Movement is the only way I can contain the overflow of emotion from a night like the one we just had. My mind is a crime scene and the only forensics team I trust is my own. I throw myself around the gym until my pulse drowns out everything. By the third song, my calves are shaking and my arms feel like someone else’s. It’s not a bad feeling; there’s a memory in my aches and pains. They’re like a permission slip that says I survived again today.
My reflection follows me edge-to-edge across the mirrored wall. My hair is a rat’s nest, and my shirt is soaked. I look like a drowned ballerina, but I’m not here to be pretty.
After the last jump, I collapse against the barre and slide to the floor. Gravity is my friend as I breathe through the stitch in my side and focus on the sweat beading down the back of my neck. I take a minute to inventory my joints, then two, then three.
If this is what a quiet mind feels like, I could almost get used to it.
But there’s a hole in my chest, and it’s getting bigger by the minute. Taurus is gone—off to whatever mission he couldn’t say ‘no’. Talia is holed up in some endless debrief, probably drinking her way through a gallon of coffee. I love them, but the emptiness isn’t about their absence. It’s about what’s left of me after that nightmarish meeting and all the discoveries I made during it.
I know exactly who can help within seconds. Rafe is the one whose soul was welded to mine first. My primary may not be solely focused on me anymore, but he’s the kind of clone you add to your bloodstream and let him poison you in small, delectable doses.
He’s my antidote, and my aftercare when I need things the other two would never understand.
I haul myself upright and wipe my palms on my tights before I stagger toward the kitchen. I eat a banana with my head in the freezer because the cold feels good against my cheeks, and then chase it with a shot of vodka and a handful of prenatal vitamins. There’s a note on the fridge—Leo’s handwriting—suggesting Itry the protein bars he made that don’t taste like cardboard this time. There’s a smiley face at the end, and my heart swells.
My family loves me even when I don’t love myself.
I don’t bother showering or changing. Rafe has never cared about sweat or blood or the chalky residue that clings to my skin after a workout. If anything, it makes him softer around the edges. I pad through the house, up the stairs, past the sunroom to the high-ceilinged studio that has become Rafe’s cathedral.
The door is open; it always is because Rafe welcomes everyone. He’s perched in the bay window, sketchbook balanced on his knees as his pencil moves in quick, decisive slashes. The sun pours over him like honey, catching every highlight in his impossibly gorgeous hair. He’s as beautiful as ever—more, maybe, now that his wrists are wrapped in ink and silver. He’s wearing a paint-spattered t-shirt and a pair of jeans that have seen better decades. I want to curl up in his lap and purr until he shoves me off with a laugh to say he’s done being a piece of furniture.
Instead, I lean in the doorway and watch him. There’s something in the way he glances up and out at the ocean as if he’s waiting for a sign. I know it means that he senses me because he always does.
He doesn’t stop drawing, but his voice is gentle when he says, “You’re tracking blood all over my rug.”
I look down. There’s a smear of red on my calf, dried and flaking, and another on my right foot where I must have stepped in something more substantial. I shrug and go to him anyway, too tired to care and too needy to hide it.
“Hey, you. Can I come in?”
Rafe looks up and smiles, setting his board aside. Patting the open part of the seat, he chuckles. “You don’t need to ask. Come have a seat.”
That’s how we work and it infuriates everyone else because we don’t need words; we just know.
Plopping onto the cushion, I chuckle as he drags me into his lap and sits his chin on my shoulder. “You’re unsettled and maudlin.”
I nod. “I am.”
“You realize you’re mourning the rose-colored picture of what you thought this place was.”
“I do.”
My primary sighs and runs a hand over my bun. “You only bundle yourself up when you can’t let everything out because you’re afraid it’ll spill onto everything.”
I chuckle. Leave it to my frightfully observant yet emotionally oblivious primary to know that when I’m upset I even bind my clothing and hair to help keep it in. Everything about me gets sharper and more severe when I’m trying to process trauma without letting anything into the universe.
“It’s an external representation of what you do inside—the doors, the seals, and the forbidden zones. You dress to match what you’re doing to the pieces of your heart and soul.”
“I’m growing tired of having to build more doors.”
“Me, too, love. I’m tired of watching you do it. It worries me that someday you won’t have any joy left to let out.”
I turn to kiss his temple. “Nature has an infinite capacity to rebuild and restore after destruction.”
“But we do not, my night bloom. You may have a well without a bottom that your power originates from, but there’s only so much your heart can take before it shuts down. Every time, I worry it’s the last time.”
Nodding, I lean back against him. “They say the blues are good for your spirit. You only learn to appreciate joy compared to sorrow. Without both, you do not know how they differ.”
He snorts and shakes his head. “We’re going to the bottom of the ocean today?”
