CHAPTER NINE || HUNTER #3
Warmth spread through my chest at the sight of that real, unguarded smile. It was another precious glimpse of the Daniel I remembered. The one who gave as good as he got, who’d never been afraid of me, who used to laugh at my jokes even when they were awful.
“Fine,” I grumbled, settling deeper into the couch. “But I’m complaining the entire time.”
He snorted. “I would expect nothing less.”
I was hyperaware of the fact that he was close enough that if I shifted my weight, our shoulders would touch. I didn’t shift my weight. But I didn’t move away, either.
We watched the cooking show, which turned out to be a program about inexperienced home bakers who tried to replicate gorgeous cakes made by master chefs.
It went about as well for them as could be expected.
I periodically ribbed the contestants’ culinary choices.
Daniel shushed me without ever taking his eyes off the screen.
Lee, who was half-watching with us in between cooking, called commentary from the kitchen about one of the contestants’ use of a stand mixer being a hazard to themselves and others, and Daniel shot back that it was about the flavors, not the technique, and Lee replied that you couldn’t appreciate the flavors if you’d lost a finger in the process.
It was startlingly, almost painfully, normal.
And it was easy. We were just three people who knew each other inside-out, sharing a space and doing something perfectly ordinary together.
And for minutes at a time, I forgot about the monster, the quarantine, the sympathetic manifestations, and most especially, about the two years of silence between us.
Instead, I just existed in the same space as Daniel and Lee, letting things be okay.
During the finale, Daniel laughed at one of the final reveals—an epic disaster of a cake that literally toppled over onto the floor at the feet of the judges.
Though he followed it with a wince and pressed his hand over his lips, it was still a real laugh, bright and sudden.
And so achingly familiar that my breath caught in my throat.
I realized that I’d forgotten what it sounded like to hear him laugh and mean it. Or maybe it was more accurate that I’d made myself forget. Remembering had been too painful.
I glanced at him. He was watching the screen, his dark eyes crinkled at the corners, and in the warm light of the lamp he was happy. And perfect. Not just handsome, but beautiful and carefree in a way I hadn’t seen since before Lee and I had become two separate people.
Swallowing hard, I looked away.
Lee served pasta. We ate at the small kitchen table, our knees bumping beneath it because the table had been built for two, even though we had four chairs. Daniel ate everything on his plate and went back for seconds, which earned a small, satisfied smile from Lee that I pretended not to notice.
My other half wasn’t even trying to hide the light in his eyes when he looked at Daniel.
And, through the bond, I could sense his happiness, too.
Though Lee spent so much time in his head, his thoughts often complex and tangled, there was nothing complicated or hard to understand about how he was feeling now.
The warlock looked better than he had all day.
The color had returned to his face. His hands had stopped trembling.
And the haunted expression he’d been wearing ever since the bar had eased into something closer to genuine relaxation.
I was sure that, while the food helped, the normalcy helped even more.
I found myself watching him eat and feeling something I hadn’t felt in a long time: the simple pleasure of seeing someone I cared about being taken care of.
And through all of it, the question was sitting in my chest, growing heavier with every passing minute. It had been there since Lee and I had talked on the porch, when my twin had said, Maybe we ought to just ask him.
I could feel Lee watching me. I raised my eyes and met his gaze steadily from the opposite side of the table. His lips pursed and his expression darkened fractionally—he must’ve known exactly what I was thinking—but he gave me a slight nod.
Daniel was mid-sentence—I’d gotten too in my head and had lost track of what he was saying, but it was something about the author of the diary he was translating and her theories on energetic transference—when I interrupted him.
“Daniel.”
He stopped and looked over at me, his brows pulling together. “Yeah?”
“We’ve got to know.” My voice was rougher than I’d intended, ground out by the emotions I’d been holding back for two years.
It wasn’t great to do this now, maybe, but none of us could sit through this normalcy and let it become a very confusing lie.
Ripping the band-aid off wasn’t going to be much fun, but it was going to be better in the long run.
A kindness for all of us. Including Daniel.
“Why didn’t you tell us you were a warlock?
Why did you lie to us for twelve years?”