22. Chapter 22 #2
“I love you toooooo,” Catie went on, her hull turning a hundred different shades of pink.
Tiny projections of hearts fluttered in and out of existence around her, some of them spinning, others sparkling, yet others wearing tutus and snapping with sharp teeth at each other.
Dinosaur ballerina hearts, of course. “It’s okaaaay if youuu take Lizzie, because you’ll briiiing her baaack.
And we caaaan talk through herrr! I can sing you my sooongs. Do you want to hear my new sooong?”
“I would love to hear your new song,” Kieron managed, and the hangar began to fill with a sound that was somewhere between syntharmonics and an ancient children’s choir.
It swung from chord to chord in an almost random progression—almost. There was enough of a link between the chords in there to make it beautiful to listen to, rather than a haphazard mishmash of sound.
It was lovely, and youthful, and fun, and sweet. It was beautiful, just like Catie.
She was going to be upset when she realized Elenus didn’t feel the way she thought he did. She’d become attached to Kieron, despite him knowing it would be better for him to push her away and leave her affections solely focused on her father.
But how could he, after he saved her life?
How could he let her think he felt anything but affection for her, when she’d been treated so terribly?
Kieron knew what it was to have someone you loved so much, with all the innocent earnestness of a child, not love you back.
He knew what it was to be considered a disappointment, to have someone wish that you’d been born someone else.
He couldn’t let her think that. It would have been too cruel not to return her infatuation with a soft touch and kind words.
He hadn’t meant to love her, but he did. He loved everything about her, but especially the pieces he could see she’d inherited from her father. Because …
Because …
Because he loved him too.
Kieron shut his eyes and resisted the urge to bite hard into his lower lip.
He’d been doing such a good job of not thinking it!
Not while they were working together, not while they were eating together, not while they were having sex, not while they were sleeping side by side, and Elenus was snoring, and Kieron could just poke him in the side, and he’d automatically roll over for him.
Shit. Shit. It was one thing to have to deal with the feelings, it was another layer of awful to have to deal with the words too.
He loved Elenus. He loved Catie like a parent loved a child, but he loved Elenus. That lanky, too-tall, too-smart, too-pretty son of a bitch.
Maybe you don’t really love him. You’ve never been in love before, after all. Not even with Zakari, and you know he would have married you and brought you into his family if he thought you wanted that. He loved you so much. Xilinn loves you.
Those were the only adults Kieron could think of who had ever loved him, so it wasn’t much of a sample size to draw from, but the way he felt for them—and it was love, it was—wasn’t the way he felt for Elenus.
Elenus inspired different, bigger, grander feelings.
He inspired something that could be almost as dark as it was light yet at the same time made him want to set all darkness aside. Bigger than hate. Bigger than lust.
Damn it to the far side of the universe, why did I let it happen?
“Are you thinking of me?”
Kieron’s eyes snapped open. He stared up from his seat at Elenus, horrified that perhaps everything he’d been thinking about was written on his face. “What? Why would you think that?”
“Because you were frowning,” Elenus said lightly, not letting it get to him. When did anything ever get to him, when it wasn’t connected to Catie? “I simply assumed that frown was for me. Nine times out of ten they are, right?”
“No.”
“But this one was.”
“No, it …” Kieron didn’t want to lie—it seemed like too much effort for not enough reward since Elenus would see through it anyway. Evasion it is, then. “I’m going to go check the experiments from the control room, excuse me.”
“Catie’s song isn’t over yet, though.”
Oh, that was true. “I’ll … ask her to play it again for me later.”
“No, later won’t work.”
Kieron paused in the middle of standing up. “Why not?”
“Because we’re going to be talking later, so you might as well listen to her song now.”
Kieron looked warily at Elenus. “What … exactly … are we going to be talking about?”
“Oh, lots of really uncomfortable things that make both of us want to run away, or start a fight, or lock ourselves in places where we can be alone for a while,” Elenus said.
The words were light, even mocking, but his expression was serious.
“And we’re going to do it because we’re godsdamn adults who can avoid the stupidities of their pasts by being honest with each other.
No big misunderstandings right now, not between you and me. Do you hear me?”
This was the last thing Kieron wanted. Couldn’t they just … enjoy each other’s company for the next few months before quietly parting ways once the radiation dimmed?
Apparently, they couldn’t. A frisson of fear went down his spine … followed closely by anticipation. “All right,” he said at last.
“Good.” They both sat and listened to Catie’s song all the way through to the end. It was beautiful.
What was coming next probably wouldn’t be.