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Adam is fourteen when his soulmark appears. He doesn’t know exactly when it happens, because the mark curls between his shoulder blades. Even if he dared to spend longer in the trailer bathroom than absolutely necessary, the mirror is too small to glimpse it.
He’s changing in the locker room after gym class when one of his classmates raises his eyebrows mockingly and says “Nice tattoo, Parrish,” on his way out of the door.
The mirror in the school showers is big enough to see the mark. Mouth dry and heart pounding, Adam takes in the curling green vine set with spiky black thorns.
It’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.
A warm glow pools in his chest, and for a moment he lets himself float, luxuriating in the knowledge that somewhere out there is someone who is marked for him. Only around two thirds of people have soulmarks, but he was chosen to have one. The universe, fate, whatever…found him worthy. He soaks in that golden thought for what could be minutes or hours, until his next thought drains it all away.
One third of people don’t have soulmarks.
Including his father.
Who will never tolerate Adam having anything that he doesn’t.
It will be another sign that Adam is getting above himself, too big for his boots, and it will be punished in the same way.
He can’t let his father see the mark.
Adam leaves the showers and goes to the library. Does some research on the computers. Makes a plan. Saves up the money he needs.
Three weeks after he saw his soulmark, he pays an unshaven man in an echoing room of scrubbed metal to remove it.
“It won’t last,” the man tells him. “Soulmarks always come back eventually, whatever you do.”
“How long?”
“Five years, maybe. Then you’ll need to have it done again.”
Adam nods. Five years is fine. In five years, if he carries out his plans, if he survives long enough, he will be out of his father’s reach, and it won’t matter any more. The thought seems as distant as the stars.
Afterwards, the patch of skin is smooth and blank and clear. Adam’s soulmark only exists now in his memory. The man offered to take a photo before he removed it, but Adam didn’t have the extra five dollars.
Nothing to be done about it. He moves on.
—
Ronan has no hope of keeping his soulmark private, because Matthew is the first person to spot it on his back. His excitement is so loud that within five minutes everyone in the house knows. Matthew bubbles with speculation. Declan unbends enough to show a gleam of interest. Aurora strokes Ronan’s hair with a tremulous smile.
“My boys are growing up.” She takes a photo of the mark and sits next to Ronan as he studies it.
“It’s very pretty,” she says. “Even with the thorns.”
“I like the thorns,” says Ronan. His stomach churns as if he’s teetering at the top of a rollercoaster. Somewhere in the world, his soulmate is seeing the same mark in the same place on his skin. Ronan wonders what he looks like. If he feels as excited and nervous as Ronan does. As impatient to meet him.
Because they will meet. Ronan is sure of that, despite all the statistics that Declan drearily quotes at him over dinner. What would be the point otherwise? The universe has marked them for each other, and so they will meet and be together and be happy.
His father whirls into the house as night is falling, and receives the news with a broad smile.
“I always knew you’d be blessed with a mark, my boy.”
Declan leans back in his chair, his face shadowed. Niall inspects the mark on Ronan’s back and squeezes his shoulder. “I look forward to meeting the lucky girl.”
One word, and Ronan’s mood shatters.
The glow he’s been feeling all day fades away, as he realises that all that time he’s been thinking of his soulmate as him . He never considered another possibility.
Nor has Niall.
Ronan can’t form the words to correct him.
It’s that moment which lingers in his memory from that day, the bitter realisation that someday he will have to.
As it turns out, he never gets the chance. It doesn’t make anything better.
—
Adam tells no-one about his soulmark, because he has no-one to tell.
Gansey, two years later, is the first person to ask him if he has one. Many people consider it a rude question to ask, and Adam could choose to be offended. However, Gansey has spent the past twenty minutes showing Adam his own soulmark - a tree surrounded by tiny birds - and recounting every detail of how it first appeared, and all the symbolic meanings he has researched, and listing the soulmate connection websites where he has posted a photo in an attempt to find his match, so Adam supposes it’s fair enough. Besides, he’s not actually offended, which given the frequency with which Gansey usually manages to trigger Adam’s sore points, is worth his forbearance.
“No, I don’t have one.”
The lie is out before Adam even has time to consider it. After two years, it doesn’t even feel like a lie. He only had a soulmark for a few days, after all. It’s not worth thinking about, even if sometimes, in his most lonesome moments, lying bruised in the trailer, he imagines he can feel its outline burning between his shoulders.
