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“It is yet another business deal, Esme.”

She shook her head. And then she did something that she hadn’t done in about fifteen years. She lifted her hand up to her mouth and she spit in her palm, and then she stuck it out. “Not a business deal. This is like the kind of deal we made back then.”

He lifted an eyebrow, staring hard at her. But she was determined.

“You have to seal it that way. The right way.”

He lifted his own palm up to his mouth, and spit. Then the two of them shook hands. He had done that when she and Alex had first met him. Out on the street. He had said that it was the way you made a handshake mean something. It was the way you made yourself family. He said he preferred a cut, and the mixing of blood, but that it was too dangerous to do because of infection. So that was the compromise. She was happy to find him that way now. It felt superstitious. But it also felt right.

It felt like maybe he would have to keep his promise in that case.

It really felt like he might.

“This isn’t business,” she said. “It’s family.”

In the truth that yawned between that was that neither of them really understood what a family was. What it looked like. She had Alex, and he was her lone concept of family. She had goaded Adonis about the fact that he was marrying her for Alex’s sake, but the truth was, if Alex asked her to do it, she probably would’ve complied with him. Because he mattered. Because he was pretty much all she had.

It had been wrong of Adonis to try to leave them. This was the end result.

So now they were stuck together.

And they just had to make the best of it.

Back then they’d been like the Lost Boys. Adonis had always been Peter Pan.

The trouble was, they all did grow up. And time made some wounds worse. It took pure, strong feelings and fractured them into something more complicated, something sharper. Into feelings that burned and maimed and made babies. Into feelings that felt beyond anything she could ever be called equipped to handle.

“I’ll tell Alex the good news.”

“Great,” she said.

“Then…we should meet. Tonight. And talk about what it…what it looks like.”

“All right.”

“I’ll draft up my demands.”

“I thought you said this wasn’t going to be business, Esme.”

“Fine,” she said. “Then it will be like it used to be.”

“As you wish.”

Chapter Six

When Adonis approached Esme’s front door, he wasn’t sure what to expect. But then, he had no idea quite what to expect at any moment going forward. He hadn’t anticipated any of this. It had been a long time since anyone or anything had managed to surprise him.

That simply wasn’t the way that survival worked. You had to be a step ahead of everything. He had been. All these years. She was his weakness.

He didn’t like that. Didn’t like that he had one that was quite so apparent. It had always been true, though. In a fashion.

She had buzzed him into the building, so she opened the door to her apartment before he knocked. She was wearing…pajamas. Which wasn’t really notable. He had seen Esme in all manner of clothes. He had seen her dressed up and dressed down, and at this point, had seen her naked. But there was something disarming about seeing her like this. Soft. Comfortable. But the glitter in her eyes told him that she still had her guard up. And he wasn’t going to have an easy time with her, however easily she might be dressed.

“Come in,” she said.

Her apartment was beautiful. Whimsical like she was. Pink and purple with florals all over everything. It was maximalist and like nothing he would have ever consented to live with. Her curtains were green velvet, the couch loud pink with flowers. The kitchen cabinets were bright yellow, and the floor was a sparkling blue tile. The stove was emerald green like the curtains. And there was a large pot of what he could only assume was soup boiling away on one of the burners.

“Do you still cook for yourself?” he asked.