Licking his cracked, burning lips, Chase faced the door and put his hand on the knob. If Six or Trent were here, he bet they’d have enough physical strength to break the bitch down. But he didn’t have that, especially not after months of being on the Farm. He only had his mind, and his fierce desire to protect Elijah.
Once again, that terrifying pressure built in his head. It felt like he, and the rest of the world, would fly apart beyond his control, except this time the pressure concentrated. It peaked with an audible cracking sound coming from the door, which proceeded to drop down off one hinge, then the other.
Chase stepped away, panting.
“Good enough,” Elijah breathed. He briefly looked up at Chase with absolute wonder before sliding forward to shift the door partially out of the way.
They stepped inside the cabin, and even with it dark and chilly, it was a sanctuary from the storm. Elijah immediately went to shove the door into the hinges again, struggling to sit it just right. It was only when he cast an exasperated look over his shoulder did Chase snap out of his daze and assist. He helped put the door to rights, then shoved over a chest of drawers to sit in front of it until he could find some tools. Assuming he hadn’t destroyed the hinges.
“What now?”
Elijah looked at him, surprised. “We build a fire if they have supplies, get these wet clothes off, and wait out the storm.”
Chase nodded woodenly. Again, Elijah seemed to be on the verge of saying something but turned away. He raided the cabin as Chase looked on, foraging for precut wood and instead finding a small portable heater. They plugged it in, spread out their clothes nearby, and huddled in the bed under layers of scratchy blankets Elijah had found in a cabinet.
The blankets smelled clean, and the cabin as a whole was very cozy and tidy. There was electricity and running water, a fact that surprised Chase, and he wondered distantly if people used the cabins for activities during the winter. If so, and if anyone came up on them, he was sure his fucking random power would blow them to bits. Since that was his new thing.
“Chase, you didn’t do anything wrong.”
Chase started, caught off guard by the declaration. He looked up from his examination of the quilt to meet Elijah’s gaze.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Elijah found his hand under the quilts and squeezed. “I know you feel guilty. Or scared.”
“What, are you joining the empath club?”
“No. I can see it in your face. You shut down as soon as you realized there was nobody climbing out of that fire, and you haven’t really . . . come back since then.” Elijah laughed softly. “You’re usually so bossy and impatient, and you followed after me like a lost little boy.”
Chase glared at him. “So? You seemed to be Wilderness Master all of a sudden.”
“Did you forget I didn’t grow up in the city?” Elijah nudged him again. “My parents used to send me to sleepaway camps when I was little. Shockingly, I loved it back then. Liked being away from everyone and in the peace and quiet where nothing triggered . . . visions. Where no one looked at me like I was weird if I spaced out. Just me and the trees, and a hundred other boys.”
Chase snorted. Leave it to Elijah to help him find a smile at the bottom of his pit of despair. “I knew that was coming.”
“You ought to,” Elijah said with a sniff. He lifted his chin haughtily, then relaxed against the pillow again. “I’m serious though, Chase. They were going to take us out into the woods and kill us. Or kill you, and Will would have—” Elijah grimaced. “I don’t want to think about what Will would have done. He acted like I wasn’t a real person. It makes me . . . really afraid for the other people back at the Farm.”
“But Will is gone,” Chase said. “He can’t hurt them.”
“Maybe not, but do you think he’s the only guard or staff member like that?” Elijah shook his head. “The power dynamics there are awful. People like me, and the psys they have for breeding, are like . . . helpless. Well, they thought I was helpless. Will wasn’t the only person who let his station turn him into an abusive monster. Even Kyra gave me the creeps. She may not have been like her brother, but there was something off there.”
“Something off like what?” Chase pressed. “How?”
“I just . . .” Elijah squeezed his hand again. “I overheard her with one of the counselors once, and it made my skin crawl. She seemed to be the type of person to play people against each other to make them more loyal to her, and then led them on with this weirdly . . . fake emotional bond? Even I could see through it, but the counselor was blinded. I could tell by watching that one conversation. And now that she and Will are gone, there will just be more like them. How could there not be in a community that thrives on empowering a select few while keeping everyone else as subservient pieces to be moved around at will?”
It was a lot to digest, but it didn’t ease Chase’s doubt. Not really. Even if the twins were monsters, even if Beck was, him snuffing out their lives didn’t feel righteous. He felt like he’d become . . . like them. Just another monster using his gifts to get what he wanted no matter how it happened.
