37. Zyran #2
The table settles into mainly just Esperr and Sybil talking—mainly Sybil telling Esperr something about the first time Raiden cooked for her, which, from the look on Raiden’s face, is not a story he would’ve chosen to share. And Esperr is leaning slightly forward in her chair, completely absorbed.
I just take a bite of my cornbread when the back door opens and Slater steps through. He kicks the door shut and then glances up, stopping when he sees the table, eyes scanning before falling on Esperr.
He stills, and I catch the moment she does as well.
I swallow and then cough, nearly choking for a second. “Slater, this is Esperr.”
Slater looks at her the way he looks at everything—long and unhurried, like he’s figuring her out by just staring at her. And Esperr, she holds it without flinching, which tells me she’s going to fit in just fine.
Then Slater looks at me for one… three… five seconds, and then he grabs a plate from the counter and his fork before sitting down at the other end of the table.
“He likes you,” Sybil mutters to Esperr, though she’s not very quiet at all.
My girl glances at me and raises a brow. “How can you tell?”
“He sat down,” Raiden says from across the room, completely deadpan. “Usually he takes his plate to go.”
Esperr nods like she understands and goes back to eating while Sybil starts making small talk again. The conversation goes from working out to how she thinks when it warms up that she’s going to plant some new flowers in front of the house.
Cyran stays quiet the entire time, and while I glance around the room at everyone, my gaze mostly stays on him, waiting for just one look that he never gives me.
Eventually, as everyone finishes, Sybil stands and stretches, putting her hands on her hips as if she’s surveying the table. “Alright, I think the boys should clean up.”
Raiden looks over at Esperr and then at Sybil. “That’s fine, how about you go show her the game room or something?”
Esperr looks at me, and I can see the confusion in her eyes before it dawns on her what’s happening. And then she raises her brow, indicating that I should fix this, and follows Sybil out of the kitchen, their voices fading.
The dining room goes quiet, Slater still eating and Raiden drinking his water like he’s truly enjoying this awkward silence between us.
Finally, I can’t take it anymore and drop my hands onto the table. “So it’s like that? You’re just going to fucking ignore me?”
Cyran slowly looks up, his jaw ticking.
Of course the fucker doesn’t say anything.
“Cyran,” I snap, my voice coming out rougher than I mean to. But honestly fuck it, he’s a stubborn asshole.
“What do you want me to say?” He says almost casually, and somehow that’s even worse than if he were to start yelling or cussing me out.
“Anything!” I yell, leaning forward. “Say fucking anything. Tell me I’m a stupid fuck, that I’m an idiot; I honestly don’t care. Just stop sitting there looking at me like I’m a stranger.”
“You want me to yell at you because that’ll make you feel better. Like as if that would be enough.” He shakes his head, leaning his elbows on the table.
“Then what?”
He goes quiet for a long moment, staring at me with a million words running through his head.
“You’re my brother, my fucking twin, does that not mean anything to you?
” He tries to hide the hurt from his voice, but I hear it, the waver in his tone.
“For the past year I’ve watched you become a fucking shell of yourself.
Flinching at the smallest movement, hiding yourself away, becoming a person that apparently doesn’t trust me!
I’M YOUR GODDAMN TWIN. I should know you inside and out. ”
His words hit like a fist over and over again.
And he’s right. Everything he’s saying is right; he knows it and I know it—fuck, so do Slater and Raiden, who are sitting there staring at us. Cyran has watched me disappear, and he let me because he loves me and because he thought I’d find my way back on my own, and I didn’t. Not until her.
And I hate in a way that it wasn’t him.
“Cyran.” My voice comes out rough, worse with this damn scar on my neck.
“Don’t.” He snaps, shaking his head. “Don’t give me some bullshit explanation, not right now, and not later.
I don’t want that fucking excuse.” He looks at me, and the hurt is right there on his face, unguarded, and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen my brother look like that. “I just want my brother back.”
I drag in a breath through my nose, eyes drifting close for a second. “I was stalking her a year before everything went down with Sybil.”
The dining room becomes even quieter—Slaters’ fork is halfway to his mouth, his gaze snapping to mine; Raiden, on the other hand, does not move a muscle or even flinch.
I keep my eyes on the table, focusing on the ring in the wood from someone’s glass that nobody bothered to wipe up, and I trace that over and over again because it’s easier than looking at any of them.
“Rhys wanted coffee one morning and wouldn’t go himself because he was busy or something.
And well you know how he gets, so I went instead.
” I almost laugh at the fact that this whole thing started because my brother couldn’t handle a line.
“I walked in and she was there behind the counter and I don’t even know how to explain what it was, I mean…
I drink a goddamn coffee every fucking morning just because she made it.
It’s disgusting, but the next day I went back again and again. ”
“You drank coffee…” Cyran mumbles.
“Because of her, and every day I found a reason. And every day I told myself it was just a habit, just a new routine, that I was going to force myself to like coffee and this was the only way. But eventually I knew her schedule, I knew the days she opened, and I knew when she went grocery shopping. I figured out when she’d have a bad night because she’d be quieter at the counter and couldn’t make eye contact with anyone.
” I tell them, twirling my glass of water around.
I can see Raiden leaning back in his chair with his arms crossed but a neutral expression and Slater, who has picked up eating again.
And because I’ve already started talking, I can’t stop.
“Then I… I got—got shot. And I couldn’t go back, couldn’t go anywhere for a while, and by the time I could move again, I told myself I shouldn’t.
That every smile, every flutter that happened when she spoke or when I saw her was just in my mind.
Sybil convinced me to go, literally demanded it so much so that she went with.
I couldn’t go inside at that point, but after that…
I started going back again. And again. Every day I went back, and every day I wanted to know more about her, and I couldn’t explain it to myself, let alone to anyone else. ”
Raiden shifts in his chair, blowing out a sigh. “Zyran, this…complicates things. What we do, who we are, the people that come looking for us.”
This time I picked my head up and gave him my full attention. Thinking carefully about my next words. “She sort of already knows.”
Raiden’s jaw tightens slightly. “How much?”
“Enough of it.” I hold his gaze as I speak.
“And there’s stuff about her past—” I pause, thinking about how to put it about everything she’s told me and everything I’ve pieced together, and all of it without giving too much of her business away.
“She didn’t grow up far from our world. She just sort of came from a different direction.
She knows what people like us look like; she knew what I was before I even told her. ”
The table is quiet for a long moment, and I turn my gaze to each of them, wanting them to see how serious I am.
“Do you trust her?” Raiden asks, sounding a little too much like Rhys.
“Yes.” I don’t miss a beat.
I need them to understand that Esperr saved me more than I ever thought was possible.
She sat with me when I could barely sit with myself.
When the noise started to feel like too much, when things in my nightmare began to feel like too much.
About what happened in that warehouse and who I became after and how I’m trying to figure out who the new me is.
Slowly Raiden unfolds his arm, nodding his head, sort of like a father that’s giving me his permission.
Then there’s Cyran, whose gaze no longer shows how much he’s hurting. “You’re fucked,” he chuckles, shaking his head.
“Don’t I know it.”