Chapter 44 – Rex
REX
The mirror is still my worst fucking enemy.
But I'm looking anyway.
The dressing room at the new venue is bigger than the last one. Better lighting, too, which is either a blessing or a curse depending on how much self-punishment I'm in the mood for tonight. At least the lighting in here doesn't make it look like a fucking morgue.
My face, though?
I stand shirtless in front of the mirror with my hands braced on the counter.
The surgical bandage on my back pulls when I breathe, but it's only there to appease the doctors.
The feral state I slipped into kicked my healing into overdrive.
The wound is closed. Still pulls and twinges, but the infection risk is gone and the muscle knit back together faster than it should.
I'm not in danger of going feral anymore. Not even close. The bond marks changed something fundamental in my nervous system. Three braided threads tether me now to three people who chose me.
Who chose this.
The face in the mirror hasn't changed.
I reach up slowly and grip the edge of my mask. The leather is warm from my skin, the straps familiar under my fingertips. I've been wearing it all day. Put it on this morning out of habit, the way you put on shoes or brush your teeth.
The straps release.
The mask comes away and my chest goes cold and tight.
For years, the glimpses have been accidental. Quick enough to look away, to file under already knew that and move on.
This is different.
One side could belong to anyone. Could belong to Nash. That's the sick joke of it. Half a face that works, that people might actually want to look at, and then the other side that belongs in a medical textbook or a horror movie.
My gaze crosses the bridge of my nose like stepping off a cliff.
It's worse than I remember.
Or maybe it's exactly as bad and I'd been softening it in my head, letting memory blur what the mirror won't. The skin isn't skin anymore. It's white where failed grafts are thin enough to show bone, pinker where the nerve damage keeps blood too close to the surface.
The cheek is gone, torn away into a freakish grin. The worst part, maybe. The teeth. The visible jaw hinge and muscles flexing when I clench. All the teeth on that side exposed, what remains of my lips on that side pulled into a grotesque snarl.
Even right now, happy for the first time in my fucking life, I look furious and dangerous. Evil, even.
And, fuck… the eye.
I'd forgotten how wrong it looks with both sides visible at once. It just stares, lidless and unblinking. The pupil is permanently blown, a black void ringed by the same blue as the other side.
It can't close. Can't narrow or do any of the thousand small things that make an eye look human instead of like something pinned open on a dissection tray.
I force myself to keep looking.
Forty million people have already seen this. Screenshotted it, shared it, made memes out of it, written think pieces about it. They blurred it in the thumbnails because showing it uncensored was too disturbing for casual scrolling.
Content warnings.
Trigger warnings.
Viewer discretion advised.
All for my face.
But my hands are steady on the counter.
That's new.
Before, catching a glimpse of my reflection would have sent me into a spiral that ended in a shattered mirror and bloody knuckles. The leaked photos almost put me in a grave. I sat in the mud at Nash's headstone and seriously considered doing what the fire didn't finish.
But the world saw my face.
And my world kept turning.
I'm still here.
A hand brushes my arm and I don't panic because I know who it belongs to.
Bells appears in the mirror, already in her stage whites.
The rabbit mask is pushed up on her forehead, her choppy platinum hair swept back from it, long enough now to be wild.
The triple mark on her throat—mine, Phoenix's, Raf's—is visible above the neckline of her t-shirt, the three overlapping bites covering the crescent scar that used to own her.
No collar this time.
She rises on her toes and presses her lips to the destroyed side of my face. Right where the cheek should be and isn't, where the graft didn't take, where exposed muscle meets the hard ridge of bone and there's teeth.
The old reflex screams at me to jerk away, to angle the bad side into shadow, to put the mask and as much distance as possible between her mouth and the thing underneath. The reflex is loud and insistent and it has been running my life for over a decade.
But somehow, I don't move.
Her lips are warm against the dead nerve endings. It feels muted and wrong, like touching something through thick gloves. But I feel the warmth. Through whatever scrambled pathways still connect that ruined skin to my brain, I feel her.
I turn my face against hers.
My nose brushes her temple. The dyed-dark hair at my forehead falls across her cheekbone and she doesn't push it away. I nuzzle into her, an instinct I didn't know I had until she woke it up, and my mouth finds the curve of her jaw.
Soft.
The kiss is soft in a way I didn't think I was capable of. The left side of my lips presses against her skin and holds there, and the right side—the destroyed side—grazes her throat.
