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“How did you know that?” she hisses.
“Really? You think you aren’t obvious?” Dice muses.
“Gage won’t tell anyone, because I assured him we’d do nothing, but he’s now focusing more on killing Hannah’s minions than worrying about the portal that doesn’t really matter anymore.”
“It explodes,” we all three tell Dice in unison just as he’s about to ask.
“Hashtag, spoiler alert,” he says with a frown.
“Well, Roslyn’s parents and my mother are with Karma and Kicera, so I have a few hours to kill. Chaz said you’re looking at new variables, but I can help with the little things most people overlook.”
He sounds so helpful that all three of us just look at him like we’re waiting on the anticlimactic punchline. It’ll probably start with a hashtag.
“What? I’m the king of little things,” he says, then frowns. “Scratch that. It’s entirely misleading, if you know what I mean. Did you see the size of the baby I put in Karma?” he goes on.
And…the moment is over just that fast.
“He definitely fixates on the little things,” Kya mutters under her breath before gesturing over to all the boards on all the walls. “Get caught up.”
“Slade doesn’t learn about this. And neither does Dad,” I tell him.
“Or Drackus,” Kimber adds.
“Don’t tell the three most overprotective, murderous psychopaths I know that I’m helping you find a way to save the scarred menace, but that it might still cost you your life, despite this apparent hell he’s undergone to keep you safe. Hashtag, no fucking worries,” he says without ever turning back around, his eyes on the board.
“I didn’t tell Chaz about that,” Kya quickly tells me, hand in the air like she’s swearing it.
“I didn’t tell Gage that either. The love story is still a secret, since I’m worried this version of Slade might kill someone for knowing,” Kimber adds.
I run a frustrated hand through my hair.
“Thad killed Roslyn’s mom in most of these timelines,” Kya goes on.
“Hashtag, trouble in paradise,” Dice chirps.
“If you start doing that, I’m going to turn your voice into a meow,” I threaten.
I stare at his back, waiting on a retort, but he says nothing. My eyes go back to the board we have laid out between the three of us, and I start marking off possible ways to connect the other new variables.
“It’s crazy to think that I was just excited, believing that Slade was planning for a future, and that we were finally going to come out on top,” Kya says softly, looking down.
“That day he finally stopped fighting me, I’d shown up to the Trout massacre, and I thought it happened then. The spark of wanting to live. I think it did happen, until he sat down and read his journal, forcing himself to remember why he couldn’t deviate from his plan,” I say softly.
“I get that,” Kya sighs. “Chaz came with me, and I…I think I fell in love with him even more.” She pauses and glances over at a grinning Dice. “Tell him that and I’ll castrate you.”
His smile falls away.
“Anyway,” she goes on, “I didn’t even realize how much I needed that. To finally see someone who actually hauled me into that place. Someone who played a part in my hell. To rip their face from their skull while Chaz held them in place…I realized I could fac
e any future with him. I finally felt immortal when I stared into their eyes, knowing I could destroy them just as they tried to destroy me. And I was deadlier than I’d ever felt,” she goes on. “Some of those broken pieces faded away,” she says, glancing back up at me then to Kimber.
Something occurs to me. Actually, three things occur to me at once.
My eyes flick over the board, and I write down two things that has Kya’s eyebrows arching as she frowns like she’s trying to make sense of the written request.
“I know it’s weird, but can you do that?” I ask, pointing at what I’ve written but refuse to say aloud, especially with Dice in the room to make a hundred hashtag jokes.
“Are you serious?” Kimber asks.
