Page 112 of Legendary

“At this point Nick, the beginning is the only place I would like to start. I won’t believe you’re fully okay until I know everything,” he explained, leaning back on his hands as he sat on his bed.

I sighed, not wanting this conversation to set me back after I had released everything to Dani the night before. If I could get how I felt out once, then I could probably do it again. I had that thought in mind when I opened my mouth and started from the beginning. I dragged him through every detail I had, from the moment the nightmares started to the day it almost took me out. Reese hardly blinked as words flew out of my mouth. I didn’t know if I was speaking slowly or too fast, but he never stopped me. He never interrupted. I wasn’t even sure if his face changed expressions as I prattled on. I knew he was listening though; every minute detail was accounted for, and he was just soaking it all in.

I blew out a breath when I was done, suddenly feeling very thirsty after talking for what felt like hours. I licked my lips and rubbed the back of my neck, nervousness creeping its way up my spine as I waited for his reply. His chest rose and fell as he stared at me. He started to nod slowly as if everything I’d said was starting to make sense. Everything that had happened after Jonah’s death was starting to populate in his mind and all the weirdness I’d displayed, all my reasons for being so cagey at times were now making perfect sense. He ran a hand through his waves of blonde hair and clucked his tongue. “Well.”

“Well?” I asked, confused. “Well, what?”

“I don’t know, I kind of feel like shit now.” He wasn’t saying it to make things about him, I knew that much. He looked down at his feet, rubbing the tips of his shoe against the wood floor.

“You feel like shit? Reese what the hell are you talking about?”

He grumbled under his breath. “Ugh! Because I knew something fucking weird was going on with you and yes, I thought it was just because you were having a rough time with Jonah’s death and everything else that came with that, but I didn’t think it was this bad. I didn’t ask because come on Nick, your father is the most understanding person in the whole realm, and you wouldn’t even speak to him, so I never really stood a chance.” Reese shook his head, more to himself than to me. “I should have asked though. I should have tried more. I literally thought for half a second that your issues had to do with Dani, like the fuck is wrong with me.”

“I probably wouldn’t have been so open even if you had tried more. It’s no one’s fault but my own. Lilith and Markus and everyone else may have birthed the problem, but I held my feelings in, that was all me.” I tried to reassure him.

He waved me off. “Yeah, well maybe you wouldn’t have felt like you needed to stuff it inside, bottle that shit up, if I had pestered you. I didn’t want you to push me away and then bad shit happened, but bad shit happened anyway. We all almost lost you to whatever succubus darkness is in this place and all I would have thought was ‘I could have fixed things if I would have just pushed him more, told him it was okay to tell me what was going on.’”

I opened my mouth to speak, but he was right. I probably would have pushed him away if he had kept trying to get me to open up. Dani had tried and maybe I hadn’t pushed her away, but she didn’t get any closer to what I was feeling until she had to force it out of me. “I hate causing problems, let alone being a problem. You and I have always skimmed over the details on things, probably thinking it’s better to keep the friendship lighter and not get into the deep stuff.”

“Fuck, I know. And I get it, okay. I should have made you talk the minute I found your ass on the bathroom floor; I should have sat you down and just waited it out until you opened your mouth. Maybe we both would have just started talking until neither of us shut up and cleared the air completely. Every inch of emotion and trauma unloaded.” He let out a humorless chuckle.

“I wasn’t really ready to talk then and who knows, forcing me too early could have made it worse. I’ve always known you cared; I just don’t think it mattered because I wasn’t really ready to see it for myself.”

He nodded solemnly as if he still felt semi-responsible. Reese had latched onto me when we were kids, and he never had any intentions of letting go. Sometimes his loyalty to me could be a bit much, it could be overwhelming and suffocating, but I remembered when all I had was my dad. As fun as Maurice Cassial could be, it just wasn’t the same. I was a popular kid, but there had never been someone I felt comfortable enough with. Then a very rambunctious kid, with a mop of blonde hair, barreled into my life courtesy of my father’s need for me to make a connection that wasn’t him and I never looked back. I gained more broken bones, a concussion, and several very aggressive verbal punishments with our friendship but I also gained a best friend I wouldn’t have traded the realms for.

“And you’re okay now?” He asked in the smallest voice I didn’t even know he was capable of having.

I tilted my head back and forth. “I’m not, not, okay. I just have a better understanding now. I’m still sad and angry, but it’s not taking over my mind anymore. I think I’m slowly starting to forgive myself in pieces.”

He coughed and let out a loud sigh. “Good. I want to know if anything else happens though. Any negative thought enters your little brain, you tell me. You feel even a sliver of self-deprecation, you fucking talk to me.”

I tried to screw my mouth up so that my smile wasn’t so apparent. “You got it.”

“I honestly cannot believe the demon princess got us both to open up. It didn’t feel like compulsion, but it fucking could have been.”

I raised one of my eyebrows. “What?”

Reese rubbed the space between his blonde eyebrows. “Yeah…she got you to talk about your deep dark feelings and somehow I ended up telling her some of my feelings about my parents and enough about my past that we ended up being weird friends I guess.” His eyes glazed over a bit as if he was remembering the entire conversation.

“Wow, I mean you keep the parent stuff close to your chest, so like wow. I guess I never wanted to push you on that either. My dad actually told me to leave it alone when I tried to discreetly ask if he knew anything. So, I just let you tell me as much as you wanted, but whenever it’s really bothering you, you tell me alright?”

Reese pressed his lips together and pushed himself even further up his bed. “Alright, but this conversation is not about me, it’s about you. Let’s just agree that you will never do scary shit like that to me again and we’ll both open our fucking mouths and talk to each other about the deep stuff.”

I leaned back on my bed as well, feeling the soft pillow hit the back of my head. “I promise to never scare you like that again.”

“And if we cry, we cry,” he added, saying it as if it was some kind of royal decree.

I placed my arm around the back of my neck, so I was laying on it. I repeated his words back to him. “If we cry, we cry.”

“I was wrong about her you know,” Reese started, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. “Someone who stuck with you through that, helped you out during all of it, she’s a keeper in my book.”

“I think so too.”

Reese hummed, clearly not done. “While we remain on the topic of speaking up, you should really tell her how you feel.” I looked over at him and saw that he was looking at me with two raised eyebrows as if the answer was as clear as day. “And I think webothknow what I mean.”

Present

I heard voices outside the room, shuffling feet moving and casual conversation. I placed my arm over my eyes and yawned. I wasn’t tired enough to go back to sleep, but I could feel that my body was tired fromthe night’s events. I had never seen Dani so shaken up, so terrified before. I actually had never seen her cry, but all that had happened in a single night, and I honestly wasn’t sure how to handle it. I would have to try for her, especially with how this day was planning to go. I would let my girl take the reins and all of us would be at her side, just like we planned. As much as she would like to pretend like a one demon show was what she wanted, what she preferred, I knew she liked knowing she had us to fall back on. I know I certainly did.

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