Adam’s soulmark is irrelevant now. It’s something for the future when he’s out of Henrietta, like everything else in his life. Maybe then, when it comes back, he’ll post photos online like Gansey, to try to find the person he’s marked for.
Maybe.
It’s different for Gansey. He doesn’t have so many dirty and damaged parts to hide.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” says Gansey, and immediately winces. “That is…I didn’t mean it wasn’t…lots of people don’t have soulmarks. Ronan doesn’t have one either.”
Ronan grunts. He’s sitting by the window in a patch of sunlight, drawing an intricate pattern on the back of his hand with a sharpie. Adam could almost have forgotten he was there, if Ronan wasn’t impossible to ignore.
Adam thinks that Gansey’s words are dubious consolation. He doesn’t want to have anything in common with Ronan Lynch. Having Gansey’s friendship in common is more than enough.
“You might both still get one,” says Gansey encouragingly. “There have been many documented cases of people developing soulmarks later in life. There was one man who was nearly eighty. It’s a fascinating story-”
“No, it’s not,” says Ronan. He throws down the pen, which rolls across the floor and bounces off Adam’s worn sneakers. “His grandson posted the mark online, it went viral, he found his soulmate, and they both died on the same day a year later. It’s boring and fucking pointless. Like soulmarks in general.”
He stalks into his bedroom, slamming the door shut behind him.
—
Ronan shouldn’t care.
It shouldn’t matter.
He shouldn’t give a damn that Adam Parrish doesn’t have a soulmark.
Ronan stopped caring about his own soulmark a long time ago. He’d be no good to his soulmate now if he did find him. All Ronan would do is tear him apart the way he’s done with the rest of his life. He doesn’t believe in that shit any more.
But…
The first time he saw Adam, pushing his bike up that hill with such stubborn grace…there was something. Something catching in his chest. A pull, a yearning…
Ronan hadn’t even realised that he’d been hoping. Kept it secret even from himself, until Adam spoke those words in his careful voice.
No, I don’t have one.
Ronan is disgusted with himself for daydreaming like a fucking child.
As if finding out he was Ronan’s soulmate would magically change Adam’s opinion of him. Would stop him seeing Ronan as a necessary evil to be endured in return for Gansey’s company. Would make him look at Ronan with something other than anger or disdain.
It’s a good thing that daydream has been shattered. Now Ronan can stop thinking about Adam fucking Parrish and his blue eyes and his warm honey accent and his weirdly elegant hands.
He’ll daydream about his soulmate instead. Even if it’s better if Ronan never meets him, he can still daydream about him. His soulmate, who has dark hair and an easy smile, who can’t out-smart everyone in the room without breaking a sweat, who doesn’t need to push himself to the edge of exhaustion to prove the world wrong, who doesn’t have a sense of humour as harsh and bone-dry as the Sahara…
Fuck it.
Ronan grabs his car keys. He needs to drive. Pound his thoughts against the asphalt until no trace of them remains.
—
Adam does match a soulmate mark, but it’s not his. It's Gansey's. Even worse, he sees it on the skin of the girl he was almost dating for a while.
The selfish, terrible part of him considers keeping quiet for longer than he would like to admit before he battles it down. Wants to pretend that he never saw the tree and birds on Blue’s shoulder.
But Gansey has been a better friend to him than Adam deserves, and he cares deeply for Blue even if they’re not together any more, and he wants both of them to be happy. The next time they’re all at Nino’s, he breaks the news and presents the evidence. Watches Gansey’s bewilderment and Blue’s shock turn into warm slowly-dawning smiles, before retreating from the restaurant with a twist in his gut that he can’t quite identify.
It’s not jealousy, he doesn’t think, at least not in the obvious way. He was hurt when Blue ended things, but enough time has passed now that he can see they work better as friends. He’s seen the covert glances she and Gansey have been exchanging for weeks, both annoyed and touched by their ridiculous concern for his feelings. He’s got used to the idea of them, so all this discovery has done is put an official seal on it.
Besides, there’s Ronan now.
Ronan, who is still impossible to ignore, but for entirely different reasons. Or maybe it's always been the same reason, and Adam just hadn’t realised it.
Ronan, who has followed him out of Nino’s, grumbling.
“They’re going to be fucking unbearable now, aren’t they?” He scowls, but the gleam in his blue eyes betrays his true feelings. “Still, at least Dick didn’t find her through one of those shitty soulmate match sites. That would have been-”
“Intolerable? Insupportable?” suggests Adam. “Insufferable?”
