Page 96 of Delusions & Desires
Ezra crossed his arms and leaned on the door, watching my every move. He didn’t have to say a word for me to know he hadn’t. The clench of his jaw, his deceptively casual posture, ready to use the wall as a spring if anything came at him, told me one thing. While I’d been unconscious, events hadn’t unfolded as he wanted.
I lathered myself up with the bar of soap. “Ez, you might as well get it off your chest now.”
Ezra cocked his head to the side while I rinsed.
“I wanted to hate her.” Ezra uncrossed his arms, resting a palm on his sword hilt. “So, I left everything up to Morgen. She and Hope decided it was best if she pretended to be a man. We set ‘him’ up in Grady Hall. It was the only place left with a room.”
I slowed in my scrubbing, processing, trying to place Ezra’s unease. “Did someone hurt her?”
“No,” Ezra said quickly, too quickly. “She made friends.”
As I scrubbed, brushed my teeth, and shaved, the final steps to feeling like myself again, I listened. Each word from my lover's mouth became harder to hear than the last. She stayed with the family most opposed to my views. Her best friend, or maybe more, was the son of a cult leader whose goals here I didn’t understand.
“Rowan is still in your five?” I confirmed.
Ezra grunted. “He claims his tether formed against his will.”
I took a deep breath. I was also drawn to her, but my tether hadn’t come alive; I had created it and sunk it into her. It's too late to change it now.
“Does she know? Is she drawn to him?” I asked.
“No.” Ezra finally uncrossed his arms, handing me a towel. “Quinn is…” He trailed off, and my jaw dropped. My lover was never at a loss for words. He might use them sparingly most of the time. But once he opened his mouth, a complete thought always came out.
He looked at me and, for the first time in our lives, uncertainty showed behind his glowing purple gems. My world tilted. He said he wanted to hate her, but didn’t say how he actually felt. She’s clearly impressed him, but you could be impressed by a person without actually liking them.
I opened my mouth and closed it.
I brought a third person into our lives and bound her to me. A complete stranger. I’d valued her life over my own. Over Ezra. Over everything we’d built. I’d been so impulsive and thoughtless. Guilt burned a hole in my stomach, and acid ate at the base of my esophagus.
I forced myself to smile. “I guess I’ll have to go meet Quinn to fill in your sentence.”
My lover nodded sharply. “I’ll set it up.”
Ezra stepped back so I could dress. If my uniforms were good enough for my trainees, they were good enough for me. I slid a gold chain with my family crest, a sleeping cat, around my neck and finished the look with a matching pair of small gold hoops in my left ear.
“You won’t set it up.” I picked up my TB, which buzzed with a constant stream of notifications, as everything I missed came to me at once. I didn’t look at any of them as I clipped my device to my hip. “I’ll find her. If, for some reason, we are unable to bump into each other,we can set up something more formal. But I’d like to meet her as an equal, as a friend.”
I let my gaze rest on my partner, the love of my life, my foundation since I was sixteen, waiting for him to suggest the three of us train together.
Silence stretched between us.
What had I done?
