This is bizarre. All of it. Being able to see his face and have an actual conversation rather than simply discovering what he’s done after the fact and scrambling to mitigate the damage.
“So,” I clear my throat. “What do you want to talk about?”
“I don’t know.” His eyes glint with mischief in the mirror. “How big an asshole you are? Cause from back here”—he makes a show of looking down at where I’m sitting—”I can see just how big, andphew.”
“I’m sitting down, you absolute knob. You can’t see anything.”
He just chuckles, pleased with himself.
I sigh and resist the urge to end this session early. Lo-Ren believes these conversations are important. That communication is the foundation of any healthy relationship.
And I would do anything—anything—to keep her looking at me the way she did this morning when she woke up beside us. Like we were her entire world. Like we were exactly enough.
“Mostly we just exchange insults,” I mutter, more to myself than to him. “Or argue about the schedule.”
“Hey, I’m not the one who wanted an extra hour on Tuesday,” Remus shoots back.
“That’s because you took two hours on Monday when you were only supposed to have one and a half?—”
“She wanted to finish?—”
“I know what she wanted to finish.” Heat creeps up my neck at the memory of what I woke up to. “That’s not the point. We agreed on equal time.”
“Equal time doesn’t account for?—”
I hold up a hand. “We’re not doing this again. Lo-Ren already ruled on it.”
Remus grumbles but subsides. Because that’s the other surprising thing: he actually listens when she sets boundaries. When she tells us both to behave, he…does.
It’s civilized. Structured. Everything I always wanted and never thought we’d achieve.
Which brings me back to the question that’s been gnawing at me since I regained consciousness.
“Why am I still here?” The words come out quieter than I intended. More vulnerable.
I feel Remus tense through our shared nervous system. “Ughhhh.” He makes that long-suffering noise that used to drive me mad. “What the fuck is this, feelings hour?”
I stay quiet. Because yes, actually. It is.
Lo-Ren has been very clear that we need to address the “big stuff.” The trauma, the resentment, and the millennia of dysfunction. She’s even threatened to make us see a couples therapist if we don’t start making progress.
I’m not entirely sure what a couples therapist would do with two immortal beings sharing one body, but I’m also not eager to find out.
In the mirror, I watch Remus shake our head. Then, with obvious reluctance: “Fine. You really want to know?”
“Yes.”
He sighs like I’m asking him to move mountains. “You see how she looks at us.”
I do. Gods, I do.
“You think she’d look at me even half the same way if I’d shown back up after killing you?” His voice has gone rough. Raw. “Everyone else only saw a monster. But she looked at me and saw more. So I could finallybemore, okay?”
The words hit hard.
Because I understand exactly what he means. I’ve spent five thousand years being told—and believing—that I was theresponsible one. The one who cleaned up messes. The one who sacrificed and suffered and never got to have what I wanted because I was too busy keeping my brother from destroying everything.
I believed I was trapped. Doomed. Unworthy of individual love because I came as a package deal with chaos incarnate.
