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“We want you to. I already talked with the twins, and they want to see what you pick. They didn’t realize you hadn’t really watched TV or had movie nights with friends. We’re older than you, but we’ve had a taste of that normal. That’s what we want.” He glanced away and tapped his leg. “It’s nice to have real friends, not ones who want a powerful warlock in their pocket.”
I agreed but then left, feeling bad for keeping Kyle waiting.
He was ready to go when I arrived, not questioning what took me so long and simply tossing me a bottle of water.
We headed out and started at a good pace. I was still thinking of how to say what I needed to when he got tired of my dragging things out.
“Dylan reacted badly to you being the owner, right?”
I tripped over my feet and almost face-planted, but he caught me at the last moment. “You knew?”
“Yeah, and you’re not a normal demon. You think you’re a succubus. I’ve known for a while, Jasmine.” He sighed when I couldn’t get my feet, mouth, or anything to work. “I’m your right hand and basically head of security. Of course, I fucking know or I’d be shit to protect our team and everything. Seriously, I’m good at my job.”
That was actually pretty fucking fair and I muttered as much as I got moving again. “I didn’t like telling them before I told you and Kiera. I’m sorry.”
“It upset me, but we’re good. I know it’s not easy.”
“Thanks.” I cleared my throat. “It was the times I went off the map to go flying, right? Elijah would be gone too, and all the VPs worried too much.”
“Go flying?” It was his turn to trip, but he recovered before I could catch him. “You can fly? Like Superman kind of fly?”
“Oh boy,” I sighed. “So if you and Kiera—I can’t believe you guys never talked to each other about this at all. If you had, you would have gotten the full picture.”
“We love you,” he said firmly as if it explained it all. “Caring about you and protecting you were more important than our curiosity.”
I stopped and faced him. “I think you exactly just pinpointed my main problem with Dylan. He says he cares about me, but solving the puzzle I am and getting his answers were so much more important. Yes, he protected me with ISLE, but he let stuff out to Aidan and others and… You’ve known Kiera fordecadesand you guys never risked talking about it. That’s love.”
“You weren’t ready,” he muttered, blushing a bit.
“Thanks for seeing that.” I cleared my throat when we started jogging again. “I’ve actually been ready to tell you and Kiera for a while. At least the part other than being the owner. That seemed selfish to tell you and risk—knowledge isn’t always good to have.”
“We both thought that was why you kept things from us. We both knew you were keeping more, and we both knew more than we should. That was it.”
“And yes, Dylan didn’t react well. To—well, he seemed to handle my third form well.” I backed up and told him a lot of what I told Kiera except a lot of the emotional stuff and even about my family. Kyle and I liked to keep that stuff in the past.
Oh, and I didn’t tell him about my dad.
But I did tell him about killing Lucifer, and I felt a lot better when he went and puked in someone’s bushes. Yeah, that seemed about the right reaction.
I actually understood that reaction and freakout.
“Seriously, Jesus, I get why you—I’d have needed a lot more than a few days’ mental breakdown from that, Jasmine.”
“There’s more of the personal stuff which I’m sure you figured out,” I muttered.
“Yeah, but—you’ve got Elijah for that.”
I didn’t even judge him. He didnotwant to talk about family stuff. Our family was Heavenly Entertainment. That was it.
So if that was what he needed to survive whatever he’d been through, I was fine with that. Seriously, I was. If I needed him to back me up and be there for me, he’d do it, but… We all needed to be more understanding of each other at times.
“Man, I had way more faith in Dylan than that,” he said when we were done and walking back to the house to cool down. “I’m really sorry.” He let out a long breath. “So you’ve officially ended it?”
“I’m going to after this. I wanted to talk to you and Elijah first. You guys push and I did try to say—look, what happened happened. I’m saying now that I’m out. I’m not running. I’m not playing. I’m breaking, and I need to cut some things off to survive. Dylan is one of them because it’s not healthy for me.”
He pulled me closer and gave me a one-arm hug as he kissed my hair. “I’ll tell the others. No more him at home base and wiggling into—fucking idiot. You don’t stick your foot in your mouth like that and not even send flowers. He seriously thought just dropping by trying to catch you was enough? Like bygones?”
“He didn’t even text or call,” I rasped.