She hums, happily.
I pull back and pick up the mask. I settle it over the right side of my face, the leather cool against freshly kissed scars.
I'm not performing without it. I probably never will. The mask is mine in a way that goes beyond hiding. Nash gave it to me. It's a part of who I am. Taking it off when it's safe doesn't mean I have to stop wearing it when it would be like going out there naked.
But it's a choice now.
Not a prison.
My phone buzzes on the counter. It's a photo from Jamie, who's been bothering me more than usual to show support in the worst possible way for a hardcore introvert like me.
It's Cheeto sprawled across both their laps on a velvet couch, Orion's long legs visible beneath the tiger's massive head, Jamie's hand buried in orange fur.
MASK GREMLIN
GOOD LUCK TONIGHT!
Cheeto says break a leg. Orion says don't actually break a leg.
I say brEAK ALL THE LEGS!!!
MASK PRINCE
He's had three espressos and a glass of wine. I apologize in advance for anything else he sends.
Bells peeks at my phone and snorts. "Is that really how you have them listed in your phone?"
"Yes," I grumble. "Keeps me sane when Jamie spams me with memes."
"Tell them we're coming for game night next week. For real this time."
"Platonic game night," I say flatly.
"Obviously." She grins. "Unless Orion makes that mulled wine Jamie keeps talking about. Then all bets are off."
I roll my eyes half-heartedly and sit down on the bench, grab my guitar from its stand, and settle the strap over my shoulder. My fingers find the neck automatically and I run a silent chord. G minor without a pick or an amp.
Nash's warm-up.
He played G minor before every show. Said it grounded him. Said it was the saddest chord in music and if you started there, the only direction was up.
Sentimental bullshit.
But my fingers play it anyway, and the vibration travels up through the wood and into my chest and slips in beside the bond threads.
The dressing room fills up without ceremony.
Phoenix drops onto the couch with the subtlety of a building collapse, his blond mane falling loose around his shoulders.
Raf perches on the arm of the couch, scrolling through his phone.
Bells claims the folding chair beside me, tucking one boot underneath her.
Raf's phone lights up with a video call notification. He glances at it and his whole face lights up.
The screen fills with chaos. Kids shrieking in the background, a woman with Raf's same dark eyes and jaw leaning too close to the camera. "Is Bells there? The girls made her a sign. Show her, show her—"
Two little faces shove into frame, holding up a piece of poster board covered in glitter glue and stickers with a stick figure that does look sort of like Bells because of the giant tuft of upside-down white fake fur glued to its head.
Bells is already off her chair and crammed against Raf's side, waving. "I love it! Is that a unicorn sticker? That's the best fu—freaking unicorn sticker I've ever seen."
More shrieking. Raf's sister is laughing now, shouting instructions at the kids in Spanish while simultaneously telling Raf he needs a haircut only for her jaw to drop when she sees Phoenix's mane.
"They ask about Phoenix every time," Raf mutters to me, passing the phone off to Bells. "And they've been texting Bells more than they text me. She's even in the meme chat. I've been replaced."
"We're all meeting them after the tour wraps up," Bells tells me over her shoulder, drowned out by the kids yelling and showing her their toys. "Albuquerque. Raf's mom is making dinner. She's already been teasing me with pictures of a pork dish that looks insane. It's wrapped in a banana leaf."
"She's making that for you," Raf corrects. "And Phoenix. She's making me do the dishes."
Phoenix grins. "Well, it's cause for celebration."
"Does she know about you two?" I ask them.
"She knows," Raf says with a resigned sigh. "She knows everything about all of you. I have lost control of my entire family."
When the video call wraps up and Raf gets his phone back, he starts scrolling through his notifications.
"Meridian's publicist wants to schedule a formal sit-down," Raf says, squinting at his screen. "Quote, a carefully moderated conversation about the band's journey and artistic vision. End quote."
"Translation, they want us to cry on camera," Bells says flatly.
"Carmine says we can push it to next month." Raf scrolls further. "The Reverie's lawsuit got tossed. Apparently Jake's lawyer billed him forty grand before figuring out he didn't have a case, and with it getting out that Stephen Hughes did indeed rip off Nash's work… well."
Phoenix winces. "Ouch."
"Couldn't have happened to a better asshole," Bells mutters.