The only thing that felt right about any of it was that he’d protected Elijah. If he thought back to the first time he’d used his telekinesis in the recent past, during that pulling session with Jasper, he’d destroyed the cuffs because Richard had suggested Jasper use Elijah against Chase. After all this time, did his telekinesis only activate if Elijah was threatened? It seemed to all go back to him.
Elijah watched him carefully and lifted a hand to his cheek. The tips of his fingers grazed Chase’s hair, longer than he’d worn it in years, before it turned into a slow caress. Elijah’s touch was gentle, but the hazardously intense affection building inside Chase made it dangerous. Everything about Elijah was dangerous. And even now, after everything that had happened in the last few hours and with their future so uncertain, Chase couldn’t get over how badly he wanted him.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Elijah searched his face, gaze training on his lips before rising again. “Sometimes I can read you so well, and other times I don’t know what to think.”
Chase tried to speak, but no sound came out. He didn’t know if his vocal chords were failing or if there was simply nothing good enough to say. No words powerful enough to explain just how much Elijah had come to mean to him. How his mere existence was enough to trigger a psychic power so dangerous it killed anyone who threatened him.
“I . . .”
Elijah’s breath hitched. “What, Chase? Please tell me.”
“I just . . .” Chase squeezed his eyes shut, searching for the words in his chaotic, fucked-up brain. “Fuck, I don’t know. I can’t say it.”
Elijah pressed against him, their naked flesh aligning beneath the layers of scratchy summer camp blankets. Relics of innocence draping over bodies that were already hardening with arousal, because even explosions and death couldn’t turn them off each other. He would always want Elijah, and . . . and Elijah . . .
A memory came to Chase unbidden.
Him kissing down the side of Elijah’s neck in the office at Evo, asking against all that damp, heated flesh what he was doing for his birthday, and Elijah thrumming against him like a newly strung guitar. The way Elijah had lit up at Chase caring about celebrating, and the way he’d turned away as soon as Holden had barged into the door with a gift in hand. He’d come bearing an expensive watch when all Chase had offered was a kiss.
“Chase,” Elijah pleaded. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
Chase squeezed his eyes shut, swallowed thickly, and forced that memory away. Why was he so fucked up? Why couldn’t he let it go? So many questions and so few answers. Absolutely zero ability to not feel inadequate at anything but giving Elijah every inch of his dick.
“I don’t want to think,” he said, voice scraping out low. “I just want to fuck you until my mind is blank.”
The weight of Elijah’s disappointment could be felt in his silence, but Chase couldn’t bring himself to say anything more than what he’d said. He already felt flayed open and raw, every nerve exposed and primed for damage.
“Never mind,” Chase muttered, rolling away. “I know you’re tired.”
He stared at the windows, frosted over with snow and ice, and hated himself for being so needy and emotional. He almost wished Elijah would just go to sleep, but that faded as soon as Elijah touched his shoulder.
“Does you rolling over mean I get to fuck you?”
Chase choked out a laugh. How could he love someone this much and be so terrified of them at the same time? “I didn’t think you wanted to fuck at all.”
“Well, I don’t want to think either. And isn’t this what they do in movies?” Elijah kissed lower, his legs sliding against the sheet. “Fuck to stay warm?”
“I wouldn’t know. I don’t like movies.”
“Oh, right.” Elijah trailed wet kisses over to the middle of Chase’s back before licking down his spine. “You don’t see the point of watching fake people do fake things when our own lives are weird enough to be fictional.”
“Heh. Yeah.” Chase bit his lower lip and balled his hands into fists. “Us screwing each other after killing people is the most fictional thing to happen yet.”
Elijah paused mid-suck at the small of Chase’s back, and shifted up to the head of the bed again. He yanked Chase around, once again showing surprising strength in his soft hands, and narrowed his eyes.
“You protected us. You saved me. And if you want me to be perfectly honest?” Elijah’s nostrils flared as he pressed closer. His dick swelled against the side of Chase’s thigh. Maybe he wasn’t as disinterested as Chase had assumed. “When your eyes got that glow, like molten silver, and all that power exploded out of you . . . You looked terrifying and deadly but also so ridiculously sexy.”
Chase could think of nothing to say in response to that, so he stared incredulously.
