“Are you done with Pete?” Shadow couldn’t stop the bitterness from seeping into his voice.
Leaving the room he’d so craved to visit for most of his short life was relief.
Gray stumbled, saving himself by leaning against Shadow. He clutched the crumpled T-shirt to his bare chest. “I-I think he’s gone,” he said, briefly glancing at the empty space beneath his stump.
Shadow released the black arm into Gray’s body, and it quickly drizzled down the stump, forming the arm all the way to fingers with matte nails. “I didn’t mean to take it. But you know how it goes when I’m too far away.” He cleared his throat and averted his gaze. “Was Pete everything you wanted?” He didn’t even want to know, but it seemed like the thing to ask. He rubbed his stinging eyes again, overwhelmed by the misery this night had brought him.
Gray’s face stiffened, and he quickened his pace, pretending he’d missed Beast waving at him from one of the rooms. Shadow followed his human’s lead and went after him, away from the noise, the drunk people, and friends who would surely need something.
Just a staircase away, hidden behind a door Gray had the keys to, was the quiet. Hallways stretched in both directions—one ending with a load of rubble in front of a door, the other—endless and crisscrossed by rays of light coming through windows.
For a moment, they were both silent.
“Pete’s gone,” Gray said, clenching and unclenching the shadow hand. “He completely freaked out when it disappeared. I managed to convince him his brain played a trick on him, and it hadn’t been there all along. He drove back to his parents’ place.”
Shadow’s shoulders slumped. Not only was he miserable, but he’d also brought the same on Gray. With each word spilling from Gray’s mouth, the tightness in his chest seemed less bearable, as if having to confront those issues at all left him with collapsing lungs. “I’m sorry. I should have stuck around. It’s just that… it was so hard to see the two of you together, and I thought that if I gained some experience, you would give me a shot. So I tried, I really did, because I only have so much time. But turns out my body doesn’t work around other people the way it does with you. I will never be able to give you what you want.”
Gray blocked Shadow’s way and stilled, looking up at him. “What do you mean? You participated in the orgy?” he asked in a hissing tone that only ever came out of Gray’s mouth when he was displeased.
Shadow had to tread carefully. “No, I just went with Jared. You said I don’t know what you need, so I wanted to learn, but… it was a disaster.”
Gray started saying something but in the end bit his lip and rested his hands on his hips, glaring at the wall while his pulse quickly gained pace. “Shadow, that’s not how this works. And that wasn’t what I meant at all!”
Shadow spread his arms, frustrated by the fragility of his understanding of the world. “How does it work then? How am I supposed to learn if my body doesn’t react to other people? Jared tried to… do what you did once, and I just… nothing. I’m so embarrassed!”
Gray shushed him with a gesture and stayed still for a couple of heartbeats, his forehead wrinkled with thought. He eventually grabbed Shadow’s hand and pulled him along, toward the general direction of their room. “Everyone is different. You can’t just have sex with one person and then transfer what you learn to another. And Jared is a nice enough guy, but he’s nothing like me. Why would you want him?”
“I don’t know how it works! It made sense that I could be experienced for you if I did things with other men. I didn’t even want it by the end, but it felt like… the thing to do. I feel so bad, Gray. Why do I feel this way?”
Gray stopped again, and this time, there was no one to disturb them. He swallowed, looking ashen in the pale light coming in through the window. His hand was damp in Shadow’s and hot as if he was feverish.
“You’re my shadow, remember? That’s why you feel this way.”
“I don’t understand.”
Gray swallowed, seeking Shadow’s other hand and squeezing it gently as he backed Shadow against the wall. “That’s how I feel. I tried to be like everyone else when I was younger, but it was this… stream of failures. I was more and more disgusted with myself and how I couldn’t really get from sex what everyone else seemed to. So I pretended until I met Pete. We were in love for a while,” he said before staring at his feet.
Shadow hated to hear of Gray’s pain, but it also made him feel that bit more normal. Maybe he wasn’t this way because Baal made him crave Gray. Maybe it was in his nature because he was Gray’s shadow. He squeezed Gray’s hands.