“Did you swallow a fucking thesaurus, Parrish?” Ronan glares at him, which really shouldn’t be as attractive as it unfortunately is.
“Expanding my vocabulary. Maybe you should try it.”
“Fat chance.”
“What if I found you an X-rated thesaurus?”
That startles a real laugh out of Ronan. He throws his head back as he laughs, and Adam’s eyes follow the long line of his throat.
Adam’s got used to Ronan looking at him, to the heat and barely-veiled hunger in his eyes, although he still can’t comprehend why someone as beautiful and magical and impossible as Ronan should choose him, of all people, to look at. Adam Parrish, stained by the dirt of the trailer park, scarred by the rage and cruelty never far from his surface. Who meets friendship and offers of help with cutting words and prickly pride. Whose brain coolly devised the horrors they used to trap Greenmantle. How could Ronan Lynch want any of that?
The real problem, though, is that more and more Adam finds himself looking back at Ronan. Wanting Ronan with equal heat and hunger, and he’s not sure what to do about it. If he does anything, he has to be certain that he means it, because Ronan does not do casual.
Which makes it ridiculous, really, that he doesn’t have a soulmark. Ronan, passionate and devoted, is precisely the kind of person who should have a soulmark. Whereas Adam, cold-hearted and manipulative, is precisely the kind of person who should not. It all adds to his conviction that soulmarks are yet another of the universe’s cosmic jokes.
—
Ronan hadn’t known what to expect after he kissed Adam.
Kissing him hadn’t exactly been an impulse. He’d spent too much time nerving himself up to it. Convincing himself that Adam was looking back at him now.
The moment itself, though…he hadn’t planned that. He’d found Adam sitting in his old bedroom, playing with that dream toy car, and known, suddenly, that this was the moment. Like rounding a bend to find a straight stretch of open highway, or seeing a tennis ball arc through the air at the perfect angle to smash a winner cross court.
He’d almost shuddered with relief when Adam kissed him back. All those nights lying by Adam’s side in St Agnes, all those lingering glances, the charge he could feel in the air between them, still struggled to balance against the old insidious doubts. He thinks you’re a loser. He’s only spending time with you because he feels uncomfortable around Blue and Gansey now they’re soulmates.
But Adam had kissed him back. And later, when they’re left alone at the Barns, and Ronan screws up his courage to ask for Adam’s answer to his question, Adam kisses him again. And again. So many times that Ronan loses count, or pretends he has.
Now they’re sprawled across the couch, Adam lazily tracing the lines of Ronan’s tattoo with his beautiful fingers. It finally makes all the pain Ronan endured getting that tattoo seem worthwhile.
“Ungibus et rostro,” murmurs Adam. “I’ve wanted to see this up close for a long time.”
Adam can look all he wants. Touch all he wants. Ronan would be happy to lie here for the rest of his life, as long as Adam kept touching him.
Then Adam’s fingers pause between Ronan’s shoulder blades. He’s still long enough that Ronan almost turns his head. When his fingers start moving again, the touch feels different. Tentative, almost reluctant.
Ronan abruptly recognises the pattern Adam is tracing on his skin. The soft curve of the vine, the jagged lines of the thorns. Even three years after hiding it amidst the expression of his grief and rage, he could draw that shape blindfolded.
Adam completes his circuit of the vine.
“That’s not a tattoo,” he says, and takes his fingers away.
Ronan closes his eyes.
“No. That’s my soulmark.”
He feels the couch cushions shift as Adam moves backwards, and a pit opens in his stomach.
“You told Gansey you didn’t have one.” Adam’s tone is carefully level, leached of any hint of emotion. Always a bad sign.
“He assumed, and I didn’t correct him. I didn’t lie.”
Ronan sits up and turns round, needing to see Adam’s face. It doesn’t tell him any more than Adam’s voice did. It’s blank and shuttered, as Adam’s face always is when he’s feeling a strong emotion and wants to hide it, but Ronan can’t tell what that emotion is. Anger, fear, jealousy…it could be one, or all three, or none. It’s always hard to tell with Adam.
“It doesn’t matter,” Ronan says. “It doesn’t change anything.”
Adam’s eyes flicker…and that was definitely anger. “Yes, it does.”
Ronan shakes his head stubbornly. “I gave up on the idea of soulmates a long time ago. It didn’t belong in my life anymore, after…that’s why I covered it with the tattoo. I’m not going to look for him.”
“What if he finds you?”
