21. Olivia #2
“I don’t need to think about it,” I said firmly, and honestly, I was amazed at the steel I was able to put in my voice.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to wail. I wanted to bash my head against the wall in shame but also beg him to never leave me.
To never cut me off from the love and warmth that had made life an adventure worth exploring rather than a tedium I tried to get through.
“Today showed me that even if we really want this to work, we’re incompatible.
The best thing to do would be to end things now.
A clean break. I’ll refund you any fees we get for canceling the caterer and the florist.”
A bitter laugh tried to rise up in me at the thought that at least I hadn’t bought the dress yet, but I cut it off. Not even dry humor or self-deprecating jibes would soften the sword I was plunging through my own chest.
“Olivia…”
“Don’t Olivia me, please,” I said, gently breaking out of his hold and taking several steps back. Somehow, each movement felt like another blade raining down from the heavens to spike right through me.
I was never going to be happy again. Not only because I was losing the most amazing man I’d ever met, but also because I was hurting him so badly.
Even without looking at his face, I could scent his heartbreak filling the air around us.
It was a mix of brimstone and acrid sulfur, the hot sting of shock combined with the sour stink of sorrow.
“There are things you don’t understand. I’m sorry, but I think this was the reality check we both needed.”
I knew I was likely going to end up at Amanda’s, sobbing uncontrollably into her satin pillowcases and unable to speak, but somehow, I was managing to hold my tears at bay and keep my voice steady.
God, I sounded so fucking cruel. I hated it. I hated it so much! But it was the right thing to do.
If it’s the right thing to do, then why does it hurt so badly?
“Olivia, where is this coming from? What do you mean I don’t understand?
Nobody in this entire world gets me more than you do, not even my own mother.
You’ve always told me it’s the same for you.
We’re two sides of the same coin, and we bring out the best in each other!
I understand that you’re scared right now, and that you feel responsible for introducing me to the people who hurt me, but again, I am fine, and it’s not your fault! ”
We were just going to go in circles. And as much as I wanted to stay rotating around the same points over and over again so I could remain in his presence, I needed to end things and get out before I lost my resolve.
Because, in truth, all I wanted to do was throw myself back into his arms, kiss him silly all over his face, and then tuck him into bed with a nice cup of tea so he could relax while I did chores around the house.
“It’s not going to work, Keith. It was nice to get lost in the fantasy, and I apologize for letting myself get carried away. I shouldn’t have, and it was wrong of me. But we’re from two different worlds. There’s too much dividing us, and it’s only going to get worse if we walk down that aisle.”
What if we had kids? Keith and I had talked about being open to adopting or having biological ones, as it was normal for shifters to have what humans would call geriatric pregnancies, but I couldn’t exactly explain that to him.
And what about when they got their first shift?
Or even the time leading up to that which was often full of random aggression, spurts of body hair, aching teeth, and the desire for raw meat?
I was a fool. A fool who had been in denial for far too long, and now Keith was suffering because of it.
It wasn’t fair!
Why did the perfect soulmate for me have to be a human, and the perfect soulmate for him have to be a shifter? It all could have been so easy if things were a little different.
“Different worlds?” he repeated, and though his volume was rising and his tone was urgent, there was still no anger in his voice. No frustration. He was too kind. He should have been screaming at me. Cursing me out. But no, he was trying to find reason. Trying to make sure I was okay.
I didn’t deserve him.
“Olivia, I don’t want to belittle how you feel, and if you’re genuinely not in love with me anymore, or even if you wanna postpone the wedding because you think we’re moving too fast, I’m on board. The only thing that’s important to me is you!”
“Keith! My family put your life at risk, and I can’t guarantee that they won’t again!
You don’t get it, but please, believe me when I say that this is the best for the both of us.
There are too many differences. There’s this chasm between us that I thought we could bridge, but it’s not going to happen! ”
Sometimes, I wished he didn’t know me so well, because arguing with him when I was destroyed was incredibly difficult. It would be easier if he would lose his shit, which he would completely be justified in doing. Why, for once, couldn’t he be an asshole?
