“Plus, it’s dangerous,” I tell them. “Really dangerous.”
“Umm, pretty sure I’m the one who just said that,” Eden answers with a shrug. “But you know, sometimes a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. And apparently, what your girl needs to do is kick a homicidal maniac out of her head.”
“Cheers to that,” Flint says, raising his soda. “Besides, sometimes—”
“Careful just doesn’t get the job done,” Jaxon joins in with a huge grin.
“Damn straight.” Flint nods with satisfaction at what must be an inside joke between the two, before clapping his hands together. “So, just to be clear, we’re doing this thing tomorrow morning?”
“Damn straight,” Eden agrees, and everyone nods.
“Wait a minute—aren’t we getting ahead of ourselves?” I ask. “I mean, we don’t even know where the Boneyard is yet, do we?”
“We do,” Flint says, exchanging a glance with Eden. “I talked to my grandma about it, but I also asked Eden to talk to her grandma the other day when you asked me, and she got the deets.”
“The good news is, we won’t have to travel very far,” Eden says. “The bad news is, Grand-mère says only someone with a death wish would go there. Almost no one makes it out alive.”
78
Talk About a
Bone to Pick
“No one makes it out alive?” Macy says, eyes wide. “Wow, that sounds like fun.”
“Don’t worry, Mace,” Xavier answers. “We can handle a bunch of old bones.”
“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Flint tells him.
“But we can do it,” Eden says. “I know it.”
“On the plus side, it can’t be worse than going after a beast that’s impossible to kill,” I interject. “Just saying.”
“Love that optimism,” Mekhi tells me. Then looks out at the group. “I say we go for it.”
“Tomorrow, five a.m.,” Jaxon orders before asking Flint and Eden, “Where do we need to meet?”
“The tunnels,” Flint answers, and my stomach drops. But it is what it is. Sometimes you just have to put your head down and get the bad stuff done, even if you don’t want to.
“Sounds good to me,” Xavier says as he picks up his box and soda can and throws them in the recycling container at the top of the stairs. The rest of us follow suit, and the party breaks up soon after.
The tournament took a lot out of all of us, and no one wants to stick around for a late night. Except me… Hudson is sound asleep now, so spending a little time with my mate without his brother butting in every ten seconds sounds like heaven.
I wait until Flint leaves—no reason to rub things in—before I settle on the sofa next to Jaxon and lift his hand to my mouth. He watches me with blazing-hot eyes for several seconds, then wraps his arms around me and pulls me against his body.
We both sigh at the contact. “You feel really good,” he tells me.
“So do you.” I lift my head and wait for him to kiss me, but he just drops a peck on my lips. Which is nice, but definitely not what I’m going for here.
I stretch up and kiss him this time, but again he pulls away after a second.
I can’t decide if he’s doing it on purpose because he’s trying to be funny or if there’s a problem I don’t know about. But when I search his face, he smiles warmly, like he’s having a great time.
And that’s when I decide to take matters into my own hands. Standing up, I hold out a hand to him and say, “Come on, let’s go”—I add air quotes for what I’m now thinking should be our forever secret code for “make out”—“watch the aurora borealis.”
He looks confused. “You want to go see the northern lights? Now?”
“Yes, now!” I would stomp my foot like a petulant child, except I’m afraid the sudden movement will wake up Hudson. And that’s the last thing I want.
“O-kay.” Jaxon gives me a weird look as we move toward his bedroom—and the parapet outside his window. “Any particular reason why? I mean, I’m fine with it. I just—”
I grab him by the sweater and yank him down toward me so that I can slam my lips onto his.
“Oh,” he murmurs in surprise. Then a deeper, “Oh,” as he wraps his arms around me and picks me up and carries me to his bed, our mouths still locked together.
He turns so that he’s the one who hits the bed first, and I land on top of him. I straddle his hips with my knees and start kissing my way along his neck, relishing the way he feels against me. Hard. Strong. Perfect.