“Doesn’t matter.” Ronan dismisses it with a swift chop of his hand. “It’s not something I want in my life.”
Adam stares down at his hands, brow furrowed. “Are you sure?”
His voice sounds wrong. Maybe it is jealousy, after all. Ronan swoops to reassure him.
“Yes. I don’t care about some stupid mystical connection. I want you.” He swallows, trying to stop his voice trembling. After all this time, he finally has a chance with Adam. He will not let his inconvenient soulmark ruin that. He will not. He has to find the words to convince him, however embarrassing they might be. “I’ve wanted you from the first moment I saw you.”
“When you scowled at me and called me Gansey’s latest stray?”
“Before that.” Ronan grits his teeth. “We drove past you cycling up the hill to Aglionby, and you were…” He doesn’t know how to say it. Words are always too insubstantial for what he needs to convey. “I just…I knew somehow. That you were going to be important to me. Even then.”
He waits, pulse racing, for Adam’s face to clear. It does, but not in the way Ronan was hoping for. Adam looks as if he’s been given the answer to a puzzle, but not one that he wanted.
“I’m sorry,” Adam says. “Seeing it took me by surprise. Not that you were under any obligation to tell me about it.” Ronan can see him withdrawing into himself, the portcullis dropping down. “We should get some sleep. It’s late.”
Adam retreats into Declan’s old room. Ronan lies awake in the dark, staring at that damned toy car, and wants to scream at the unfairness of it all. He never asked for a soulmark, or a soulmate. He doesn’t want either.
He wants Adam. He doesn’t see how he could ever feel for anyone else what he feels for Adam, marked by the universe or not.
—
If Adam had ever imagined the moment when he first saw his soulmark on someone else’s skin (which of course he hadn’t, he was far too rational for such a futile exercise), he would not have expected his first emotion to be anger. But as his fingers trace the familiar thorns and leaves on Ronan’s back in shaking disbelief, anger is exactly what he feels.
He’s put so much care into this thing with Ronan. So much detailed thought and consideration into deciding if he wants there to be a thing between them. When Ronan kissed him, he had been sure of his decision to kiss him back. Unlike so much else in his life, he had chosen Ronan for himself.
Except it now turns out that he hasn’t. Ronan had been chosen for him years ago, and Adam had no say in it at all.
Fury flares up, thick and ugly, almost choking him. He wants to tear that mark off Ronan’s skin, scratch until it was unrecognisable.
His father’s fury. The taint in his blood, rising up. Disgust mingles with the anger. He retracts his fingers from Ronan’s skin and moves back, needing to give Ronan that layer of protection from him.
Adam can’t be angry with Ronan, because the more Ronan says, the more it becomes clear that he had no choice in this either. Adam has always wondered why Ronan would choose him, and now it all makes sense. It was the soulmark that was attracting him, not anything about Adam himself. That ridiculous story about being drawn to Adam before they even spoke makes that perfectly clear. Ronan’s feelings and choices are being controlled by a random external force with no comprehensible motives, and he’s not even aware of it. It’s cruel and unfair, and Adam’s blood boils on Ronan’s behalf.
His stomach churns as he wonders how much his own feelings have been controlled by the same force. Being with Ronan is not the safe choice, the easy choice, the logical choice, and part of Adam had been surprised that he had made it. Now he knows why.
He makes an excuse and retreats to Declan’s room, accepting the guilt he feels at the hurt in Ronan’s eyes. He can’t be around Ronan right now. He needs to think through this revelation and consider the implications carefully. But as Adam stares sightlessly up at the dark ceiling, all his treacherous mind does is replay the taste of Ronan’s mouth, the warm slide of Ronan’s hands on his bare skin, the exhilarating feeling of being wanted, every part of him. Of being enough.
Adam remembers nights flying in the passenger seat of Ronan’s car, Ronan’s hands sure and certain on the wheel, the warm flick of his eyes as he glances at Adam, the steady comfortable silence between them over the thump of Ronan’s music. Their own safe little world, bright against the darkness. That despite all his plans and ambitions, sometimes feels like the only world Adam needs.
He doesn’t want to lose it. Maybe it’s built on predetermined choices, but does that matter? If they both want it? If it makes them both happy?
He drifts off to sleep warmed by that burning defiance.
—
What happens the following day snuffs all that out.
“I don’t want to be with you. It was a mistake.”
They are the hardest words Adam has ever had to say. Even harder than telling the cops that he wanted to press charges against his father. But he managed to do that for Ronan, and he can do this for him too.
