Page 74 of Damian & Jun, Episodes 9-12
A vestige of Dalia walked across the water. Her face switched from how she was now to how she had been then, the day she betrayed him, and then further back to when she had been young, seventeen when he was six, twenty when he was nine, a beauty in her prime, twenty-five, a darkness on her brow as he passed his fourteenth year, the last of his respect for their father fading from his eyes.
Could he hate all that she had been and all that she was? Could he forget the moments she had been his loving older sister? The mornings she’d dumped cheap cereal in his bowl as she blended blush on her cheek or helped him pour the milk while quelling Thaddeus’s temper at how much he was eating?
Tearing her out of him was a cut against his own person. Hanging on to his guilt had nothing to do with her and everything to do with himself. He wanted the older sister who he loved. Had wanted her more than he had wanted himself. Hating himself for losing her was better than believing that she hadn’t loved him enough—that his only warmth in those early years had been so weak.
The boy inside clung to something that had never been, hoping the illusion would come back and dance.
He knew it was over.
But putting off belief let him pretend, shielded the child inside from the truth.
He had to let go of her, on every level, in every way.
The whole cloth of his childhood was poisoned. There was no saving it.
Dalia held out her hand, demanding he approach.
He raised the chalice instead. “I love me more. Even if I have to hate you to love me, I love me more.” He was going to become her monster. He was going to be every hateful thing she had flung at him.
He drank.
It wasn’t poison. It was life. It was color and rain and sunlight. It was Jun’s kisses and Richard’s hands. It was Enzo’s laugh and Matthew’s feet on the track. It was Émeric’s scones and Auntie’s coffee.
It was blood and rage and laughter. It was belief.
Dalia’s hand fell. Her eyes narrowed. He stared at her, licking his lips. He could feel the rage. Tears fell down his cheeks, inside and out. The rage he’d been so afraid lived inside him, strong as a wave, red and rising inside his chest. It burned, rewriting memories, building the case against her into a wall of evidence, lending him the strength of a beast. The strands between them, those bonds he’d always known to be tangled up in family, appeared between them, heated from the inside, the color of lava.
They burned to ash. Wounds ached in his heart, the points where connection had once been now empty and raw.
His physical body was falling. Arms had him. A blanket was wrapped around him, but he couldn’t look away from the wounds inside.
Someday he was going to see her face again, and he was going to feel nothing.
Tears soaked his skin. Why did you have to be the one who was kind once?
And then even that question was fading. His hands were free. He wrapped himself around Richard, the first truth, the first rock of his life.
Jun
Jun shimmied out of the dress and petticoats and traded them for loose sweats from Damian’s side of the closet. In the bathroom, he washed his face, getting rid of the makeup that feminized his features and hid his identity, and then moisturized, careful to treat his lips and under his eyes. Damian and Richard had not yet shown their faces. He went back to Damian’s room and folded the clothes into the garment bag, then went in search of Émeric. Perhaps the Frenchman would know where his husband was and, by extension, Jun’s boyfriend.
Voices led him down the hall past the playroom and the main bedroom. The door to the lounge at the end was open and the curtains all rolled up, letting in cold winter sunlight. Collin lay on one of the couches, his head on Émeric’s leg. His sir was petting his hair.
Jun held up the garment bag and laid it over a side table, then threw himself on the couch opposite Collin and Émeric. “Where’s Richard and Alpha?”
“The playroom,” Collin said.
“Oh.” Jun bit his cheek. That meant that Damian was probably submitting to Richard. He couldn’t be upset about that, not when he’d cried his heart out and almost fallen asleep in Émeric’s lap. He poked the feeling inside his chest for jealousy or panic. All he felt was bereft. He wanted what Collin had, someone to touch.
He rolled off the couch and crawled over to Collin. “Share.”
Collin blinked. “Share what?”
“Cuddles.”
Collin giggled, surprised. “You want me to cuddle you or you want to share Émeric?”
“Both. I’m greedy.”
