I’d seen that distant, haunted look from him too often today. Something about how far away he’d traveled this time made me finally voice what I thought tugged at him.
“You’re not sure what’s you and what’s him anymore, are you?” I asked.
He came back to me, but the darkness still lingered. I didn’t thinkhe was going to answer, but as I went to search the bush, he said, “No. I’m not.”
I sat down properly and scooched myself back to rest against a tree. I patted the ground beside me in a silent invitation. He hesitated for a heartbeat, then joined me.
Our shoulders touched, and I felt his chest rise and fall with each breath. He’d grabbed a stick from the ground and was twisting it again and again, his gaze going vacant again.
“When you brought me to the river,” I said, “you told me what you thought Thaddeus felt; that wasn’t conjecture, was it?”
“No.”
“Are you able to—or were you able to, I guess—discern between your feelings and his?”
“Sometimes, but not always. It depended.” His words were clipped, like the information was new to him too.
I gave him space to think through what he’d just offered and for silence to fall over us.
“It’s you that confuses him the most, you know,” he finally said.
“Me? Why?”
“Thaddeus has never felt for anyone like he does for you, Ny. His feelings are deep and complicated. You’re also the first woman he hasn’t…” He halted, then bristled.
“He hasn’t…?” I prompted.
He focused on the twisted stick. “It’s not appropriate.”
“Tarrin, there is no judgment from me, I promise.”
He searched my eyes.
Looking nervous, he said, “You’re the first woman he didn’t share with us. The only one he’s shielded from the truth by keeping you in the dark.” His words sounded confused, as if he still hadn’t quite figured out why Thaddeus had done such a thing.
I frowned at him, wondering exactly what he meant. I forced myself to let him explain instead of jumping to conclusions. I had just promised him that curtesy. Making sure my voice was soft, I said, “Tarrin, what do you mean when you sayshare?”
He swallowed, then hesitated for a long moment before saying, “I mean…any lover up until you was…well…allof our lover. Well, mainly Thaddeus and I. Nevander rarely gives into those things.”
Words were lost to me, and the more I grasped for them, the more elusive they became.
“I can feel it, you know, the pleasure you pull from him…from me.” I stopped breathing, going completely numb. “Sometimes, I experience his ministrations as if I were the one doing those things to you. It can be in the moment it’s happening, in a dream, or when he thinks about you—even something as small as your scent can shoot the memory my way. That’s why we’ve always shared—physically I mean—because, in a way, we share everything regardless. It has always been with the woman’s consent, but he didn’t want to risk it with you, couldn’t…”
“Why?” I heard myself asking.
“That’s not for me to say.”
Unwilling to think of the implications this new information meant to me, I grasped for the bigger picture, wondering what it would be like to be a bystander in such intimate moments and yet connected in a way that wasn’t my choice. To feel things that weren’t my own emotions but experience them as if they were.
“So, when Thaddeus and I…” I didn’t know how to finish the sentence. Wasn’t sure I wanted to know more.
Mercifully, Tarrin found the words for me. “When he claimed you, delighted in drawing pleasure from you, yes. I was part of it too. My particular favorite was when you knelt before him after throwing. Gods, I’d never experienced anything like it.”
I swallowed hard—Thaddeus had shared the same sentiment. Stars, it was one thing being intimate with Thaddeus, but in a way, I’d been intimate with them both—or had it been the three of them? I halted that train of thought; it didn’t matter now, and thinking along these lines wasn’t productive. Then I realized something.
“But you walked in on Thaddeus and me the other day,” I said, grasping for a different reality than the one he’d just described.
He shook his head, knowing why I’d picked that example. “No, like I said, it doesn’t always connect in the moment. That’s why it took us both by surprise.”