“Nothing is going to happen! This is a fluke! Shit like this happens in families!”
“You don’t know that! I know you think you can say that, but you can’t! There’s so much you don’t understand, and I can’t explain it to you!”
He scoffed at that, and I thought I’d finally raised my voice enough to get him to do it back, but no, that didn’t happen. Instead, his tone remained exasperated more than anything else.
“Like what? Do you mean that you’re all werewolves? Is that it?”
What the fuck?!?!
I blinked at him so hard and so many times that my brain got confused at the rapid signals. Perhaps I was getting sleepy. But no, I wasn’t readying for a nap. I was in fucking shock.
“What did you say?” I asked, voice barely above a whisper.
Because surely, I had hallucinated that.
There was no way that my fiancé just casually blurted that he knew we were all wolves.
It had to be my mind desperately trying to imagine a scenario where we could work out and still get our happily ever after.
“I said, is this because your whole family, or at least a lot of them, are werewolves?” he repeated steadily, proving that no, I hadn’t spontaneously developed psychosis.
“Because if it is, I understand there’s gonna be a learning curve, and probably some stuff we’ve gotta address, but, again, I do not care.
“Whether you’re a human, or a werewolf, or a cyclops, or the reincarnation of an ancient god, none of that is important to me.
What’s important to me is you, Olivia. It’s your soul I’m in love with, your soul I’m connected to, no matter what vessel it’s been poured into.
” He took a step toward me for the first time since I’d put space between us, his arms open wide enough to invite me to step into his embrace, but not forcefully so.
“And I hope you feel the same way about me.”
I wished I could say that I smoothly laughed and dismissed his claims as preposterous because werewolves didn’t exist. I wished I could say I ran into his arms with abandon and forgot everything I’d said.
But I didn’t do either. I could only stare, my brain locked between panic, relief, and the aforementioned shock.
“How… Who... I...” Okay, that wasn’t going anywhere, so I swallowed and tried forming full sentences in English again. “Why would you possibly say that?”
The corner of his lip quirked, the first thing even close to a smile since he’d returned to the party in his awful state. “It wasn’t like your family exactly made it difficult to guess.”
I had no rejoinder.
“You always have the week of the full moon blocked off. I know you said that’s when your family does your monthly hike, and I get keeping a strict schedule, but I noticed it wasn’t always the same seven days every month and never really gave it a second thought until I saw your lunar calendar.”
“Astronomy is really important to some of my aunties. Thinking people are werewolves because they’re interested in the lunar cycle—”
“I’m not done,” he said, holding up a finger, and I was starting to see more of Keith’s optimistic nature seeping in.
“Out of the forty or so of your family members I’ve met, not a single one has ever worn a piece of silver jewelry.
Seriously, not a soul. And don’t think I didn’t see that pair of older emo and goth teenage girls that were at the corner of the party and in several family photos.
No self-respecting goth would avoid silver jewelry.
” There was a glint in his eye as he hit me with what he knew I couldn’t argue with.
“Amanda taught me that much when she got into different subcultures. You want to tell me that she’s wrong? ”
I couldn’t believe that this was happening.
“Well—” I started before I realized that I had nowhere to go.
Never in my life did I ever think that I was going to have to argue that people who could randomly change into wolves weren’t real while being confronted with all the blatant evidence my family had been shoving into my fiancé’s face.
Ex-fiancé, the bitter side of my mind reminded.
Let’s hold off a minute on that particular title, the other side of my mind shot right back.
“Not to mention that while you have plenty of gold and bronze décor in your house, again, not a lick of silver. And then there was another lunar calendar in the downstairs bathroom. One near your altar to the moon is reasonable, two on different sides of the house indicates a high level of importance. Oh, and also, there’s the fact that your family has a literal altar to the moon right between two of the most prominent rooms in your home. ”
That was a pretty damning list, but still one I could plausibly deny. Already, my mind had switched from breakup and heartbreak into preserving the secrecy of my species so we could be safe.
But Keith kept on going.