She said I was too naive, too foolish to recognize it. That being alone would forever be my curse, just as I’d cursed her to the same fate.
This, from the woman who’d just gotten caught in the midst of a decades-long affair by the man she claimed to love.
The man who—until that moment—I’d called Dad.
It was the manifestation of my magick—magick that shouldn’t have existed in the child of two mundane parents—that gave away her ugly secret and broke apart the only family I’d ever known.
To this day, I still don’t know who my real father is. Backed into an impossible corner, my mother admitted her indiscretions, but she refused to implicate her partner in crime. For all I know, he’s not even aware of my existence.
It was easier for her and everyone else to blame me, as if I somehow divinely conceived myself, all for the sole purpose of decimating their happily ever after.
“You’re cursed, Ansel,” she said matter-of-factly one day, turning her back on me and ashing her cigarette into the kitchen sink. She took one last drag, then dropped the butt down the drain, flicking on the garbage disposal as if it could destroy the evidence of every terrible thing she’d ever done. “Cursed as the red hair on your bastard head.”
I was ten years old.
I should be able to laugh about it now, right? All that ancient history. Water under the bridge, as the saying goes.
But here’s the thing: I’veneverbeen able to laugh about it. Not then, and certainly not now. Some wounds just cut too deep, even for the guy who lives to make everyone else laugh. The guy who finds the silver lining in just abouteverydisaster I’ve had the pleasure of navigating.
For all her faults, my mother was nothing if not convincing; I spent my entire adolescence believing I was the ungodly, unlovedthingthat broke my family apart. Once that seed took root? Well. Just add a little water and a healthy dose of resentment from the man who spent a decade loving another man’s son, a mother who turned day drinking into an Olympic sport, and a baby sister caught in the crossfire, andvoila! A life and all its infinite potential—myinfinite potential—derailed.
There was a long time—dark, shadowy nights curled up with a bottle of pills and a razor blade—when I wondered if my mother was right. If maybe Iwascursed to be alone, to skirt the edges of real love like some desperate spectator who could look but never touch. Never know. Never feel.
Then I came to Arcana Academy—a last-ditch effort to get myself back on track after barely passing high school. Here, I learned to embrace my magick rather than be ashamed of it. I met the guys, connected with my fire energy, discovered my Sun Arcana. I made an oath to the Keepers of the Grave and learned what it meant to have real brothers. To stand for something so much bigger than your own petty crap.
And just when I thought things couldn’t get better, Stevie rolled onto campus—a mass of wild curls and crazy energy and pure, uncut happiness. A woman who turned my world inside out, shone a light in all the dark places, and rescued my heart.
Even now, despite our dire circumstances, just the thought of her name brings a smile to my lips. After all the time we spent together—the hikes, the laughs, the hugs… That kiss tonight was everything. A promise, a gift, a future.
So no, maybe I can’t laugh about all the messed up shit my parents put me through. But I’ve got the next best thing.
Vindication.
My mother? That woman was dead wrong.
Idoknow love. And it’s not the twisted, conditional bullshit so many families try to pedal in the wake of their own colossal failures at it. This love is real. Vast. Perfect, even when we ourselves are anything but.
And that kind of love? Friendship? Brotherhood? There’snothingI won’t do to protect it.
To protect them.
“Don’t get any smart ideas,” Casey Appleton warns, as if she hasanyfucking clue how bad things are about to get for her.
“Oh, I’ve gotplentyof ideas. But don’t worry, Case.” I grin, sweet and disarming. “None of them are particularly smart.”
She presses the gun into my forehead and gives it a hard shove, but her lazy smirk is a dead giveaway: she doesn’t see me as a threat.
No one ever does.
I hold back a smile, thinking of that game where someone asks, “If you could have just one superpower, what would it be?”
Flight, invisibility, mind reading, healing—sure, those are the obvious answers.
You know what no one ever says?
I want to be perpetually underestimated.
But that’smyanswer, and it’s where the real superpower lies. Because being perpetually underestimated? That makes you the most dangerous person in the room, every fucking time.
