AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Those videos and those pictures helped me, too. He didn’t win with me, either.”
But it was costing her to say these words.
For a moment, no one said a word.
“So you’re saying there’s two of you?” Cyclone was back on the Chase thing. He had scooted further up on Payton’s lap so he was standing, and more leaning back against where she was sitting. “Are you him right now? Are you guysthatidentical?”
Kash chuckled.
The tension broke in the room.
A few laughed.
“No, I’m not him.” He squeezed me, rocking me gently from side to side. “Bailey would know. She did know.”
“Hold upagain.” Seraphina had a hand in the air, and she was standing in front of the couch. “You’ve met him?”
Her question was directed toward me.
I nodded. “I did.” I did not tell her the circumstances.
“Wha—Huh?” She gaped again, rotating to Cyclone and back to me, and then to Peter. “Not fair! We don’t know anything that’s going on. Chrissy’s dead, then she’s alive. Payton isactually Cyclone’s mother. Kash has a twin brother. What about me? Do I have a secret mother, too?”
Oh.
Oh, no.
The hope in that last sentence broke me.
I started to pull away from Kash, but he held me back. “They need to do this. Not us,” he murmured in my ear.
Peter edged from his couch, and he knelt in front of Sera- phina. He took her hands in his. “Quinn is your mother, Ser,” he whispered, though all of us could hear.
“But…” Her head folded even farther down, her chin resting against her chest.
Peter scooted all the way up to her, taking her gently into his arms. She went with him, her hands still in fists as her arms wrapped around his neck. “What’s wrong with me? Why is it always me?”
I strained to get free.
Kash kept me back.
I knew he was right, but I just wanted to grab my sister, hold her, say anything I needed to say to take away what she was feeling, and I had no idea what she was feeling. I just knew she was hurting, and it was a hurt that could change a person.
“Honey.” Peter eased back, smoothing the hair down the sides of Seraphina’s face. He framed her face in his hands. “Nothing is wrong with you. Nothing. You know why your mother was how she was with you?”
“Why?” A hiccup-sob.
“Because you were what Quinn knew she needed to be. You’re kind. You’re loving. You got all the goodness from her and from me. They mixed together and made you.”
“Dad.” But she grinned.
He grinned, too. “It’s true.”
“You didn’t get a crazy brain, Ser. We might be smart, but sometimes it sucks. Do you realize how hard it is to shut downthis thing?” Cyclone pointed to his own brain, looking and sounding frustrated.
It worked. Seraphina’s grin got a little bigger. “I’m not smart like you guys.” She looked to Cyclone, me, and finally back to Peter.
“Honey. Sweetheart.” Chrissy leaned forward, touching Seraphina’s arm. “Take it from someone who lived with one of those ‘crazy smart’ brains, you have something they don’t have.” Chrissy’s gaze swept up, spotting me before she looked back to my sister. “I’ve seen what you can do. You have a genius that you’ve not even shared with the world. Do they know?”
