It doesn'tfeellike she lives alone here.
A sudden, horrible possibility is suddenly smacking me in the face. The obvious reason why she must not live alone. Damn it, I should have realized sooner.
I have to clear my throat twice to get it out. "You got a match or two living here?"
Heidi looks confused for a second before she blinks. "Oh. Of course not."
"Whyof course?You're twenty-two. Didn't you go to the last Seeking?"
She grabs our finished plates to place them in the sink, once again blowing escapee hair out of her face. "Actually, I like to stick to normal human dating. You know, boyfriends and stuff."
I grunt. "Weird, but okay. How many boyfriends do you have right now? I should start vetting them."
She looks at me kind of horrified, like I've grown three heads. A cute little furrow has formed between her eyebrows.
"What? No, no, no—I've never dated multiple people at once. I'm not a cheater."
"Who the hell said anything about cheating?"
Legacies belong in groups. Platonic or romantic or whatever falls in between, it's what's natural for us. I've seen some world-class idiots cheat outside their established quintet dynamics, but with such fated relationships, it's pretty uncommon—especially for quintets that enjoy sharing and orgies, because they've all eagerly consented.
Heidi rubs one of her bruised arms. "Aha—I get it. You're thinking about all of that like a legacy. The thing is, I'm really not like a legacy. I grew up around humans, and I'm used to how they do things. You know, monogamously."
I squint at her. "Monogamously. As in, only one."
"Yep." She gives me two thumbs-up.
"So you're saying that out of the gods-matched group of guys and/or girls out there who perfectly complement your soul and complete your existence—assuming they're all romantically interested—you're only going to pickone?That's fucking brutal."
Not to mention, nuts. A woman like this deserves the kind of perfect love story legacies dream about getting when the gods match them to their quintets.
Her cheeks pinken again as she rolls her eyes. "Come on, isn't that putting things a bit dramatically? Besides, look at me."
She gestures toward herself, as if my eyes weren't already pinned on her.
Believe me, sweetheart, I've been looking way more than I should.
"What's your point?"
Her blush gets deeper before she waves away the subject completely. "Never mind. I don't have a boyfriend at the moment, or anyone else you need to vet, okay? Now, about the guest room?—"
I hold up a hand. "Back up. So you have no matches and no roommate. You live all alone."
"Sure do."
"Out here in the woods."
"Aren't they glorious?"
"Alone?"
Heidi starts laughing. "Are we doing this bit again? I'm starting to wonder if we need to get your brain scanned, big guy."
I could tell her I've had my brain scanned way too many fucking times over the last few months already, but I'm too hung up on her situation.
I scowl. "And just why the hell has Frost been letting you live out here in the boonies all on your own?"
"First of all, don't knock Koasville until you try it. I love it here, and these woods are perfectly safe for a shifter. Also, Everett's not nearly as controlling of me as you seem to think. I told him I needed some time alone to adjust after the Upheaval—and until I got hit by a bus on live television, I was doing just fine, gearing up to rejoin the world of the living." She pulls a cute face before sighing. "Come to think of it, this whole going-viral-as-Frost-roadkill thing is probably going to wipe out whatever flimsy dating prospects I had left, huh?"
