“You didn’t tell them?” Cole asks me again. “Liv!”
“I’m sorry. I tried. It was weird and I was completely disconcerted and then I discovered neither of you were there and that she was Empress and had a daughter who was in love with – you will never believe - Lance and…this, this whole other thing. I’m sorry. I was trying to figure it out and then it was too late.”
They are both staring at me in varying shades of shock. “She has a daughter? Who is in love with Lance?” Devon asks as Cole snaps, “How was it too late?”
I look between the two of them and Cole asks again, deathly quiet, “How was it too late, Liv?”
If I could cut my own tongue out of my head, it would be the more attractive option than having to answer that.
“How?” he growls at me as he gets up to put his sweats back on and with epically bad timing, I answer him just as CK pops into existence, “I slept with her Constantine.”
To say the pair of them look homicidal is an understatement. Devon, after picking his jaw up from the floor, beats a hasty retreat–the lucky fucker–and I am left alone with them.
“You, what?” Cole asks, almost as if he is expecting a different answer.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, “I didn’t mean to, it just sort of happened.”
Now I realize here that I am being untruthful, but no way am I admitting that I wanted to do it and even less so am I admitting that I also had her Sebastian. That goes with me to my grave. Which, by the looks of it, is going to be way sooner than I had hoped.
I am desperate to play the blame game by stating that he slept with other me, but he claims he didn’t know. I was all sorts of conscious of my decision and unfortunately, he knows that. I look beseechingly at him, keeping my eyes firmly away from CK. I daren’t. I just daren’t even look at him yet. Nobody moves as we stare at each other. His hurt is palpable, and I want to reach out and comfort him, but I know he will reject me, and I don’t want that, for either of us. I pull the sheet up to my chin as I become very aware of my nudity and as he still doesn’t say anything, I make the bold and stupid move of shifting my eyes to my sire.
They are completely black and like two death rays, they pin mine in place and now I can’t look anywhere but at him.
“Would you care to explain exactly how that happened, Aefre,” he says in a tone that suggests that if I don’t care to explain, tough shit.
“I can, I can explain,” I say as my brain scrabbles to remember how it happened. “I was asleep, and I woke up and he was next to me. It is, after all, his bed.” I make this point to two stony faces. “He was apologizing to me for something that he did. Something that hurt her a lot. She hadn’t forgiven him, and he was asking me to forgive him. He looked so sad as he remembered how she looked at him.” I chance a quick look at CK as I know how he felt when I looked at him a certain way. Nothing. Okay. So, I continue, “I wanted to offer him some comfort. You must understand that I had a bond with him. Just as strong as ours,” I say to him. “Just as you had to her,” I say this to Cole. “I leaned forward to kiss him and he took it in the way that his wife would have intended. I got lost in it momentarily and then…” I trail off as I am sure I don’t need to explain further.
“I see,” CK says.
Cole looks at him. “Oh, you see, do you?”
“I do. I can say with some degree of certainty that the other me is not that much unlike myself. If I was in bed with Aefre and she leaned over to kiss me, I would probably do the same. I am also acutely aware of the effect I have on her. We already know the bonds remained intact when they switched and therefore, I know what she would have felt. However,” he then states as he catches me looking at him gratefully, “as usual, your misguided charge side got you into trouble by trying to make him feel better. When will you learn, Aefre, that it is NOT YOUR JOB?” He roars the last three words at me as he takes a menacing step forward and I shrink back, pressed against the wall clutching the sheet to me in a useless defense.
“I’m sorry!” I yell back. “I’m sorry that I don’t like to see you in pain. Any of you or any of your alternate selves.”
“Not a good enough defense, my sweet.” He steps forward again. “It is bad enough that I have to share you with everyone here, now I have to share you with him, too?”
“No, of course not. It was once. One time.” Liar, liar pants on fire, my brain sings to me. Good thing I’m not wearing any then.
“Liv,” Cole says quietly. “I can understand that you felt a bond with him, but I don’t get that you would consciously do this to me. To us.”
“Cole, I’m sorry,” I say, forgetting now about CK as I shuffle forward with my sheet. Ah, screw this, I need to get dressed. I Astral off the bed in a foggy swirl and reappear fully clothed in front of him. “Please, baby. Forgive me. It was stupid and I wasn’t thinking.” I take his hands and he lets me but just barely.
“You knew I wasn’t there and instead of being sad about that you go off and fuck your sire. What a fucking surprise,” he says bitterly. “Once again, you chose him over me.”
“I would hardly say
that, my boy,” CK says, interrupting. “Seems she chose someone else entirely over both of us.”
“Stop it. Both of you. I didn’t choose anyone over anyone. It was a mistake. A horrible, horrible mistake. Please forgive me.” I step closer to Cole and he steps back.
“Not this time, Liv. Not as easily as that.”
What? Well, now the pointing finger is coming out, damn the flimsy argument.
“You fucked her, and I forgive you,” I say softly. “I know you say that you didn’t know it was her, but do you know how much that hurts? That you couldn’t even tell?”
Oh, I am such a manipulative bitch, I am going straight to Hell. To Hell, I tell you, as he looks back at me, his beautiful, angry gray eyes changing to sad light blue ones. “I knew something was off, I did,” he says to me. “It never even occurred to me that someone else was in your body.”