At last, Taurus makes a sound—the ghost of a laugh escaping. “You’re impossible,” he says. He lets her slide off his lap and onto the bed, steadying her with a hand on her elbow. She lands with liquid grace, tucking her legs to the side, never breaking eye contact.
For the briefest instant, I think it’s over. But then Talia leans in, closer than comfort allows, her lips almost brushing his ear. She whispers something—too low for me to catch, but I can feel the words rippling through Taurus’s aura, making the hair on his arms stand up. He jerks back, eyes wide, and then clamps them shut, his hands clenched into fists. Whatever she told him, it hit deep.
That’s a bad sign and I don’t like it.
That’s when Rafe finally moves. He rises off the bed in a single, smooth motion and stalks over to the window, arms folded. His silhouette is sharp against the dusk light bleeding in through the curtains. He stands there, back to the room, breathing through his nose like an animal tasting the air. It’s obvious he’s not handling this well. He keeps glancing over his shoulder, not at Talia or Taurus, but at me, as if I’m supposed to have a solution or a script for how this next part goes.
He’s right in a way—I know what’s coming. I’ve dreaded it since I felt the magick surge and the healing complete. But there aresome truths that refuse to be born unless forced. I hold my tongue, counting the seconds until someone else cracks.
Taurus pulls himself to his full height, gathering all his battered dignity around him like a cloak. “Sampson,” he says, voice rough with emotion, “why don’t we go find something strong to drink?” I catch the glint of wetness in his eyes before he turns away. “Let the ladies have their secrets for a while.”
My primary hesitates, looking like he might argue, but then Talia gives him a soft smile, and he wilts. He brushes a knuckle against my cheek as he passes, an unspoken promise that he’ll be back to help me when it’s done. Then the two men are gone, their footfalls fading into the hallway, leaving a silence so thick it feels like static.
Talia collapses onto her side, curling toward me like a question mark. She looks smaller now, as if the war is over and all that’s left is the aftermath. I wait for her to speak, but she just studies me, searching my face for a sign, a password, an escape route. She’s waiting for permission to say something and I’m not in a place to give it.
After all, I know how to deal with being cast aside.
“The two of them are fucking exhausting, let me tell you.” Talia’s voice is a dry martini, two parts disdain to one part bravado, but her hands are shaking just a little as she says it. She sits up on her elbow, hair sticking in all directions, an improbable halo of bedhead and static. “This is way too much drama for it being within these walls and not outside of them. Christ.”
She rubs her palms over her face, dragging streaks of mascara across the hollow under her eyes, then lets them fall to the quilt. The men’s footsteps still echo in the hall, receding into the softvelvet of the house’s acoustics, but it feels like the aftershocks will never really leave. She says nothing else for a minute. She just breathes in and out, her breaths shallow and uneven, like she is practicing survival at the most basic level.
I almost say something trite and commiserating, but the words taste like acid on my tongue, bitter and pointless. Instead, I watch her, really watch her, see where the seams are coming apart. Talia is not unbreakable—she is only good at pretending otherwise.
She’s not as good as I am, but she hasn’t had to be. For that, she should be grateful.
“That chat will be interesting,” she finally says, the words coming out brittle and bright as tinsel. Her eyes track the ceiling, and I can see her cataloguing every new possibility, every future branching out from this moment.
“Interesting is a word for it,” I say in a hollow tone, and this time the words come out more like a confession than a comment. As if she can sense the war playing out in my head, she turns to me and fixes me with a look so direct it feels surgical.
“Well?” she says.
I hesitate, my throat closing up around the words I should say.
“I want a family,” she says firmly. She doesn’t smile or blush or look away. She just says it with a sincerity that makes me want to lie down and let her walk over my heart with her heels on. “I want it very much.”
I almost laugh at the simplicity of the phrasing—like she’s ordering a pizza, extra cheese, no mushrooms, easy on the sauce. I want to tell her it’s not that easy, but I don’t. She’s the one whojust fucked this entire thing up because she couldn’t handle her emotions, not me.
“I don’t know that it’s possible,” I say, and I try to keep my voice gentle, but I know she can feel the edge in it. My pessimism has always been a blade I use to cut myself out of hope before it can get too tangled. “There is water and a bridge and—well, they’re men. It’s less clear what will happen when men get involved. They need to figure it out.”
For a second, Talia just looks at me. She cocks her head, considering, as if she’s weighing my soul in her hands. Then she grins, conspiratorial. “I’m not worried about them.”
That makes one of us, but okay.
Damn it, Deli—just tell her. Tell her what you decided and be done with it. You can lock it all up, find your husband, and go surf the crowd at a desert festival in California or eat mustachioed cheese eaters in Paris or break into the Kremlin.
Do it, and you’re free!
But I can’t. Not yet.
Talia’s smile softens, and she scoots closer, her hip bumping against mine like a dare. “So will we,” she says, and the words are a promise and a threat and an invitation, all at once. Her hand finds my hand, fingers intertwining with a familiarity that is almost as dangerous as it is comforting. I feel the electric pulse that always runs between us, the ancient battery we keep charging and draining in equal measure.
I try to picture that future—all of us a family. It’s impossible, and yet, there is something in the way we fit together that makes mewant to believe we could do it, that we could be the ones who get it right when everyone else has gotten it so wrong.
Maybe I’m a romantic after all, or maybe I just want to be.
She leans into me, her head heavy on my shoulder. I wrap my arms around her, and we both settle into the quiet, two animals at rest after a storm. I don’t know how long we stay like that, but it is long enough for the world to feel a little less dangerous, a little less doomed.
After a while, Talia laughs. “You know what would make this better?” she asks. “A really greasy plate of fries and some milkshakes. Maybe a big chocolate cake for dessert, and then a bubble bath with enough bubbles to drown a horse.”