“I know I’m sick,” Elijah said, still peering at Chase with darkening, dilated eyes. “And I know it’s the last thing you want to hear. But maybe my sick Chase fetish is exactly what you need to hear right now. You’re convinced that your power makes you a murderer or a freak, but the first thing that went through my mind was how safe I felt with you standing in front of me. And how much that made me want you.”
Air left Chase’s lungs in a great gust. He closed his eyes and felt his heart race to a gallop when Elijah brushed their lips together. Elijah’s declaration probably would sound twisted to anyone else. A normal person would be horrified that he was turned on by his lover having the ability to annihilate someone with a single thought, but . . . they weren’t normal people. They were psychics.
“Is this a weird time to tell you that I fucking love you?” Chase rasped against Elijah’s mouth. His stomach bottomed out as he said it, but he couldn’t stop. If there was ever a time when those words needed to hit the air, it was now. Before they froze to death or Richard and Jasper tracked them down. “Because I fucking love you.”
Elijah stilled against him. “Why— What—”
“Don’t say a bunch of stupid shit and ruin it.”
Elijah grabbed a handful of Chase’s hair and yanked his head back. “Do you know how long I’ve been waiting to hear that from you, puto?”
“Since you realized Holden found himself a cyborg to fall for?”
The beginning traces of happiness turned to outrage in an instant, so Chase crushed their lips together again before Elijah could go off on a rant. Elijah tried to twist away from him, but Chase held him tighter and kissed him more forcefully. Their relationship so far had been made up of insults, spite, and frantic fucking borne of desperation and loneliness. Why not add in a combined dose of admitted affection and resentment?
Chase sucked on Elijah’s tongue and ground their hips together, getting hotter as Elijah’s dick nudged his own. He had little doubt that Elijah was angry, that he wanted to turn away and give Chase the cold shoulder like he’d done so many times in the past. But he equally knew that Elijah’s dick was raging hard, and that he liked blue balls even less than hurt feelings.
Maybe.
That’s what Chase had always told himself, anyway—that his own bad attitude and shitty comments could be smoothed over if they had sex.
“One last blowjob before we die?” Chase asked between increasingly ragged kisses. “Don’t say no.”
“What if I don’t want to suck you off? You ruined that beautiful moment.”
“Beautiful? I declared my love for you after murdering five people.”
Elijah pulled away from the kiss with a wet smack. “In self-defense. And I know exactly why you said it right then.”
“Maybe I just got a little emo.”
“Maybe,” he said, watching Chase with guarded eyes. “But it’s more likely that you know we may not make it out on the other end of this grand escape alive, and you know I would do anything for you, go anywhere to be with you, and trust you with my life.”
Chase opened his mouth to deny it, and Elijah pressed his fingers against Chase’s lips.
“Please don’t. You’d be lying. And I need to trust that you won’t keep pushing me away just for the hell of it.”
Jesus Christ, way to back him into a corner. If Chase’s choices were shoving Elijah away to keep from tumbling farther into a fubar hole, or letting him inside to keep this shit show of a journey functional . . . Chase would go with the second. And it had absolutely nothing to do with the way Elijah’s eyes went all soft and damp every time he was rejected. Not at all.
Chase leaned in for another kiss, this one slower and wetter.
“I said what I said, and I don’t take it back. Now let me suck your dick before someone shows up at the broken door and takes us out.”
“Do you think that’s possible?”
Chase laughed gruffly. “We just entered a whole new world of dysfunction. Anything is possible.”
Elijah shuddered, his teeth chattering as though a chill had infiltrated the cabin to snake down his spine. Or maybe it was the menace he felt coming all the way from the Farm. Chase had been feeling the animal claw of dread and fear at the back of his mind since they’d warmed up and calmed down enough for him to think straight. There was no doubt that the Community would come for them, he just hoped that would happen after they met up with Nate and Holden.
For all that Chase didn’t fully trust Holden when it came to Elijah, or Ex-Comm when it came to their motives, at the end of the day, they were safer as a group. Not one smart-mouthed drummer with a penchant for forest exploration, and a multitalented fuckboy with zero ability to control his most devastating ability. What a nightmare. Without Nate, Holden, and the others, they were doomed.
“Let me warm you up,” Chase coaxed when Elijah kept watching him warily. “You always come hardest when I let you ride my face. Maybe then you’ll be able to sleep.”
“And what about you?”
