Chapter 19
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So, are these flowers where dirt used to be?
Morana
“This is great!” Maelin cheers. “I’ve missed having you around so much. We’ll need to celebrate your move. Maybe we can both go to Brew Tea? Their chocolate peanut butter cake is the most incredible cake I have ever tasted.”
“Morana,” Viktor mutters, hefting one half of the back of my bookcase bed into the room Kyran has designated for me, a modest two doors down from his. “Where do you want this?”
“Oh.” I swallow, look at the vast space, which presently seems unfillable even with all my crap steadily entering it. “Over…there, maybe?” I say, pointing toward a corner that I might be able to stuff with my things in a way that doesn’t make the high ceiling seem quite so…far.
He shuffles past, and Lukas—at the other end—grins.
They don’t know I’m married.
No one knows I’m married.
I barely know I’m married.
After I settled down some last night, Kyran somehow coaxed me into my bathroom and got me to brush my teeth before he cradled me in my bed until I passed out in my wedding dress on his lap.
No kiss. No wedding night. Just a few mild swears about how pretty I was and how much he loved me as he laid in my bed and wrapped me in a blanket and told me I was his wife.
“Where does this bookcase go, mistress?”
My heart lunges up my esophagus as my face explodes. Stiff, I turn ever so slowly toward Zakery and Kyran hauling my big antique bookcase in through the door sideways.
My sister’s husband. My…husband.
“Um…uh…” I swallow.
Kyran’s lips quirk slightly.
“Is this going to keep happening?” Zakery asks.
Kyran nudges him along, heading toward an empty slice of floor by where Lukas and Viktor are setting up my bed. “Leave her alone. She’s shy.”
I am not shy.
I am stupid.
And, between last night and this afternoon, I have lost the ability to speak to my…husband.
Turning me around so my back is to the menfolk, Maelin huddles, whispering, “Did something happen between you and Kyran?”
“Yeah,” Kyran answers, passing behind us on the way back out the door, “we got married.”
“Hey!” Viktor barks, figuring out how to get the sliding cabinet doors on my bed back in their tracts. “Don’t even joke about that.”
Straightening away from our conspiratory huddle, Maelin giggles. “As if both of us would pass up planning a proper wedding. Dad would sob.” Bright as the angel goddess she is, she beams. “Sorry, sis. I’m afraid that duty falls on you.”
I swallow. Again. Because swallowing is a basic human function. And all that jazz.
I have shirked my childly duty.
I did not have a proper wedding.
My parents don’t even know I’m married.
Last time I spoke with them, I did not so much as allude to the possibility that I would be getting married any time soon. I was single, working, content, the end.
Dad is going to kill me.
They barely even had a chance to meet Kyran when they came for Maelin’s impromptu wedding because he said, Wow, matrimony, congratulated his brother and new sister, then expressed that he was exhausted from the Creator’s Ball and would be lying awake in his bed for the next twelve hours.
There is no future where my parents approve of this outcome.
And, yet, it is afternoon, not morning, and I never did the smart thing and said, Unmarry us right now, you moron.
I’m literally the stupidest person I have ever met in my whole entire life.
I’m too stunned by everything to think straight.
I can barely wrap my brain around how Kyran exists in this space of fierce casual.
He loves with such an undying passion it’s shocking how normal he makes it.
It’s very yeah, I love you, what of it? As though loving someone is just like breathing.
And then you pair that with how he sees fit to display that love, and it’s like.
Oh.
Oh.
Okay.
Wow.
How stupid does someone have to be to get accidentally married while perfectly sober? That’s all I want to know right at the moment.
“We heard that a little sister needed help moving in?” Kaleb’s gentle tenor greets me, shattering the pit of self-loathing I’m plummeting into.
Jerking my attention toward him, I find he’s got a box labeled Morana’s Pretty Pony Collection and gasp.
Kaleb. The perpetual voice of reason. The solid normal foundation amid all the crazy that is the famous Bachelor brothers. The one who peaced out of his parents’ trauma upbringing and home-grew his trauma elsewhere like a sane person.
