He did not apologize to her; he only tilted the phone down and kept listening.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, flashing a smile.
“Oh, um?” Lyla blinked, glancing at Wolfe and then back at me. “Nothing. I just feel like standing, is all.”
“Makes sense,” I took a drink of champagne. “I thought it had to do with his boner, but if you are more comfortable.”
Wolfe kicked me, and I laughed.
“Got to the best part yet?” I asked, leaning on my elbows.
I wanted to see it. The moment my name flashed in his eyes, knowing full well I wouldn’t get what I hoped for. Because, unlike me, Wolfe didn’t care that we shared a soul. He was content to play out this poly nightmare as long as she stayed just a little bit his. And if I were being honest, I wasn’t sure Daphne would let him go. Not even for me.
“Fucking hell,” he breathed, his features going ragged, and I already knew Lyla would spend her evening paying for everything Daphne was doing to his body. But then I saw it: the confirmation in his pretty eyes.
It was not jealousy or pain. Or the edge of madness, where nails bent into the floorboards.
No, it was love.
And love was a dangerous emotion for a man who had been taught never to feel it.
Wolfe was a black sheet of ice, splintering into a winter valley. His parents had forged him from shadow to kill things and sleep at night, and I don’t care who you are, you do not walk away from that kind of world-building without being a whole different level of fucked up. For him, nothing was real, and nothing was pretend. Everything had to be reduced to letters and numbers, because it didn’t matter how much red stained your hands as long as the equation held.
But love threw him off a cliff. It was ink crumpling in the fire. A black draught of poison that died at dawn. He had spent his entire life avoiding mirrors until the day he saw himself in her and could never look away.
I watched as he tore the buds from his ears and placed them in my hand.
“Shit.” He rose to his feet, and true to his nature, didn’t give a fuck about the tent in his pants or the attention it drew.
“What?” I asked, standing and reaching for Lyla, who was pale and beginning to come apart at the edges.
“Nothing. I just realized something.” He shook his head and tossed my phone against my chest.
“Like what?” Lyla used me as leverage to get to Wolfe, slipping neatly onto his side. But he did not feel her.
“Nothing. I,” Wolfe cleared his voice. “I just didn’t say it back.”
I knew what he meant, and it hit with a splatter. It felt as if someone had turned off the lights in the whole damn universe.
“It’s fine,” he shrugged, walking away. “We need to go.”
Daphne: Love you. Goodnight.
sixteen
Daphne: Lemon Bars
It turns out babies in Maine are born the same way as in Seattle. Through the same violent love. Through the same wild screams. The same harrowing moment when the center of the earth pulls. The only difference was the land beyond the window, and the way the sunlight stretched without ever finding his face.
“You did well today,” Finn praised, plopping down on the painted white stairs outside the birthing woman’s home. He pulled his knees, letting his sandy brown curls fall forward.
“Thanks,” I murmured behind a yawn, stretching my arms wide until my knuckles brushed past him. Ten hours in the trenches of childbirth does something to a body.
“I am starving,” I groaned, searching the coastal town for a food cart or anything with carbs.
“Yes,” Finn moaned, rubbing his perfectly smooth stomach in distress. “We need sustenance!”
Despite the thorny brambles that twined along the edges of his personality, he was a dream as a midwife. Calm. Sure. Thinking! It was strange to work beside someone so utterly pieced togetherthat even when he unraveled, the world shrugged it off as character development.