Chase kissed down the side of Elijah’s face. “Don’t worry about me. Just shoot all your milk down my throat, and I’ll be fucking thrilled.”
Elijah groaned and went limp against the bed as Chase trailed openmouthed kisses down his chin and neck before exploring the rest of his body. For a moment, stalled in the middle of the wild storm, there was nothing but the two of them pressed together—Chase worshipping Elijah’s body like he was royalty, and Elijah whispering his name like he was a god. Chase shivered at the sound of Elijah’s voice, at the way he spread himself open despite the cold, and arched pleadingly. Chase responded by scooting down and flipping their positions so Elijah was straddling his face, and his mouth aligned with Elijah’s dick.
“God,” Elijah whispered.
“No, it’s just Chase,” Chase growled, and opened his mouth.
Elijah leaned forward with his knees digging into the rickety mattress and pressed his dick between Chase’s lips. Chase’s lips skimmed the velvety head, then the shaft, until Elijah was lodged completely in his throat.
Chase squeezed Elijah’s ass, spurring him on. When Elijah got the hint and began to ride his face, thick length sliding in and out as his harsh gasps grew louder, Chase pressed the pad of his finger against Elijah’s hole.
“Oh shit.” Elijah bucked his hips forward, but Chase just took him down farther. “Chase . . .”
Chase slid his finger in deeper, and Elijah cried out. Each movement after that was fast and harsh, and not destined to draw this out. Elijah went to pieces above him, riding his face while Chase fingered him, and panting so harshly that the sound of them fucking grew louder than the howling wind outside.
When Elijah finally came, it was with a frantic cry.
“Chase,” he moaned again, shuddering as Chase swallowed every drop of him. “God.”
Chase pulled away once there was nothing left, and watched with hooded eyes as Elijah trembled above him. His eyes were squeezed shut, mouth gaping as he tried to catch his breath.
“You’re so fucking gorgeous.”
Elijah looked down at him, curly hair hanging everywhere and lips still parted. “You are.”
Chase scoffed. “Right.”
The denial didn’t earn him the usual eye roll. Instead, Elijah’s gaze narrowed, and he shifted to crouch beside Chase’s sprawled body. “Why do you think I wanted to fuck you even when I thought I hated you?”
“My charming personality?”
Elijah leaned down to run the tip of his tongue along Chase’s still-aching length. He looked up then, smiling at Chase’s desperate expression. “No. Because you’re beautiful. That white hair and gray eyes, the pale skin . . . you’re just as fucking beautiful as Nate and Theo, but your ink makes you walking sex.”
Chase wanted to say something witty, but nothing came to mind. All he could do was watch and wait to be touched.
“I hated your attitude,” Elijah said after another slow lick. “But I couldn’t stop looking at you and your leather and your sneer and all your metal. I wanted to fight you and fuck you at the same time.”
Then why . . .
Chase shut down on the thought before it could complete. No thinking of the whys and the hows. No thinking of Holden.
He just wanted to enjoy this one moment before they froze to death or got shot.
“Touch me, Elijah,” he whispered. “Please just help me not think for now.”
“I can do that.”
Elijah swallowed him down, eyes sliding shut like he was tasting something delicious. He sucked and pumped Chase’s dick at the same time, working him over until Chase was arched off the bed and ripping at the cheap sheets—panting and moaning and losing himself in the kind of pleasure that shouldn’t be possible in a world so full of darkness and pain.
When he came, it was with a silent shout, his body straining up. Afterward, he collapsed to the bed, and Elijah crawled up to curl beside him. They relaxed against the now-twisted sheet with the scratchy blankets still on top of them. Chase could smell detergent on the blankets and another scent that reminded him of summer days and sunlight. A reminder of simpler times in the lives of people he would never meet, and who had nothing in common with him.
He’d never had a simple life. Or an easy one. Neither had Elijah.
Chase glanced down at Elijah, smiling to find him already dead to the world with his lips parted and breathing even.
There were thoughts and mental images running through Chase’s mind that weren’t easily explained. Fantasies about feeling safe, the absence of that sinking sensation in his gut, and waking up with Elijah in a tiny colorful bedroom with their limbs intertwined and their chests pressed together.
He wanted to believe it was a vision of their future together, but if Chase had learned one thing in his twenty-some-odd years of existing on this planet, it was that good things didn’t come to him. And if they did, it wasn’t without blood, tears, and a whole lot of loss along the way.