He lifts my tokidoki box and looks right at me. “Where should I put this?”
I march up to him, steal the box, set it lovingly on the floor, then grab his arm and drag him up the hall.
Past Zakery and Kyran.
I feel my…husband’s eyes track me, but I do not slow for a second.
Not until we are far, far away from my room, outside in the cold, and tucked away in the winter wonderland of his handiwork.
Frosted flowers and branches hang around us as I learn, quite immediately, that I forgot to grab my coat in my flee.
Chuckling kindly, Kaleb shrugs his own off his broad shoulders and covers me in it. “What’s up, Mora?”
Buried in the thick brown leather warmth of his coat, I manage a calming breath, then I whisper, “You can’t tell anyone.”
His head tilts. “I’m good with secrets. It was an occupational requirement.”
Right. Yes. Prior escort, this one. Then he fell in love with Crimson, Crisis’s bestie, and now he lives happily ever after with that queen, awaiting their formal double wedding in April.
Because Crisis and Viktor, and Crimson and Kaleb?
They have brain cells, and they have been planning a proper wedding together for over half a year now.
White air leaves my mouth. “I married your brother last night.”
Kaleb coughs to hide a laugh, then murmurs, “Viktor is going to hate that when he finds out.”
Yeah, Viktor has a complex about the fact he fell in love first and began planning a wedding with Crisis like a proper adult man, but now all his other brothers are getting shotgun weddings before him. Viktor is a lunatic if he thinks he shouldn’t be proud of his sanity.
“Kaleb,” I hiss, “you don’t understand. I was chilling.
Kyran broke into my house with a key he got from Crisis.
And then he microwaved marshmallows for us, conned me into trying on a stupid fluttery dress Mae made for me, and invited a magistrate and two witnesses into my living room while I was changing. ”
Kaleb’s expression neither loses its humor nor gains an ounce of concern. It remains stable, awaiting, like I’ve yet to say why I need his reasonable grounding skills.
Bewildered, I stare at him.
At long last, he says, “So…you said I do?”
Heat erupts in my cheeks. “I mean…” I clear my throat, bundle up in my big brother’s coat. “Well. Yeah?”
“Under duress?”
I snap my fingers, nod. “There was definitely duress.”
“Ah, okay.” He turns on his heel, heading toward the door.
I grab his sweatshirt. “Where are you going?”
“To wring my little brother’s neck. Better to be a widow than an imprisoned bride, isn’t it?”
I grip tighter. “N-now, wait a minute. There’s no need for…all that.” Sinking, I mutter, “Maybe there was duress…but maybe he also gave me a choice… Free will…was definitely involved.”
“Oh?” Kaleb faces me again, gentle smile warm and open. “So…what’s the problem?”
“I…” Feel like an idiot. Lowering my eyes to my shoes, I say, “I was hoping you’d know.
I’m on edge, and I’ve just been reminded that my parents are going to flip, because they have no idea about any of this.
And it all happened so fast. And I don’t know why I didn’t stop it at any of the moments when I had a chance.
And I keep thinking how I don’t want this because I can’t want this, but then my body and brain won’t collaborate. And—”
“There’s a chance you do want it?” he says. “At least a little?”
“I…don’t know.”
“Kyran doesn’t spend his energy on people carelessly. It’s clear to all of us how much he cares about you. And, though maybe less clear, it’s obvious you care about him. Do you know the root of the problem?”
Breath shakes through me. “I…don’t think I’m good enough. It feels like I’ve stolen something that shouldn’t be mine, no matter how much I want it. And, worse, I’m scared he’s made a mistake. I don’t want to watch the realization that he doesn’t actually want…me…overcome him.”
“Whether or not we’re good enough for someone isn’t something we decide,” Kaleb says.
“There will be people who come into our lives and decide we aren’t good enough.
That’s inevitable. But it’s not a reflection of our innate worth; it’s just a revelation that no one meshes with everyone.
You have innate worth, Morana. Kyran sees it.
I see it. We deem you good enough for our family, in different ways, with different roles.
