Page 80 of Darkness Defined

I left to get him a cup of cold water, but when I got back, he was out. Wasn’t that just perfect? Now my drunk ass had to figure out how to get his drunk ass off of the floor. The good news was, it didn’t matter how awkward I was, no amount of anything was likely to wake him up.

It was far from graceful, but eventually I got him on the bed. I briefly contemplated stripping him down and putting him under the covers, but dismissed it as an exceptionally bad idea. Instead, I grabbed the other side of the comforter and rolled him up like a burrito. I was having a good laugh at myself tucking him in when he grabbed my wrist. A look at his face said he was still sound asleep.

I tried to extricate myself, but he wasn’t letting go. The harder I tried to get away, the tighter his grip got. On a whim, I leaned down and planted a kiss on his forehead, lingering a moment. Instantly, he relaxed, releasing me.

What I wouldn’t give to understand your secrets, Matt.

Finally freed, I made my way out, quietly closing the door behind me. The event had sobered me but, I still wasn’t ready for bed. The dreams would never compare, anyway.

I looked around the dorm. The room was a total disaster. With a sigh, I set to putting it right again. When it resembled its usual state of disarray, I sat down on the couch to take stock.

How had any of this evening happened? Despite the truths I’d accumulated, I felt like I had infinitely more questions to the riddle that was Matt. But I knew one thing for certain—he’d absolutely kissed me back.

Chapter 23

Granite

M

Myheadpoundedsohard I felt it in my eyeballs and my mouth tasted like something had died in there while I slept. Groaning, I shifted to get up and met resistance. I struggled to free myself from the constricting cocoon and toppled out of the bed fully clothed, followed by a mountain of comforter.

Alex.

Just thinking his name brought back memories from the night before. The game had been hilarious and fun, but the kiss had been absolutely epic. I was officially convinced that my dreams weren’t some weird manifestations of finding out my best friend was gay. No, I wanted Alex to kiss me. I still wanted it. And I’d made a total and complete ass of myself.

I groaned again to the agony of my throbbing headache. How could I ever apologize for my behavior? My only saving grace was that I hadn’t actually thrown up on him. Still, what I did do was bad enough. I’d cut that far too close, but I couldn’t stop myself. I wanted more. Even now, I could feel it like a hunger growing inside. It was right next to the actual hunger that said my dumb ass hadn’t eaten anything substantial last night.

I quickly changed and went out to the living room. All evidence of the night before was completely gone. The glasses, the bottle, even the chip remnants. Nothing remained. Then I saw Alex asleep on the couch. I walked over to see that he was still in the same deep purple shirt and gray pants as the day before.

He must’ve stayed up to get this place looking normal again.

What did that say? Was he upset? I felt cruel now for the body shot fiasco. It wasn’t his fault he didn’t know what it was, and it was wrong to force him to do it. I was a terrible friend. A terrible friend that dreamed about making out with their best friend and tricked them into kissing them.

Shame kept my feet moving. Rather than wait for Alex to wake, I quietly fixed myself a cup of water and set one out for him as well. My gaze lingered on his relaxed face. He seemed so peaceful with his quiet snore and messy hair. Then my focus dipped to his mouth. I licked my lips and fought the impulse to kiss him awake. With a soft sigh, I let the fantasy go. After one last glance back at his sleeping form, I slipped out, barely remembering to grab my key before quietly shutting the door.

Alone in the hall, I was just as lost. The only thing I was absolutely sure of was that I liked Alex kissing me. I liked it a lot. None of it made sense though. I’d never been even vaguely interested in any other guy before. But that was it, he wasn’t any other guy. He was Alex, my Alex. Determined to find clarity before facing him again, I wandered off.

What I really needed was a way to clear my head so all of my thoughts weren’t on top of each other. The way his hair had felt between my fingers. How his mouth molded to mine. The overwhelming mortification of puking after the most intense kiss of my entire life. I’d have gone straight to the fight club—fighting always gave me a single-minded focus—but given it was Saturday and they only met Tuesday and Thursday, that wasn’t really an option.

Eventually, I found myself in the library. The massive building reminded me of a tomb some days, but now that summer semester was officially over, it was mercifully empty… and quiet. I weaved past several heavy tables until I found one that was nestled up by some shelves about halfway through the room. The chair didn’t even squeak when I pulled it out and flopped down. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Distraction. Maybe I could make some headway on the Demonic History report for the fall class.

I took out our research book—Alex’s book—and ran my fingers over the worn cover. The rough edges of the corners contrasted with the front and back, smoothed from years of loving hands. I knew now why Alex didn’t want to tell me if the knight killed the demon. He didn’t know. There were pages missing and everything before that was too vague to be certain.

The bookmark fell to the table. Without enough pages at the end, there was nothing to hold it. Alex was right about the image—it was a shadow demon. In fact, it was practically a modern adaptation of the illustration in the book. I unfolded the page to reveal the half that he apparently hadn’t seen. Technically speaking, this part of the drawing was a self-portrait. I’d never been all that great at drawing myself, but there was no denying the figure across from the shadowed demon was me. He certainly looked every bit as lost as I felt.

With a frustrated growl, I replaced the bookmark and shoved the book back into my bookbag, angry at myself for being too much of a coward to be honest with Alex and basically sneaking out. He deserved better. Finding information about his favorite book wasn’t much in the way of an apology, but it was a start.

The cavernous room seemed to swallow what little noise my footfalls made as I wandered through the stacks in search of answers. I walked past several daunting displays of books until I found the genealogy section. Surely, a family dedicated to hunting down an entire supernatural race would be mentioned somewhere.

After an hour of searching, all I had to show for my efforts was an absurd stack of ancient families and hands so coated in dust they looked gray. I flopped onto the floor and began methodically going through each one. Names like Guerreros del Sol seemed promising, but their order didn’t start until the fifteen-hundreds. Then there was the Danai family, which seemed to have been around since the dawn of time. They were a twisted bunch, but they were necromancers, or at least I thought that’s what the text meant. I couldn’t imagine anyone being able to bring the dead back to life. But then I couldn’t imagine a lot of what had happened in the last few months.

I let out a huff as I surveyed my collection. None of these had what I was looking for. But how did you find an obscure family that kept to the shadows? I was sliding the last book onto the return cart when I had an epiphany. If we were right and it was a love story, maybe something came of it—marriage, kids, something. I raced back to the genealogies with an eye for family trees on the Shadow Demon side this time. There wasn’t much in the way of Shadow Demon lineage, so I grabbed them all and returned to my table. The librarian on duty eyed my haphazard collection skeptically, but didn’t intervene or comment.

I stayed there well into the night, searching the books. It was rough going. The first couple of layers were full of countless demons, but as the timeline progressed, more and more holes showed up. I wasn’t sure if that was because of deaths or because literally no one knew. I traced each line from an Original, careful not to skip lines or pages. It would have been much easier if the lineage behaved anything like a normal family tree. That would have been too easy. Across time, demons skipped in and out of relevance. Some disappearing for decades only to show up again in a different branch of the history.

I was getting a headache from reading the tiny script, and I desperately wanted a shower. Then I saw something that didn’t quite fit with the rest. Next to some demon’s name I didn’t have a prayer of pronouncing was a very simple Matthias. No last name or descriptor. Just a name and a symbol. Except I’d seen that symbol before.

I slid open books aside until I found the only one I cared about—Alex’s book. There on the cover was the same symbol: a torch topped by the sun, surrounded by what appeared to be black flames. I knew better though, those weren’t flames, they were shadow.