Page 100

I spread my hands. “Maybe it’s very rare that we do things on purpose to hurt each other. Maybe, usually, what we’re doing is trying to feel good or trying to escape or trying to feel some other good emotion, and our real crime is thoughtlessness. We forget about the people who will be hurt if we seek our own pleasure. I think that’s what it was with you and Opal, anyway.”

“I said I don’t want to talk about the past,” said Damian.

“But it’s all connected,” I said, gesturing with both of my hands. “Opal, she wrote in her manuscript that it wasn’t a plan, that it was something she regretted, and I think it was true. I think part of her wanted it—you were saying this last night, Damian, about how part of you wanted things, like part of you wanted to be a woman—”

“That’s the thing you repeat, seriously?” cut in Damian.

“Well, I’m saying, people are complicated.”

“Yeah,” said Damian. “Yeah. I never wanted to hurt you, Leo. Hurting you, knowing I had hurt you… it gutted me.”

I nodded, and my eyes stung, because I knew it was true. Memories swam up in my mind, Damian soothing me when my bond sickness was bad, waking up in bed with Damian in the summer sunlight, Damian holding me against him and promising he was going to find a way to fix everything, Damian licking the place where he’d bit me, Damian, Damian, Damian. He had loved me. He had fucked up, yes, but he had loved me.

Damian turned to Vincent. “You’re saying, Leo, that if I’m going to ask you to forgive me, I have to forgive Vincent, too. I have to accept some part of Vincent maybe wants to hurt me, but not all of him. That, in there too, is the brother that loves me and wants me to be happy. That’s what you’re saying?”

I hadn’t been saying exactly that, but it made sense.

“I can’t,” said Damian, shaking his head at Vincent. “I never got over the betrayal of you and Opal. I was started to try to make peace with that, because she’s dead—”

“You know,” said Vincent, “when she was with me, it was about you.”

“You sure about that?” said Damian. “Opal was complicated, too.”

Vincent looked away, and his eyes were shining.

I wanted to hate them both, for loving her, for missing her, but… well, part of me missed her, too.

I had just as many good memories of Opal as I did of Vincent, memories of her and I going shopping for clothes together, spending hours trying things on and looking each other in our new outfits, telling the other she had to buy those jeans. Memories of her and I lying out on lounge chairs by her pool getting tan talking about school and gossip and boys. Memories of each of us talking to each other about our biggest fears, Opal saying to me that she worried no one would ever love her.

We all loved you, Opal, I thought into the building she’d left me. All of us did.

“I’m sorry,” Damian said softly. “But not Leona, Vincent, not her. I can’t forgive that.”

“I don’t get it,” I said. “Why do you still think there’s some deep and amazing connection between us?”

Damian looked at me, hurt twisting his features. “Why do you think there’s not? You’re the one, Leo.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “And if you thought so before, I think it was because I was flattening myself out, filing off all my rough edges to be whatever you wanted. I built my life around you, Damian. I built myself around you. I grew up thinking I was growing into your wife, your mate, your cwen. I never gave myself a chance to be me for me.”

“And now, when you’re giving yourself that chance, it’s with him?” Damian pointed at Vincent. “Can’t the both of you just not do this? For me? If you ever cared about me—”

“No, I gave up too much for you already,” I said.

Damian turned to look at Vincent.

“Okay,” said Vincent, but he was looking at his coffee cup, not at Damian.

“What?” I said. “What?”

“I’ve never chosen him, Leo,” said Vincent woodenly. “I don’t know if anyone has. People do things for him, but it’s because they want things from him, you know? People always want things from him. So, it’s not a gift, it’s a trade. He doesn’t have anyone except me, and if I—”

“He doesn’t deserve that,” I said, and I was on the verge of tears.

“Maybe not,” said Vincent. “But he’s my brother.”

“So, you’re just done with me?” I breathed.

Vincent looked up at me, and he looked agonized. “Leo, can we talk later? Just you and me.”