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“I don’t think so,” said Tommy.
“You don’t know,” she whispered. “No onegetsit. No one knows what it’s like having this thinginsideme.”
Tommy tucked her hair behind her ears. “Okay, I guess I don’t entirely understand, but I know I trust you.”
“You and Niles are both idiots,” she said, and she fought her way out of his arms. She headed for the shower, and there the cool water sizzled against her wings, until the flames were extinguished and she was left with nothing but burning nubs smoking under the stream of water.
NILES WOKE UPand his whole body ached. He noticed that first, and then he rolled over, and he opened his eyes, and he didn’t know where he was.
It smelled like Dahlia, though, and he was lying on a bed, and—
“Oh, you’re awake.”
Niles sat up on the bed and turned in the direction of the voice.
Tommy, leaning against one side of the doorway, rubbing an absent finger over the small nubby horns in his curls. “Good nap?”
Niles vaulted upright.
Then he sat back down on the bed, groaning. Whoa. The room was spinning.
Tommy sauntered closer. “Okay, so here’s how you gotta do this, all right? You can’t let it go on for longer than thirty seconds to a minute. You just shove her off periodically. It does two things. It gives you the chance to recover a little, and it gives her the chance to get back under control. Every time she goes for you, she has to make a choice to go for you, after all, and she’s in there, and she eventually gets a handle on herself and stops. But if you just let her go for broke, you’ll pass out every time.”
Niles got up again, this time more slowly.
“I tell you this not because I like you,” said Tommy. “Because I don’t think you’re good enough for her, and I don’t like the entire idea of you and her together. But I also care about her, and if she really hurt someone, it would destroy her. And I don’t want that to happen to her. That’s part of the reason why I’ve always been this for her, you know? So, if you’re going to do it, you can’t fuck it up, you got that?”
Niles licked his lips. “Am I in your apartment?”
Tommy laughed. “Okay, well, I guess I said what I needed to say.” He walked out of the room.
Niles stared after him, furrowing his brow.
Okay.
Well, so, his girlfriend was a crazed badass who could, uh, who could… yeah. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
This thing with her and Tommy was some kind of odd co-dependent arrangement in which they saved each other from themselves.
Niles wasn’t sure that was what he wanted from a relationship.
He was in it, now, though.
I could get out of it,he thought.
He let out a breath. Yeah, he could. He could run from this like he’d run from every other relationship he’d been in since college. He’d thought he’d had good reasons to run from those relationships, but there was no reason like,She might lose her mind and kill me.
Right?
Staying in a relationship like this, it was kind of like staying in an abusive relationship.
Nah.
It wasn’t.
No, if he wanted an excuse, he had one, but…
But what if this thing he was looking for, being sure about a girl, what if… what if he just had to decide tobesure.
