Page 23 of This Cruel Fate

Marshall had the gall to look stricken, as if she had hit him. “I didn’t know you felt that way.”

“Well, I do.”

Xolia crossed her arms, frustratingly aware of Adonis’s number resting on her skin. Marshall stepped into her space, a hand reaching out to rest on her shoulder before he let his arm fall limply to his side.

“Do you think we can fix us?” he whispered. It was so soft Xolia almost didn’t catch it. Almost.

“I don’t know.” There was no end. Marshall wasn’t happy with her anymore. Peter wasn’t happy with her anymore. Sel only knew where Atlas was and what had happened to her stuff. She had no phone. She barely had a job. “I don’t know,” she reiterated. As if Marshall needed any more confirmation.

Marshall left the apartment, though the tension between them remained. It was cloying. Xolia sat down on their small and faded couch. She hung her head in her hands. Guilt gnawed at her. Nothing was happening like it was supposed to. But she had felt so alive at the fights. And Adonis. . . No. She pushed all thoughts of him deep down.

With a furtive glance at the front door, Xolia got up, went to the kitchen, and turned on the faucet. She rolled up her sleeve and stared at the number. Just do it. She shoved her arm under the water and scrubbed at her skin until there was no reminder of him. Just pink skin.

Good. Xolia moved to her bedroom, where she could change into clothes that were hers. A pen and a pad of paper lay on Marshall’s nightstand. The temptation was too great; she scribbled down Adonis’s number, which she had not memorized on purpose, and tore off the paper. She collapsed onto her side of the bed, tired even after having been unconscious for two days. Tenderly, she stared at the number. She dropped her arm over the side of the bed, finding that small tear in the mattress that neither she nor Marshall ever bothered to fix. She slipped the paper inside, hoping she could forget about it.

Xolia was nearly asleep by the time the front door clicked and multiple sets of footsteps entered the apartment. Xolia jumped out of bed, wondering if Atlas had finally decided to confront her. She left the room and found Marshall and Rowan. They exchanged a few hushed words, but it was too quiet for Xolia to make out anything specific. Her stomach dropped when Rowan turned her head and they made eye contact.

It grew hard to breathe. Rowan was the last person she wanted to see, and she didn’t know why Marshall thought it would be okay, in any way, to bring her to their home. Rowan just greeted her with her lips pressed in a thin line, neither comforting nor condemning. All carefully calculated and laced with pity. Xolia set her jaw.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“You need to talk to someone, Xo.”

Xolia tsked. “Don’t call me that. And I don’t know why you think I would talk to you.” Despite her words, she moved to the living room, and stood by the couch with her arms crossed. “I won’t tell you where I went.”

“Can you at least tell us why?” Rowan asked.

Us. Why. Rowan asked it like there was one simple answer. Maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to tell them where she went. Xolia’s breathing constricted more. Why was it so hard to breathe?

“Xolia, are you okay?” Marshall was across the room in an instant, clutching her shoulders. Rowan stood close behind him.

How had they gotten so close? They were too close. She was going to suffocate.

Ripping free from Marshall’s worried grip, Xolia paced the length of their small living room. “I just—” I want things to go back to normal. I hate normal, though. But normal is what we fought for. I don’t actually know what I want. I don’t think I want you, though. “I want to not feel this way anymore,” Xolia cried out. She didn’t want to be pulled in opposite directions. She wanted one path. Right now, she was falling apart. Normal was so boring. Happy wasn’t fulfilling, not in the way the fight had been. But that was illegal. A threat to what FAR—what Peter—was trying to accomplish. And while she was dealing with all of that, there were Rowan and Marshall, both of whom were so assured in who they were. Never once had she heard them talk about the old days positively. Or at all, really. Those days were behind them.

How could she tell them everything when they were so content in the now? Running a clammy hand through her hair, she turned wild eyes on them, hoping they could see past the lump in her throat. All she needed was their understanding. She could forgive and forget if she just had that.

“What are you feeling?” Marshall asked. His features were drawn up tight, his eyes trained on her empty ring finger.

Xolia wanted to shout at him. Of course he would immediately assume it was about their relationship. “I don’t know,” she answered, putting all she felt into the words. “I feel…” She looked at Rowan’s glasses, useless lenses of glass. She thought about Marshall’s arm cast the first year they had reconnected, so inundated with suppressants that she had been sure they were healing slower than humans. “. . . human.” She slumped onto the couch.

Rowan frowned. “And that upsets you?”

“We’re not human,” Xolia said. She didn’t hate humans, but she wasn’t one. “And I hate that you applied for the vice director position without telling me.”

“I should’ve told you,” Rowan said, sitting next to Xolia.

Xolia scoffed. Like the admission did anything to heal the rift between them.

Rowan kept talking. “I was upset with you for applying at all, I think.”

“Why?”

Rowan shifted away from Xolia on the couch. Despite their knees still touching, there was an insurmountable gulf between them. “You were really mean, by the end of everything. I like the way we’re friends now. If you had gotten that position, we wouldn’t be friends anymore.”

Xolia looked at Marshall.

At least he had the decency to look sheepish, but he still shrugged at her. Xolia hadn’t been mean to them. They had been in a war, how was she supposed to have treated them?

---