All he needs to bolster his resolve is to look at the purple fingermarks on Ronan’s throat. Left by Adam’s fingers, when Adam choked him.
When Ronan let him. When Ronan refused to defend himself in any way, in case he hurt Adam. When Ronan was ready to die rather than hurt Adam.
As if Adam was whole. As if Adam was innocent. As if Adam deserved to be protected.
All because the soulmark was controlling him. Because the soulmark wouldn’t let him do otherwise. An insidious magic that forces Ronan to neglect his own wellbeing for Adam’s without him even being aware of it.
Adam always knew that he would hurt his soulmate, and now he has visible proof of it. He has to set him free.
“You wanted me too,” says Ronan. His voice is gruff, but Adam knows him well enough to hear all the pain he’s trying so desperately to hide. “On my birthday. When you decide something, you always stick to it.”
His shoulders set defiantly, while those blue eyes try to pierce through all Adam’s defences. The trouble is that Ronan knows him too, now. Adam let him get too close, and now he is paying the price.
“Not in this. I was wrong about Blue,” and oh, how Adam hates himself for knowing how to pick the words that will hurt Ronan the most. “Not surprising I’d be wrong about you too.”
Ronan flinches, but he doesn’t give up, because he’s the only person Adam has ever met who can match him in stubbornness.
“Don’t lie to me. This is about my soulmark, isn’t it?”
Adam can’t. He can’t lie to that raw exposed look on Ronan’s face.
“Yes.”
“I told you, I don’t care about my soulmate. You’re the person I want. I said it didn’t matter, and I meant it.”
Adam knows he has to match him, truth for truth. Even if his truth doesn’t mean what Ronan thinks it does.
“And I meant it when I said it does matter. I can’t do this, Ronan.”
Adam says it with more raw honesty than he’s ever given anyone in his life, and Ronan can see that. Ronan always sees Adam.
As Adam can see the moment when Ronan believes him, when the light in his eyes goes out.
Gansey told me not to break him.
Ronan will come through this, he tells himself, as he watches Ronan stumble away. He will survive this, as he has every other loss he’s suffered. He will be safe and protected, and someday he will find someone who won’t break him and be happy.
Adam can bear this, for Ronan’s sake. He has to.
—
Ronan’s reaction to his break with Adam surprises even him.
It isn’t that it doesn’t hurt. The pain is out of proportion for something that wasn’t even a relationship - because one night of making out does not constitute a relationship, he tells himself, ignoring all the nights that came before it, the laughter and loaded glances in the BMW, the intimate silence of St Agnes. Some days it feels as if Adam reached into Ronan’s chest and tore his heart down the middle.
He has to get rid of the couch. He chops it up and dumps the remains in one of the barns, then dreams a new couch to replace it, sleek in black leather.
But.
Ronan finds he can manage the pain. It doesn’t overwhelm him as it did after his father died. Perhaps he’s developed a higher tolerance, or perhaps he has more tools to deal with it.
Some things help. Dropping out of the stifling routine of Aglionby not only lets him breathe more freely but means that he doesn’t have to see Adam every day. Only when all four of them - five, often, with Henry Cheng, and Ronan sometimes thinks the worst part of this whole thing is being forced to be grateful for the buffering presence of Henry Cheng - eat together at Nino’s, or gather to watch movies at Monmouth, or go for long hikes in the fields where Cabeswater used to be. Without a word being exchanged, Ronan and Adam made a pact that they will not let the rift between them hurt Gansey, so miraculously restored to them, and so they look at each other, and speak to each other, and join forces to mock the others as if nothing had happened. But they never sit next to each other, or fully meet each other's eyes, or touch each other, and Adam never rides in the BMW. The others are scrupulously careful never to comment.
What helps the most, Ronan realises, is that he has nothing to regret. At least he tried. He was brave enough to put his feelings out there for Adam to see. Yes, Adam ultimately rejected them, but that was his choice to make. It would have been worse if he had lost Adam because he was too scared to say anything, if he had let him slip through his fingers without a fight.
The months pass, and the pain subsides to a dull throb. By the end of the summer, Ronan can tell Gansey that he’ll be fine if Gansey goes to South America and mean it, and Gansey can believe him. Adam has left for Harvard by then, which is both better, because Ronan doesn’t have to brace himself to see Adam, and worse, because he can’t see how Adam is doing. He has to rely on second-hand information from the others, because he won’t email or text Adam and force himself where he isn’t wanted. Any communication would have to be initiated by Adam, and it isn’t.
