13. The Talk
13
THE TALK
DANTE
“ W e need to talk,” Tessa says as she pulls me into my room and away from Evan in the hallway. My stomach drops so fast it nearly falls right out of my ass.
This is it. The breakup.
She has chosen Evan.
I should have known I wouldn’t be enough for her. At first, she resisted me. She thought I wouldn’t want her, but she was all I could think about once I met her.
Tess is so much better than me. She’s practically a goddess in her own right.
What could she see in me? Besides my good looks, a trim body, and a calling to bestow upon her tons of orgasms, what do I bring to the table?
Perhaps this is my karma at play. I was a fuckboy, running from one woman to another. Now, I get to feel the pain from the other side. I’m being left behind as she samples all life has to offer.
She deserves it. She deserves everything. I’d do anything to make her happy, including letting her go with grace if she no longer desires to be with me.
Tessa saved all of us. She helped vanquish a malevolent goddess. She’s survived more than I’ve ever had to go through.
“So, it’s over? Just like that?” I ask, and fuck, do I sound pathetic. Normally, I would have blown a girl off and moved on by now. I would have never tried to understand what I did wrong. How I might make it better. “I don’t even get a chance to fix my mistakes?”
“What?” Tessa steps closer, gives me a hug, then caresses my face. “What’s going on here?”
“You tell me.” I point to the hallway, where Evan is probably eavesdropping.
She sighs and rubs her face. “Explain to me what that nonsense was in our text exchange today.”
Nonsense? “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“You made it sound like I was cheating on you,” she accuses, hurt clearly ringing in her voice.
“Are you hooking up with Evan?”
“Are you serious?” she huffs and pulls away. “No. I’m not, and I don’t like that you think I’m the kind of person who would do that.”
“Then why did the guys suggest something was going on between you?”
“I told you. I thought they were messing with me.” She bites her lip and glances at the door. “But now, I’m not sure what to think.”
I resist the urge to shout and throw a tantrum. That would be such a prickly dude thing to do. No, I’m going to have a real and mature talk about all this. If I don’t understand why this happened, then I don’t know how I could live with all of them otherwise. I’d have to ask Karma for a transfer.
“While we’re talking about it, I don’t like you fucking with me and saying I should date them.” Tessa grumbles. “Don’t say stuff like that, especially when you obviously don’t mean it.”
“What?” I shake my head and try to remember if I said anything that could be misconstrued as that. “I didn’t say to date them.”
“Yeah, well, you said a lot more than that… you told me to fuck them and not talk to you about it or let you catch wind of it.” Her anger flares again. “Who says shit like that?”
“Not me,” I say with dead seriousness.
That stops her from her pacing. “What do you mean you didn’t say that? I have the damned texts.”
Tessa pulls out her phone, scrolling and clicking on and off the messages. “What the actual fuck is going on? They’re missing. Your texts are gone… everything after you apologized for last night.” She holds the phone up to me. “Where did it go?” She looks at me like I worked some magic to erase them.
“What? This is how I have our conversation going down. I tried to apologize, and you left me hanging all day, like a chump.” I pull out my phone and show her. “Then you’re hanging out with Evan all evening?”
“It wasn’t like that.” She lands heavily on the edge of the bed and appears to be in a daze, trying to figure this all out.
“Tess?” I sit down next to her.
She blinks, and her gaze comes back to me. “You don’t have your Instant powers?”
“No. I tried a few times to see, but I’m basically a regular human now.”
A soft smile graces her lips. “You were never a regular human. Too hot.” She winks.
“That’s sweet.” I nudge my shoulder into hers, playfully hoping we aren’t mad at each other anymore. “But what are you thinking is going on here?”
“I think someone is fucking with us.”
Anger fills my chest. “The guys?”
“I don’t think so.” She bites her fingernails and ponders it. “I mean, they’re sort of fucking with my head, but in person. They told you, right?”
“That they want you? Yeah.”
She sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose. “It doesn’t feel like them to mess with our texts. They’d have to know it would only come back to haunt them. Besides, I don’t think either has enough skill to hack my phone without Instant’s powers. And if you say your magic no longer works, then I suspect the other former Instant agents don’t have their own powers either.”
“Then who would mess with us like this?” I ask, eager for her to figure this out so I can beat the shit out of them. I don’t usually become brutally possessive, but this fuckery is beyond boundaries.
“I don’t think Death’s gifts could do this. And why would anyone from my work do this? I only know Megan, and she doesn’t strike me as someone to fuck with us.”
I shrug. It doesn’t make sense. “It’s similar to something Instant would have us do.”
Tessa blanches white. “You don’t think…”
“No. She’s gone.”
“Maybe. But what if…” She grasps my shirt sleeve, looking like she’s ready to freak out.
I cup her face and stroke my thumb over her cheekbone. “She can’t get you. We watched Death rip her apart.”
“Death said she could materialize again,” she says, and I feel sick at the thought. What if Instant was after her again? “It could be another god,” she suggests.
“Like who?”
“I don’t know.” Tessa pauses and stares off in the middle distance, like she’s trying to psychically decipher what’s going on. Then she confesses, “I’ve been having some weird dreams, but I thought they were just dreams when I woke up.”
“What were your dreams about?”
“A dark god, with black wings on his back and small wings on his ears. Maybe Greek origins?”
The image in my head of a hot Greek god does nothing to soothe my nerves. What if he wants to claim her?
Calm as I can, I ask, “What happens in these dreams?”
Her cheeks turn pink. What could she be embarrassed about?
“Did you have sex with him?” My heart goes cold, waiting to hear the worst.
“No.” Tessa squeezes my thigh and shakes her head. “He just talked to me.”
I sense something’s not right. “It feels like you are keeping something from me.”
She closes her eyes and swallows nervously before answering me. “He says I should be with Evan and Kurtis, too. My karmic destiny.”
I don’t like the theme of the day. Yet, I need to do right by my woman, no matter how much it hurts. “Tessa, I need you to be honest with me. Do you want Evan and or Kurtis?”
“It doesn’t matter if I do.” She grabs my shoulders and stares into my eyes. “I’m with you. I’d never betray you like that.”
“That wasn’t my question,” I say, to remind her what I need to know.
Her shoulders curl in with guilt. “I can’t say I haven’t thought about them as potentially more than friends but that was before we ended up together. Sure, they’re attractive and…”
“You like them.”
She doesn’t argue with me, just gives me a stoic expression.
I know what I have to do. It’s what the song says. When you love someone, you set them free . “Okay,” I blurt out.
She frowns. “ Okay? ”
“I never want to stand in the way of your happiness. And if you want to date them, too. Then you should see if there’s something there.”
“I’m not agreeing to this, but what if I date them, and I can’t pick just one of you?”
“Are you asking if I could be okay with sharing your love?” When she doesn’t respond, I know she is. “I… honestly don’t know.”
“Let’s not worry about this right now,” she brushes away the conversation. “I have enough on my plate with my new job, and we need to figure out who is screwing with us. Let’s go get some answers.”