Lucien flashed him a crooked smile. “Maybe we drove each other crazy in our past lives and they destroyed the books, hoping we wouldn’t follow in those footsteps.”
Calder huffed a laugh. “Maybe.”
“But if past me is anything like present me, there’s no chance I would have left a journal. I’m not much for writing my thoughts. I’m one of those live-in-the-moment guys.”
Calder’s smile returned, looking a little easier. “Not one of those deep inner reflection types?”
Lucien shrugged. “Rather be living than sitting around thinking about living.” He paused and watched Calder as he stared at the wall, lost in thought. “Why don’t you start a journal now?”
Calder’s expression darkened almost instantly, and Lucien replayed his question in his head. Had he said something to insult him?
“I’ve thought about it, but…”
“What?”
Turning, Calder set his pan down and rested his hands on his narrow hips. “They’re all so confident that this time will be different. That we won’t die and we’ll stop the pestilents. But all those times we didn’t, we left journals behind to help future generations. What if writing one now jinxes us?”
Lucien grinned because he couldn’t help it. Part of him wanted to cross the room and fold the man into his arms, but that seemed like a really bad idea for too many reasons, starting with not wanting to feel Calder push him away.
“What if that was your reason for never writing a journal in the past?”
Calder’s eyes widened and his sweet mouth fell open, causing Lucien to chuckle. Clearly he hadn’t thought of that angle.
“But I do think that whether you start a journal or not will have no impact on our ability to defeat the pestilents.” Lucien’s smile softened. “When we’re all six hundred years old, you might want to look back at your memory of your first days here. Or your first memories of meeting your soul mate.”
“True,” Calder conceded with a half smile.
Lucien stood and stared down at Calder. Like him, the Weaver was dressed in old, faded jeans and his white T-shirt had a hole in the shoulder. Light-brown skin peeked from that rip, and he had a sudden mental image of seeing Calder naked, with all that lovely skin exposed.
He cleared his throat and bent to grab a paintbrush. “I’ll go along the edges with a brush since I can reach more easily. You go behind me with the roller. Sound good?”
“Works for me.” Calder switched to the roller with a long handle.
As they got to work, silence fell between them, but it didn’t feel uncomfortable or tense like it had in the past. All the same, Lucien racked his brain for another subject, wanting to keep this easy peace between them.
“I grew up in Arizona,” he volunteered suddenly. He inwardly winced when he caught Calder twitching out of the corner of his eyes. “I was a wild kid who never turned away a dare. Got into a lot of trouble. I once jumped off the school building with homemade wings.”
A scoffing noise jumped from Calder’s throat, but it wasn’t derisive. Merely playful. “You did not.”
“Yep. Broke an arm and a leg with that stunt.” He swiped paint along the crown molding, which Dane had already painted with a brilliant white and masked off.
Calder shook his head, a smile still playing along his lips. “I can see you pulling something like that.”
“The kid who made the damn wings was too chicken shit to try them himself.” He chuckled for a second. “I did enjoy flying through the air for all of two seconds.”
“Insane,” Calder muttered.
“Probably, but it was enough to get me to go skydiving at eighteen. Fucking loved that.”
Calder shuddered. “I’ll take the water over the sky any time.”
“Ever worry about sharks?”
“Nah, though I did see one once when I was diving. It was fantastic.” Calder started rolling paint on the walls.
“A great white?”
Calder laughed and shook his head. “That’s everyone’s first question. No, it was a school shark. They get to be only five to seven feet long and are very skittish around divers. I think he got separated from the rest of his school.”
Lucien shuddered. “No, thanks. I would have been out of there the second I saw him.”
Calder grinned at him. “You would have stayed. He was beautiful and sleek. A silver flash in the water and he was gone.”
Okay, so maybe when they weren’t fighting, Lucien could sit and listen to Calder talk all day. Even about sharks, one of his few great fears in the world. He made them sound wondrous and precious with just a couple of words.
“Were you a firebug as a kid?” Calder suddenly inquired.
Lucien blinked at him, trying to get his brain to catch up to the new topic. He’d been lulled into deep blue depths with a forest of kelp and sleek sharks zipping by him. “No, thank goodness. But I did play with the idea of becoming a fireman at one time. Instead, I opened a microbrewery.”
Laughing, Calder spread more paint. “Those couldn’t be more opposite careers. Why a microbrewery?”
“Love beer, and a good friend of mine was great at brewing it. But we were both shit at marketing.” He shrugged. “It didn’t take off.”
Calder’s eyes narrowed on him. “Was it a boyfriend?”
Lucien paused, listening to that subtle shift in tone. Was that accusation in Calder’s voice? Or something almost predatory? Lucien mentally laughed it off. “How’d you guess that?”
“There was something in the way you said ‘good friend.’ Let me guess, you two broke up, and that tanked the business.”
“We did. And yeah, it did. Learned a hard lesson: Don’t mix business and personal. It’ll blow up in your face.”
Truth was, Brad had broken Lucien’s heart, and to this day, he didn’t trust anyone enough to let them get that close again. What the fuck was he going to do when he met his actual soul mate?
Which brought back to mind what Grey had told them.
“What do you think about the tangled thread between you and me?”
Calder went still, throwing Lucien a quick glance. “I have no idea.”
Lucien had a few ideas, mostly about the attraction that annoyed him.
He couldn’t tear his eyes from Calder as he returned to using the roller. The muscles in his arms flexed and strained. A strand of inky black hair fell over his eye, and he blew it out of the way. His hair looked so soft, begging for his touch.
Sighing, he tore his gaze from Calder, returning it to the wall. “We have to find a way to get along. Clay and Grey were right—we put the others in danger when we’re paying more attention to fighting each other than fighting the pestilents.”
“We’re not doing so bad right now,” Calder pointed out.
“True,” he agreed. He sent Calder a sheepish grin and swiped more paint onto the wall. “Tell me about your first boyfriend.”
“His name was Adam, and he was in my science class when I was a junior in high school. We went out for six months, but it was a secret since he wasn’t out. I was, so I eventually got tired of having to hide all the time,” he said with a shrug. “I broke it off with him. After that, I only dated men who were out. You?”