Once, Ronan had thought that being alone at the Barns, able to do whatever he wanted with no-one interfering, was the best future he could imagine. The reality is different. Not bad, but…he wouldn’t mind people interfering every now and then. Opal and Matthew visit regularly, and he lets Declan drag him out to DC for the holidays. Gansey and Blue and Henry swamp him with more messages than he’s willing to reply to. But as spring comes, Ronan admits that it’s not enough. He starts going to farmers markets and talking to the other stallholders. He volunteers at an animal shelter.
And…he takes a photo of his soulmark and posts it on some of the websites Gansey used to show him. If his soulmate sees it, Ronan is finally ready to meet him. He feels he has something to offer him now.
Ronan’s had no response to the photo by the time summer rolls around and the travellers return, but the knowledge that he’s taken that step on a new path grounds him when Blue tells him Adam is coming to stay at Fox Way for a few days.
They meet when Gansey drags them all out to a lake on a blazing hot day. Ronan sneaks glances at Adam as they settle on the lake shore, noting his well-cut hair and smarter clothes, and winces inwardly at his new voice, accent carefully removed. Ronan expected Adam to be surfing on the satisfaction of a successful year at Harvard; from Gansey’s gushing reports it sounds as if he is top of every class as usual. But Adam is abstracted; his smile doesn’t reach his eyes and that almost invisible crease between his fair brows is ever present. Ronan frowns, and has to remind himself that Adam’s mood is none of his concern any more.
Adam rouses enough to agree to swimming in the lake, stripping off his shirt without any self-consciousness over his scars. The only way to avoid staring is for Ronan to start an all-out water fight. Adam catches Ronan’s eye with some of the old mischief as they form an alliance to thoroughly dunk Gansey. Adam laughs heartily at Gansey’s spluttering, and for the first time that day he seems completely present. His eyes meet Ronan's, bright with mirth, and for a moment it feels as if they had never been separated.
“Adam Parrish,” gasps Blue, full of shocked amusement, “what is that on your back? Have you got a tattoo?”
Adam’s face freezes. He turns to look at Blue, and Ronan sees his back.
—
For a moment Adam is fourteen again, listening to his classmate’s mocking voice in the locker room. Then the present rushes in, the sunshine, the cool water, Blue’s teasing voice.
She can see it. How can she see it?
The guy had said the removal would last about five years. It’s been five years.
How had he not noticed?
Because he never looks at that spot on his body in mirrors. It hurts too much.
“That isn’t a tattoo,” Gansey says, in a hushed voice. “That’s a soulmark.” He looks up at Adam with wide eyes, so fucking pleased for him. It’s such a quintessentially Gansey look that affection chokes Adam’s throat before it gives way to guilt. “Didn’t I tell you, Adam, that some people still get them when they’re adults?”
“He didn’t just get it.” Ronan’s voice, bitter as black coffee. Ronan, who is now behind him. Ronan, who can see his back. “He got it when he was fourteen. Right, Parrish?”
It takes every scrap of courage Adam has to turn and look at Ronan. The devastation on Ronan’s face is every bit as terrible as he imagined. He can only get out one word.
“Yes.”
The water ripples as Gansey moves closer. “But…I’ve never seen it before. And you told me you didn’t have a soulmark.”
“I had it removed.” Adam doesn’t take his eyes off Ronan. Shudders inwardly at the spasm that crosses Ronan’s face. “I couldn’t risk my father seeing it. And it was easier to just say I didn’t have one.”
It does nothing to disperse the storm brewing in Ronan’s face.
“When did you know?” he bites out.
“That night. When I saw your tattoo properly.”
Ronan stills. Adam feels as if he’s stabbed him.
“You lied to me.”
“No. I told you that seeing your soulmark changed things for me. That was true.”
Ronan’s face goes completely dull, as if someone has flicked a switch in his brain.
“Fuck you, Parrish,” he says, and walks away.
Adam runs after him, but all he can see is that terrible look on Ronan’s face, so he stumbles on the sand of the lake bed and nearly falls in the water. By the time he catches up, Ronan has pulled on his shirt and his boots and is opening the door of the BMW.
“Ronan, please. I didn’t mean…I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry. Sorry I was such a disappointment to you.”
Adam feels sick. “That wasn’t why I didn’t tell you! You’re-”
You’re everything to me.
But he can’t say that. Or that he’s spent the last year and a half missing Ronan like he lost a lung. That seeing Ronan today was the first time in months he’s felt real.
