Page 14 of The Fake Divination Offense
It was hard enough to tell Seb. And I only did it because it’s the eleventh hour, and I know how hurt he’d be if I did something like this without talking to him about it first.
His gaze goes more critical the longer he looks at me. Like I’m a new experiment he’s trying to unlock.
Finally, he nods, but it’s cockeyed and uncertain. “Okay.”
“Okay?” I match his head cock. “That’s it? Nowhy would you do that, Orok? This is a huge, crazy change you’re making, Orok?”
He gives me an unimpressed look. “In what universe would I talk to you like that? But you’ve been unhappy for a long time, O. Like… alongtime. And I kept thinking it was all these other milestones you needed to hit to be happy. Getting out of undergrad. Getting out of grad school. Getting back to Philly. Finishing this lawsuit. But you’ve always been… held back?” He flinches. “That’s not the right phrase. Like you’re happy and you smile and engage people, but none of it gets to beyours. You make other people happy, but it doesn’t ever seep back intoyou. So maybe this is it? Maybe Urzoth’s been the thing holding you back from being happy.”
“I am happy,” I tell him. But it tastes bitter. “It’s not that I’munhappy.”
Thio comes out from behind the island and leans against one of the barstools. “Why are you separating from Urzoth now?” he asks. Not accusingly, but curious. “The lawsuit just ended. Is it too much all at once?”
He’s been Mr. Caretaker since the lawsuit started. Making sure Seb was okay, making sureIwas okay. Even though us suing the family members of his who owned Camp Merethyl caused issues for him, too, Thio’s been the one to monitor our emotional states like becoming a nurse unlocked his final form.
I resisted it at first. Part of me thought he was keeping tabs onme out of obligation; I paid for his mom to stay at her previous care facility for a few months when I first got signed to the Chimeras. But Thio’s a persistent bastard, and once he realized I thought he felt duty-bound to me, he actually flew out to Vegas, sans Seb, to confront me about it.
“You’re my friend, too,” he’d said. “And this lawsuit is a huge, suffocating life event we’re all going through, and that’s what friends do: help each other breathe.”
Yeah. They do.
I never stopped helping pay for his mom’s care. Her new facility has an anonymous auxiliary fund, and Thio and Seb don’t know I’m one of the main donors.
I gave into Thio coddling me.
When I pointed out his mulishness, Seb sighed all dopily and said,Isn’t it sexy?
One of the many reasons Seb and I never would’ve worked romantically. Who finds antagonismsexy?
“Yeah, it is a lot all at once.” I swallow, throat dry. “That’s kind of why I want to do it now. Get it all over with. Let people speculate and say whatever they want about me in one big, toxic cloud, then maybe I can move on. From everything.”
“And you want to move on from your patron god?” Thio clarifies.
I nod, muscles stiff, like even saying all this out loud is going to have my mother calling me in a fury. “I need a fresh start. And Urzoth, the church—it’s tied up in our past. I can’t think about him without thinking about…” I flounder to silence.
Clear my throat, and start again.
“Being back in the city with you both, in a new team, with the lawsuit behind us…” I shrug, my eyes pricking. “I just need tobegin.”
Alexo bursts into my head. The fire in his eyes as he sang, the way each word felt both begging and demanding. It solidifies the torrent of emotions whipping through me—guilt over how my Urzoth-infatuated mother will react to this; resignation that it really will make me a traitor; hope that I’ll get to figure out who I am beyond being forced into boxes defined by someone else.
Through it, I see Alexo belting out his song, a gilded beacon.
Seb throws his arms around me. I hug him back instinctively, even more of my chaos settling, eyes fluttering shut.
“Okay,” he repeats into my chest. “I support you, whatever you want to do.”
“When are you talking to team management?” Thio asks.
I squint at the clock over my stove. “A few hours.”
Seb yanks back. “Today?You have a meeting set up with themtoday?”
“Hey, you guys marked this lawsuit ending by getting engaged; I marked it bydisengaging.” I waggle my eyebrows, wresting some lightness into this discussion. “Get it? Because I’mdisengagingfrom—”
Seb snorts. “Oh, I get it.” He swats my arm. “I wish you’d told me sooner. We could’ve, I dunno. Talked it through.”
I smile. “Nothing to talk about.”
