“Enough for me to see the real you,” she mutters so softly I’m not sure she intends for me to hear the words.
They still make my stomach lurch. She’s right. And maybe that’s why I feel so out of sorts around her. My glasses are a shield, a barrier between me and everyone else. At least if everyone thinks I’m a standoffish prick with my glasses on, they haven’t seen the real me.
Sin will, though. And that realization makes me feel kind of sick.
I scrub my hand over my face. Dammit. I used to be cool. A fucking rock star. Or at least, I used to pretend like I was and eventually I started believing it.
There’s a reason Cal, and I became friends, though. And it wasn’t because we were the two cool kids in highschool. We were the outcasts, the weirdo losers who happened to be good at music and who tricked the world into thinking we were cool kids.
“Shouldn’t we have... felt it?” Sin asks softly, her eyes darting between mine. “A bond snapping into place, smacking us around the head?”
I shrug. “You’ve driven me fucking crazy from the get go. Maybe that was the bond at play.”
I’m afraid of saying anything more and fucking things up, so I climb off the bed and grab my shades. “We should ask Cal about his parents.”
Sin nods and troops along behind me as we head into the living room where Cal’s busy with his sewing kit, frowning down at the material in his hands.
I swallow hard and quickly outline the situation, watching his brows climb higher and higher on his face.
Shit. He likes Sin. They’ve just started dating or whatever, and here I am throwing a wrench in the works.
He doesn’t seem mad though, or threatened, or jealous. Instead, he starts texting his family group chat and asking for advice from his parents for me and Sin.
When we explain we didn’t feel the mate bond from our first meeting, he frowns. “You’re saying you didn’t feel a pull toward each other or a flash of connection, like maybe this person might be for me and I could be safe with them?” His eyes dart from his hands to Sin’s face and back again. “Coz that’s how I felt when I first met you, Sin. We might not be fated, but I still felt something that drew me to you.”
Well, shit. The Orc’s a damn poet and clearly a lot more in touch with his feelings than I am. I just have a bunch of muddled sensations swirling around inside me, and I don’t know if I have names for any of them.
Sin glances at me, and I shrug. “I definitely felt something from the moment I first saw you. Why do you think I’ve been hiding out here so much since we arrived?”
“I figured I just pissed you off.”
“Pretty sure I pissed you off too,” I reply, and she just smirks at me.
“You should spend some time together,” Cal says, glancing up from his phone and sounding like a sage king of wisdom. “My mom’sgot a fated mate bond with Ostin, one of my dads, but none of the others. She said she had to work just as hard to keep their bond alive and strong as she has with the others. The bond will grow the more time you spend together, and it’ll wither if you don’t.”
That’s another kick in the gut. So far, I’ve been doing a terrible job of getting to know Sin, so our bond must be like a tiny little seedling struggling toward the light.
How the hell do we get to know each other?
“It’s Elemental Infusion week on Alchemy Showdown and I’ve missed nearly all of it,” I tell her. “Want to see if Roger sets the workspace on fire again in today’s episode?”
She snorts. “You’re a Showdown fan too?”
I nod and grin. My stupid stomach flipping over itself like an overeager puppy. While I don’t think trashy TV is the usual way to bond with your soul mate, at least we have one thing in common.
I guess it’s about time I pulled my head out of my ass and got to know my fated mate.
Chapter 22
Sin
It’s a real mind-fuck to discover you have a fated connection with someone.
Especially when I don’t know if I even believed in fate yesterday. I’m not big on anything cosmic. And it’s been a long time since I had any semblance of faith—being around the Herald’s bullshit put paid to that.
“I feel kinda like we’re two dolls that someone’s smushed together and told to kiss,” I tell Julia on our daily catch up call the next day.
“Is this going to turn into girl talk? I’m not sure I know how to do girl talk,” she says wryly.