So he falls silent.
“You know,” Ronan says, “I put my soulmark up on those websites a few months ago. I knew it was a long shot, but…I wanted to find him.”
Adam has never considered this. That by keeping silent he was leaving Ronan to a hopeless search, a never-ending wait. He feels a renewed surge of self-disgust.
“I’m sorry,” he says, feeling the uselessness of the words even as he speaks them. “I should have told you the truth.”
“Yes, you should.” Ronan’s voice is merciless. “But turns out my soulmate is a liar and a coward.” He laughs harshly, the sound grinding in Adam’s ears. “You’re a disappointment to me too.”
Adam doesn’t stop him from driving off.
—
Adam gets back to the lake shore to find Blue waiting for him. The look on her face makes him wish that he’d driven himself, so he could follow Ronan's example and make his escape.
“So. Ronan is your soulmate,” says Blue, straight to the point as usual.
Adam can’t meet her eyes. “Where are Gansey and Henry?”
“Gone for a walk. We decided that I was the most likely to succeed at cutting through your bullshit.”
Adam folds his arms. Blue glares at him.
Adam knows he can hold out against her. Only Ronan has the key to his defences. But…it’s all out in the open now, anyway. And what’s the alternative? Sit in silence and hear Ronan’s last words echoing over and over? Close his eyes and see that devastated look on Ronan’s face?
He sighs and starts talking. Tells Blue the whole pathetic mangled story. When he stumbles to a halt, her face looks uncomfortable, almost pained.
“You must have a very low opinion of me, Adam.”
“What?”
“When I found out Gansey was my soulmate, I knew I was fated to kill my true love if I kissed him, but I didn’t push him away.”
“But-”
“That’s why you pushed Ronan away, right? Because you thought you would hurt him? So you must think I’m very selfish not to have done the same to Gansey.”
“That’s different. I know you’d never hurt Gansey on purpose. It was magic, it was out of your control-”
“Like having your body possessed by a demon?”
Fuck. Adam can’t believe he walked into that so easily. His brain seems to be only working at half capacity. Ronan’s face is clogging too much of it.
He glares at Blue. “That’s not the same.”
“No, because I had an element of choice, and you had absolutely none.” Blue frowns at him. “I should have realised you seemed to be dealing with that whole incident suspiciously well, but…”
“You had other things on your mind.”
“The demon made you hurt me too,” Blue points out, and Adam winces. “So why haven’t you walked away from me?”
“You wouldn’t let me do it again.”
“You didn’t do it the first time, because that wasn’t you.”
“I’ve hurt people without any help from the demon.” Each word seems to burn his lips as it leaves his mouth. He can’t look at her. “I scared you with my anger when we were dating. I’ve said cruel things to all of you, and I meant to do it. Gansey’s first reaction to finding out about me and Ronan was to worry I’d break him.”
“Adam, stop being so hard on yourself.” Blue puts a hand on his arm, and Adam forces himself not to flinch away. “We’re all cruel and angry at times. I know I hurt you when we broke up, do you still hold that against me?”
“Of course not.” Adam doesn’t understand how she can ask that. He was the one in the wrong, not her.
“Yes, you scared me that day, but that hasn’t stopped us being friends. I’m not scared of you now.”
Adam finally looks at her. Blue’s smiling at him tentatively, and a tight band around his heart eases, along with his guilt about that long-ago day.
“Adam…if I can deal with your anger, so can Ronan. He isn’t the kind of person who puts up with anyone’s bullshit.”
“Unless he loves them.”
He sees Blue acknowledge the point, but she still shakes her head. “Only to a point, even then.”
“Soulmates are different.”
Blue frowns. “Do you think having a soulmate takes away all free will?”
“Doesn’t the very nature of the concept mean that? If the universe has decided that you’re going to love this person, that your life will be incomplete without them, what choice do you have?”
“Every choice,” says Blue emphatically, eyes burning. “Soulmarks aren’t a command or an obligation, they’re a guiding hand. Directing you to someone who could make you happy, and make your life richer. But making the decision to embrace that bond is completely up to you.”
“Is it?”
“Yes. I’m not blind to Gansey’s faults because he’s my soulmate. He irritates me and yes, even hurts me sometimes. But I love him, and my life is richer for being with him, so I make the choice every day to stay. If he ever did anything so hurtful that it changed that balance, then I would leave.”
“Would you?”
“Yes. I would, and so would Ronan.”
