Total pages in book: 42
Estimated words: 39245 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 196(@200wpm)___ 157(@250wpm)___ 131(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 39245 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 196(@200wpm)___ 157(@250wpm)___ 131(@300wpm)
Ajax picked up his stack of recipes off the counter and shuffled through them for a couple of moments before answering. “That played a part in my decision, yes. My relationship with Alan wasn’t healthy. Still isn’t, if you count the way he’s blowing up my phone. When I bother to turn it on, that is.” He must have decided on what he was making for dinner because he separated out one of the papers and walked to the freezer to pull out a package of ground beef.
“Can I ask you something else?”
He looked up. “Finn, you can ask me anything.”
“In your band, you sing about…monsters a lot. Why is that?”
Ajax was silent for a long time as he studied him. He set the beef on the counter and turned to face Finn. He seemed to be weighing his answer before he finally spoke. “Because I see things that others do not.”
Finn held his breath as his heart skipped a beat. “Do you mean that in the literal sense?”
“Literal, yes, but figurative as well.” Ajax walked closer to him and his scent hit Finn’s nose. Vanilla, like those candles he was always burning.
He waited as Ajax studied him. He must have come to a decision, because he gave an almost imperceptible nod. “There are people in this world who look differently to me than they do to others. And I can sense a difference in some who look just as human as I do. You, for instance.”
“Me?” Finn was still having trouble breathing. “What do you sense?”
“The moment you walked into this house that first day, I felt your magic. You’re not like me, are you? You don’t have any physical characteristics that I can see with my eyes, but there’s some kind of magic built into you, isn’t there? One of my band members is like you. He easily passes for human but can shift into a wolf. But I could see the subtle differences he hides behind magic, and I could feel the presence of his magic before I ever saw him change.”
Finn had never paid attention to any of the other members of the band, or he might have picked up on that. Though cameras and videos captured only what preternaturals wanted humans to see. The glamours worked even through secondary imagery. “So, you could see what he was from the beginning?”
The corner of Ajax’s mouth went up. “From the day I met him in high school. Well, I was in high school, and I thought he was just a few years older. Turned out I was wrong about his age. The two of us have been in the band the longest. He’s a good friend and is one of the two…people…who know that I can see what so many try to hide.” His half smile switched over to a smirk. “He was not a fan of Alan’s. I always wondered if Matt could sense something off about my ex.”
Still reeling over the fact Ajax was one of the humans like Clive, Ezra, and Lonnie, Finn welcomed the quick change in subject. For that moment anyway. “How long did you date Alan?”
“For four years. I honestly thought we were forever for a short time.”
“What happened?”
“I started talking about my solo music, and he was vehemently against it. Turned out he liked having a famous boyfriend and didn’t want to risk losing that.”
Finn scowled. “He’s a fool.”
“I was the fool. There were signs. He constantly wanted to go to parties filled with famous people, and he spent my money like he thought it was a never-ending well. He always stopped for photographers and collected the images.”
“Those aren’t subtle signs.”
“I wrote it off as him collecting images of us together, but turns out it wasn’t like that. At first, I just thought he was getting off on the fame—that’s normal, you know?” Ajax shrugged. “I did the same thing when my band first took off. But that obsession with it never waned with Alan. He got worse, and I learned he was actually hiring photographers to follow us around. You probably saw the very private images that were all over the internet of us.”
“Yeah, they tend to come up pretty quickly when your name is put into a search engine.”
“He set that up. Actually set it up. Which is highly illegal, by the way. Probably should have pursued criminal charges, but I didn’t. I thought we were taking a private vacation, and the whole time, he was just using me to put more pictures of him out into the world. That was the last straw, so to speak.” He walked to the counter, reached for the coffee carafe, and poured himself a mug. “But I had already been planning to break things off. While the feelings were strong for a time, they had waned because he was honestly a selfish person. I deserve better.”