“Seriously,” she repeats, “at what point do you stop, take a look in the mirror, and realize that you aren’t just striving to be the person you want to be, but youarehim?” Agitated, she addresses Wolfe. “You knew about this nonsense?” she asks, clinging fully to her anger with him. “And you let him walk around thinking it?”
“Of course not!” Wolfe protests. “We knew he was trying to improve, but we didn’t know how deeply it was affecting him, I swear.” He crosses his heart, then raises three fingers.
Poem is not appeased. “Whatever,” she says, dismissing him.
Hurt flashes across his face, quickly covered by acceptance.
“Wolfe didn’t do anything wrong,” I assert. Again.
Poem dismisses that, too. She comes to a stop, hands landing on her hips as she glares at me. “Are you over this stupidity yet?” she asks. “This absolute freaking nonsense about you not being a good person? Have I made my point?”
I sigh. As pleased as I am… as gorgeous as her praise feels in my chest… “I think it’s amazing that you guys think I’m so great,” I reply. “I can’t describe how much your opinions mean to me, or how grateful I am that they aren’t nearly as lowly as I think they probably should be.”
“What’s the ‘but’?” Poem cuts in, thick lashes nearly grazing as she squints at me.
“But,” I continue, “not everyone agrees with you, even beyond just me. I think it’s important to stay realistic about what I am and what I’m not. Maybe I needed this to show me that I’m not quite as bad as I thought, but I’m not quite as good as you two think, either. There’s a middle ground, and we need to consider that I’m living in it.”
“Who?” Poem asks. “Who thinks poorly of you?”
I shrug, unwilling to tell her that it’s the parents she’s desperate to adopt. “It doesn’t really matter,” I say instead. “What matters is that I still have work to do.” My head tilts as I study her frown. “Although…” Maybe… if I’m brave enough… if I believe enough of what she’s sayingshebelieves…
She crosses her arms, and one of her legs peeks out from the slit in her skirt, presenting five fingertip bruises along her thigh.
I swallow, my entire being zeroing in on those bruises as if they are my meaning for life.
They just might be.
“What?” she snaps.
I blink.
Right. Train of thought. Find it. Finish it.
I swallow past the lump in my throat. “You said that it’s up to you what I deserve when it comes to you.”
She nods. “Right.”
“And… it’s up to me what I take from your offerings?”
“Correct.”
“Please let’s not talk about Poem’sofferingsanymore,” Wolfe mumbles. “She may not want to beyoursister, but she is still mine.”
“You’re not talking,” Poem barks at him. “You’re taking your punishment for being a dunce. Quietly.”
There is seriously something wrong with me, and it’s not just that I have a ways to go before I’mactuallythe man they think I already am. It is also the way that Poem’s livid authority heats my skin and sends my stomach swooping.
Her cool gray eyes come back to me, and the plans that felt so clear in my head a moment ago scatter like leaves in the wind.
“Am I going to have to drageverythought out of you?” she asks. “I was joking when I said you could borrow mine. You are going to occasionally have your own.”
Right. “I’m not yet the man I wish to be,” I start, forging on despite her beautifully irritated scowl. “However. You take me one step closer every time I’m with you, and you took me quite a few steps closer today in forcing me to confront things I’d rather have left unsaid and unexamined.”
Blonde brows squish together. “Okay?”
I stand and smooth out her confusion with my thumb. “What I’m saying, kit, is that you make me a better person.”
Her lip curls. “Are you going to stop saying dumb things at any point today? Pretty much theonlytime that you’re a jerk is when you’re around me. I quite literally bring out your worst every single time we interact.”