There is no doubt in her voice, and for the first time Adam considers the possibility that she might be right.
“Adam, this can’t be a new idea to you. Even basic literature about soulmates discusses this in detail, and you’re the most thorough researcher I know.”
“I’ve never read much about it,” Adam admits. He can feel his face heating up. “I didn’t want to think about it.”
“Because it scared you.” He shifts under Blue’s knowing gaze. “Deciding to be in a relationship with Ronan was one thing, but soulmates…fate and destiny…uncontrollable variables imposed by external forces…no wonder you ran away from him.”
“I didn’t run.”
It’s a feeble protest that Blue easily stares down. Maybe she’s right, Adam realises uncomfortably. Maybe he started running from the moment he first saw that soulmark. Yes, he removed it for fear of his father, but it also gave him an excuse not to have to face the implications. Once he left the trailer, he could have got the removal reversed, or at least started telling people that he had a soulmark, but he hadn’t. Easier and safer to bury it all. Then seeing his matching mark on Ronan, already unnerved by the depths of his feelings for him…
Yes. He had run.
“Time to stop running,” says Blue briskly, but her hand is gentle as she squeezes his shoulder. “Decide what choice you want to make.”
—
When Ronan gets back to the Barns, he takes a scalding hot shower, and then starts playing the noisiest, most violent computer game he has. Anything to drown out the voice in his head.
Adam was your soulmate all along, and he didn’t want you to know.
There’s nothing good about that, whichever way he looks at it. Either Adam didn’t want a soulmate at all, or he didn’t want Ronan in particular, and he’s not sure which is worse.
No, the worst thing is that if he closes his eyes, he can see that thorn-covered vine on Adam’s perfect skin, and feel the instinctive leap of joy that had consumed him when he recognised it, before all the agonising implications sank in.
I was right. We’re marked for each other. I was right all along.
Ronan grits his teeth against the burning behind his eyes and rips apart some more zombies. He’s so determined to focus entirely on the game that it takes him a while to realise that someone is banging loudly on the front door.
He’s tempted to ignore it, but it’s probably Gansey. Ronan doesn’t particularly feel like dealing with his shocked sympathy, but the longer he leaves it, the worse it will probably be. And although he doesn’t want to admit it, he’s probably better off not being alone at the moment.
He throws down the controller, stomps to the door and jerks it open, ready to bitch about Gansey invading his privacy, only for the words to freeze on his lips as he discovers it’s not Gansey at the door.
It’s Adam. The person in the world he both most and least wants to see. His face is set and determined in a way that makes Ronan uneasy, and his defences kick into place without thought.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
Adam lifts his chin, and holds out his hand in a weirdly formal gesture.
“Hi. I’m Adam. I’m your soulmate, and I’ve been wanting to meet you since I was fourteen.”
Ronan stares bemusedly at his hand, trying to process what is going on.
“I told myself I didn’t. That I wanted to choose who I wanted to spend my life with myself rather than having it dictated to me. So when I did choose someone, when I did fall in love…” His blue eyes catch Ronan’s, and…and Adam has never looked at him like that , not even on that night. Something bright and warm builds in Ronan’s chest, stealing his breath away. “...I didn’t react well to discovering I’d chosen my soulmate without knowing it. It made me doubt all my feelings. It made me doubt all your feelings, and…that’s why I ran away.”
Ronan still can’t catch his breath.
“I’m sorry,” Adam barrels on, obviously unnerved by his silence. “I know I hurt you and I’m sorry. I should have told you the truth. But if it’s any consolation, I hurt myself too. I’ve missed you every minute since I pushed you away. My life is…poorer without you, and I…I know I messed up, but if you give me another chance, I won’t waste it.”
Ronan can see that Adam is genuinely afraid that he’s screwed them up beyond repair. That Ronan will turn him away.
Blind stupid idiot. So sure that he’s not enough. That he can be easily discarded or replaced. No wonder they’re fucking soulmates.
“You’d better not.”
Ronan grabs Adam’s still outstretched hand and pulls him forward. Adam stumbles into him, clutching Ronan’s shoulders to prevent himself from falling. Ronan catches him, kissing him with all the pent up hunger of months of separation, trembling with relief when Adam kisses him back with equal ferocity, pushing him against the door post.
Whatever Adam says, Ronan knows in his bones that this moment was fated as soon as that soulmark appeared on their backs.
Fuck choices and logic and reason. Adam needs them, but he doesn’t.
He has faith the universe knows what it’s doing.