“W-hy?” Shadow choked out, holding his aching stomach. He was so confused, so out of breath, that even Gray’s naked form couldn’t take his mind off the overwhelming terror. The thought of Gray being the doppelgänger of the man who was his true other half made the walls of his world crack.
Gray was catching his breath so rapidly he sounded as if his throat had swelled. “You’re going through my things now? This is private. Private! Do you even know what that word means?”
Shadow wasn’t sure. He was in so much pain he didn’t have the strength to get off his knees.
“I need to get to know you,” he said, trying to cover his soft front from another attack. His head spun so badly it felt as if the floor was about to break apart under him and swallow him into a pit of never-ending suffering. “To connect.”
Gray’s face twisted into an ugly scowl, and he pushed at Shadow’s chest, almost sending him all the way to the floor. “We will never connect. I made a pact to help a friend. I didn’t ask for a demonic creature to constantly tail me everywhere.”
Shadow dragged himself closer to his bed, his gaze focused on the photo Gray hugged to his bare torso. Something was wrong. Shadow had no idea what, but there was something he was missing.
He slowly got to his feet, wary of Gray’s every move. “And I didn’t ask to be summoned here! I had a perfectly good existence on the Other Side. Without this stupid body that never feels right, and a human who doesn’t understand me! I’m trying so hard, but nothing I do is good enough for you! I hate it!”
Gray swallowed, piercing him with his hazel gaze. “Then we’re both meant to be fucking miserable until you’re finally gone.”
The words caused a physical ache that hurt so badly, for a moment Shadow believed Gray had stabbed him. The longer Shadow existed in the human world, the more he understood the passing of time, and he didn’t like it one bit. He couldn’t connect with the one human meant for him, and suffered because of it every day. Had he done something to Baal to deserve this fate of being doomed to spend his short life without meaning or happiness?
Shadow stared into Gray’s eyes for the longest time, but he lost the battle of wills and turned away. He was powerless against Gray’s anger.
Even the scent of liquorice couldn’t make him feel any better. What was the point of existing if Gray hated him? Who was the other Gray? Shadow would never know because Gray would never open up to him.
Never.
Shadow would never be whole.
He lay on his bed and turned away from Gray, because seeing him only caused more misery. Oversaturated with feelings he’d never asked for, Shadow swallowed a sob, desperate to be out of the body that was nothing but pain.
Chapter 16
Shadow took Gray’s arm out of spite.
But that was fine. Gray didn’t need it for watching television or reading, and asking that inhuman creature for anything would have felt like putting a collar on his own neck. So he wouldn’t. He’d just wait until Shadow stopped sulking and apologized for going through his stuff.
Gray shut his eyes, bored by the plot of the idiotic sitcom rerun he was watching.
That moment when he’d spotted the photo in Shadow’s hand kept returning to him like a vuvuzela blown right next to his ear. It was a Polaroid, so if it had gotten damaged, there would have been no way of recovering the picture. It was one of his most treasured keepsakes, yet he didn’t dare look at it most times, irrationally afraid of seeing accusation in Mike’s eyes.
Gray’s gaze lingered on the pile of stuff that Shadow had earlier tossed out of the backpack. He’d been putting off the necessary clean-up, but it was getting really late, and he hated leaving things to be done in the morning.
He started carefully packing his bag, but with just one hand even the little tasks, like putting the photo back into its place in the notebook, were a nuisance that shouldn’t have taken so much effort. It was beyond ridiculous to have to deal with it this way when Shadow had offered him the arm in the first place. Why was Gray supposed to suffer for Shadow’s misbehavior?
With a sigh, he glared at Shadow’s long, muscular body stretched on the other bed with the feet dangling off the mattress. He was facing away from Gray, silent as if he’d already fallen asleep.
So maybe he’d been cruel by reminding Shadow about the finiteness of his existence, but wasn’t he allowed frustration and anger? Shadow had spent enough time with people to know he shouldn’t look through someone else’s stuff.