That decision to welcome you into our hearts and our home isn’t made lightly, no matter how many other people have made the decision not to do the same. ”
“And what if I’ve made that decision for them?” I blurt, tearing up. “What if they tried, but I haven’t let them? What if I’m the one making sure I’m not good enough, so I’ll never be good enough because of my own idiocy?”
He hums, lifting his hand and settling it atop my head.
“What if you’re also at liberty to decide whether someone else is good enough for you?
You’re a smart girl, Morana. You don’t want to be alone.
You’re not going to hurt people you care about, and at least between us, I’ve never felt that you’ve tried to push me away. ”
“Right. But…” I wince. “It’s…different.”
“How so?”
“You’re like family. And before that, you helped me adjust to my new job here.
The roles are different. I can be a frustrating, idiotic child around you, because you don’t have to deal with me in the same way.
With Kyran…if I mess this up…he’ll still be connected to my sister’s husband.
I’ll still have his presence hanging over me.
I’ll still want what I can’t have. What I’ve broken. What I can’t…get back to.”
“You’ve given your relationship with Kyran expectations that you don’t bestow on ours.
” His hand leaves my head, so his knuckle can tip my chin up.
Forcing me to look in his warm hazel eyes, he dries my tears.
“Consider that Kyran just wants to exist with you. He settles when you’re around, Morana.
I don’t know if you can see it because you only ever experience him when you’re around, but you’re walking peace to him.
Also…” He chuckles, flicking my nose as he pulls back to stuff his hands in his pockets.
“I think maybe you need to give him some credit. A relationship doesn’t just disintegrate overnight.
It takes the same kind of effort to build as it does to burn, and both parties need to make decisions for either to happen.
He married you. You let him. Love him enough to believe he did that on purpose and will keep doing things on purpose to show you that he sees and cherishes you.
Love is an action, and those actions are intentional.
Believe he wants you around and forget about whether or not you think that’s a stupid decision because you’re not enough.
He already said you were, and you know something? ”
I swallow back more tears. “What?”
“He’s not the only one here who thinks that.
In this household, you are enough. Period.
You’re the only one who doesn’t believe it, so, I’m sorry, but you’ve been outvoted.
We appreciate who you are and what you do.
That’s not going to change. And if you need even more reassurance about that?
You came to me. The only person in my living family who gave up on them.
I ran away. Everyone else here stuck it out through horrors for each other.
If you see something in me willing to welcome and comfort and be there for you, imagine how much more capable people who suffered brutality just to stay there for each other might be.
It would take worse than torture to change my brothers’ minds about who they love and who they’re devoted to.
Are you really going to stand here and tell me you believe you’re worse than physical, mental, and emotional torture? ”
My bleeding heart wants to say, yes, I am, but I can’t.
Logic demands I can’t. I know a glimpse of what happened here; Kaleb’s told me.
Kyran’s mentioned his parents’ cruelty in passing.
It would take effort and intention for me to come close to that.
I hate comparing myself to that. I hate that that’s how far I need to spin my brain in circles to think of myself as okay.
Voice soft, I say, “I want to be worlds better for him. I don’t want to just be better than monsters.
I don’t want to just not be as horrible as what he can take.
I want to be kinder, more caring, and more loving.
I want him to be happy, and I want to make him happy.
I just don’t know how to keep my own stupidity and selfishness out of it. My own fears. My own…me.”
“Everyone’s selfish and stupid sometimes.
Everyone gets scared. I don’t think being human is any reason to beat yourself up.
We can always make choices for the better, but you shouldn’t for a second think that being better means not being you.
He chose you. He wants you. The fact that you are you is the whole point.
Every day brings new choices. Focus on each one as it happens, keep your heart open to listen and your eyes open to see.
When inevitably you mess up like all people do, take accountability for it.
Marriage is all about wading through the world together.
The only thing you need to worry about is holding tight to his hand and not letting go even if it gets hard to hold on. Can you do that?”
Can I hold on when something’s slipping away even though, historically, I have easily let go? Can I brace for the impact of rejection? Can I stomach being the one who wants something more…again?
Fragile, I whisper, “I’ll try.”