“Yeah . . .”
“So does this mean I’m in danger?”
“I hope not,” he muttered.
“What do you mean?”
Adrian felt like he could skid around this question, but from how she has been handling everything; something told him to see what would happen if he just told her.
“I don’t think it’s a reason they’d put a target on your head, but . . . you’re my soul mate.”
Silence.
The unbearable silence was festering between them.
He was getting ready to beg her to say something.
“So was everything fake?”
“What? No! Nothing was fake!”
“How am I supposed to believe that?”
“Please, you just have to believe me that everything was real—”
“How am I supposed to think that you weren’t just being nice for your own sanity? Do you even like being around me?” Aria shook her head. “What if you’re just being nice so that you don’t have to be like . . . like that other person in your pack? The one with the bad soul mate relationship?”
He flinched but tried to stand his ground. “If I told you about any of this before we became friends, do you really think you’d accept it?”
Aria spluttered for a moment.
She was caught off guard and confused. He didn’t blame her. After all this information dump, she suddenly gets this massive bomb.
With everything else in his life, why did he hope that this would be at least a little easier?
Chapter 20
Aria
She didn’t know what was scarier, the fact that Adrian wasn’t human, or the fact that she was already involved in whatever is happening.
Not to mention the fact that her mom knew something that was dangerous enough for her to get targeted? No wonder her dad sounded so angry on the phone!
That was another thing, her dad knew something about all of this. Aria could only hope that it wasn’t enough for someone to put a hit on him too. She couldn’t lose both of her parents to the freaks who were targeting them.
All of this was so confusing. No, scratch that, it was irritating. Aria was trying to put their months of friendship into consideration before he told her the fact that they were soul mates. After he dumped that bombshell on her, several thoughts of doubt began to plague her mind.
Was any part of their relationship real? Did he even talk to her because he wanted to talk to her? Was the version of Adrian that she saw so often the real him? Or was this some sort of filtered version to ensure that she wouldn’t hate him?
Try as she might, she knew that these were some ugly thoughts.
She had half a mind to get out of the car and walk straight home at this point. It was all too much, and it all felt so surreal that this couldn’t have been reality. Maybe she was in a coma somewhere, dreaming about this crazy situation.
Even that felt more realistic.
The only reason she didn’t reach for the door was the fact that Adrian was obviously distressed. Distressed in ways she had never seen a person before in real life. Not even her own dad was this visually upset in front of her when her mom died.
Still, if they didn’t have their little moment earlier then she would’ve called bullsh*t on him ages ago. Then again, they did, and Aria couldn’t ignore the fact that he was probably spilling the secrets of the century. Adrian even gave her valid points as to why he never mentioned this to her beforehand. After all, even if he tried to bring any of this up earlier then she might’ve deemed him clinically insane.
“Do you really think you’d accept it?”
That was the billion dollar question.
The answer to that before today would’ve been a firm ‘no,’ but things changed.
As she tried to string her words together, she opened and closed her mouth a few times, torn between wanting to ask more questions, to console him, or even to give him a proper answer.
“So is your whole family like you?” she ended up asking.
He seemed surprised by the sound of her voice but slowly nodded.
“Does . . . the car accident have anything to do with this?”
“Yeah, it does.”
“How much can you tell me?”
“I’m not even supposed to be saying any of this at all.”
“Oh.” Aria ruminated over what he just said. It was some pretty high stakes information after all. “But Mira was involved . . .”
Adrian didn’t reply and she knew that this might be a better way of getting some answers out of him. If he couldn’t directly tell her without his own conscience killing him, then she should be able to deduce answers from her own.
“Why was Mira involved?”
His lips pursed.
“Is she like you?” Aria’s words flowed out faster than she could register.
“I can’t say.”
“So it’s a yes?”
Adrian didn’t reply.
Obviously, she was breaking some sort of ethical code here, but the prospect of Mira being seriously hurt didn’t let her stay silent.
“Is she even in the ICU?”
He shook his head.
“Where is she?”
“We don’t know.” His voice was soft and filled with humiliation.
“You don’t know. Oh my God.” The possibilities of Mira’s whereabouts immediately started to flood her brain. Clearly she was alive and well, but Mira has been gone for at least a week.
Did Carmen know about this or . . .
Aria stopped.
Carmen and Uncle Joel knew about this. They had to. Carmen’s weird behavior which Aria then chalked to her being distressed couldn’t be excused if Mira wasn’t in the ICU. Then, Uncle Joel might’ve been more or less normal, as normal as he could possibly be, but that threw her in for another loop.
One was clearly a better actor
