Page 29 of Ex Somnis

“Jasp.”

“Okay.” He looks at his cards. “So, there are three significant connections in her chart.”

I wait.

“Three,” he says again, like I might not have heard it.

“I heard you.”

“Like, three parallel⁠—”

“Jasper.”

He looks up. “You. And if I didn’t know better… Paul Bennett and the other guy who were outside the inn when shit went down.”

“You saw that?”

“I may have peeked. I still need their moon signs to confirm,” he adds quickly. “Technically. So it’s not one hundred percent… but yeah. I’m pretty sure.”

“Three,” I breathe out.

“Three.” He nods.

“What does that even mean?”

“It means…” he says carefully, “… that she has three fated connections. Three people she’s meant to⁠—”

“How? She’s with Paul now, and then Ridge, and then maybe eventually I get my turn?” I do the math without meaning to. At least I’ll still be somewhat young when the other two have saggy balls. “When I’m what, forty-five?”

“No.” He shakes his head. “Not after each other. Now. All of you. Now and always.”

Why would she need me if she already has them?

The thing about growing up, how I grew up, is you get very good at making yourself smaller than the space you’re in. You learn to need less, ask for less, take up less, because the alternative is needing something from someone who doesn’t have it to give. That’s a kind of pain I stopped letting myself feel somewhere around age eleven.

I stopped wanting things I couldn’t have.

Stopped asking.

Stopped hoping for the things that were never going to be mine.

Somewhere in all of that, I think I stopped believing I was the kind of person who gets chosen.

I’m the guy people call when the sink leaks, the car won’t start, or when there’s a body-sized problem, and no one else wants to carry it.

Chosen is different.

Chosen means they didn’t need the nearest pair of hands.

And then she arrived and looked at me like I was worth looking at. She made me banana bread with sprinkles because she heard the thing I didn’t say. She bit my arm when she was angry on my behalf, pressed her thumb over my stretch marks, and said they look pretty without making a thing of it. Somewhere in all of that, I started believing again.

And then I kissed her.

And she ran.

And now Jasper is telling me she might be mine after all, but also theirs.

It’s either the most generous thing the universe has ever offered me or the cruelest joke it’s ever played.