Page 426 of Once Upon a Fable

“I’ll do it. Wait until you’re back so she can see for yourself you’re okay. I like hearing your voice and can’t tell you what a relief it is to know you’re alive, but it sucks not being able to touch you. Until I get to see you with my own eyes, I’m reserving the right to accept you’re not a ghost, and this isn’t an overly lucid weed high.”

I sighed. “Still smoking that stuff, huh?”

“I’ll have you know I eat more gummies these days. They satisfy my sugar cravingandgive me a good buzz. And you can’t talk. Your drugs are boulders that are one finger slip away from killing you. We all have our addictions, Gem.”

I nodded even though he couldn’t see me. “Fair enough.” I cleared my throat, keeping my eyes on Kas as he suddenly shot to his feet and went to pour a glass of water from the jug on the side table.

He drank deep, his throat working, distracting me with inappropriate thoughts.

“Safe trip home, Gemstone. I’ll be your very first visitor, so be prepared.”

I laughed while fighting the little butterflies in my stomach from watching Kas. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and returned to his seat. “I’m looking forward to it.”

“Oh, and Gem?” Josh added. “Tell that new friend of yours that if he doesn’t treat you like a freaking queen, he and I are gonna have words.” His voice lightened from the threat. “See ya soon, sis.”

He hung up, and I let my arm drop from holding the phone to my ear.

Damn.

Josh had always been protective of me. Despite his digs that I never put myself out there to meet men and that my love life was abysmal, he was part of the reason I wasn’t successful with the opposite sex.

He liked to grill them—to try to trip them into confessing their deepest, darkest secrets on the first date. Most of the time, it didn’t bother me because no one tripped a live wire inside my heart like Kas did. But if Josh did his usual protective brother routine on Kas...

Oh, God, how is that going to work out?

Would Kas snap and hit him?

Would it trigger one of his memories and make him relapse?

Kas noticed my apprehension and came to sit beside me on the bed. He took my hand in his, squeezing my fingers. “Everything okay?”

I squeezed back and rested my head on his shoulder. “Everything will be perfect.” If I repeated it enough, it would come true.

Won’t it?

“Willit be perfect?” Kas asked, his tone sad and tired.

I nodded, clutching onto conviction, for his sake and mine. “Definitely. All of it. You, me, us. Your new home, our future.” I kissed his shoulder. “Everything will be perfect. You’ll see.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

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I BLINKED FOR THE thousandth time, doing my best to focus on my new life.

The past few days were a blur, despite my attempts at remembering everything: the stay at the hospital, the tests, the examinations, right down to the pride and dread I’d felt when I’d willingly agreed to go with the concussion expert and have a frank discussion about my issues.

Apparently, I had plenty of those. Too many to fully remember because everything had happened sofast.

I still smelled the smoke of my dormitory going up in flames, yet I’d been away from my valley for four days. I still struggled around people even though Gem did most of the interactions on my behalf. There was too much newness. Too much to soak in.

Yesterday, I honestly hadn’t known how I’d coped with everything as well as I had.

Well enough not to kill anyone, anyway.

Perhaps I’d gone into shock, and the overwhelming upheaval of my life would come to bite me in the ass later? Or had Gemma truly sculpted me from the animalistic man I’d been into someone who could hide the feral part of himself and pretend to be human—for a little while, at least?

When I’d had my private meeting with the expert, I’d locked down all my instincts to either hurt him or run and forced myself to answer his questions honestly (or as honestly as I could). I permitted him to touch around my head to search for any abnormalities in my skull and at the base of my neck and subjected myself to hearing, vision, balance,speech, and memory tests. I told him about the guy with the white beard who kicked me in the head, my years of amnesia, and the struggles I’d had ever since falling off the cliff.