Page 64 of Torn

He’s never kissed someone without thinking of Love. Until now.

By the Fates, he wants to kiss Merry again.

He dreads that, because what else will she dislodge from him? What else will she subject him to? What more will unravel?

He’s wrung out by the past while standing at the precipice of a future. He clenches the rooftop’s edge, yanking himself out memories, visual relics of his birth, his training, his peers. His wasted affections for another goddess.

He resurfaces from history. His thoughts come right back to Merry.

His mind knows what should happen. His body has other ideas.

As does another unfamiliar part inside him. An irrational part. A chamber that lacks boundaries, an evasive extremity that can’t be seen, or tasted, or heard. Only felt.

Anger loathes to recall Merry’s expression when he tore himself away from her. The rift in her voice, as if he’d made a crack in her throat.

She’s a female the likes of whom he’s never met or conceived of. Someone who’s been conjured by the stars and then overlooked. Someone who’s blindsided him while casting a new light on the world, revealing layers that he hadn’t noticed before.

Colorful layers. Bright layers. Imperfect layers.

Laughter. Effortlessly, she pulls that out of him, along with a collision of self-doubt and self-worth.

Belonging. That’s what she offers him.

What he can offer her in return?

The most awestricken part is that, with Merry, he believes thereissomething to offer. That he’s still valuable. That no matter how much one loses—power or magic or purpose—one still has more left to give.

Anger doesn’t know what to feel, other than ashamed. But he does know what to do, what to give her. So he leaves the observatory and wanders the streets until he’s collected enough misplaced coins to make a difference.

Locating Merry’s favorite record emporium, the place where they’d listened to music together, Anger passes through the doors as a family exits. He’s careful not to bluster through the father.

He’s also careful not to touch objects unless customers aren’t watching, just as he and Merry were prudent the last time they came here. It wouldn’t be wise for patrons to see items of their world defying gravity. Deities may be invisible and intangible, but mortal objects are an exception. If Anger lifts something, people will question their sanity, perhaps record the event with those phones barnacled to their fingers. Either that, or they’ll scream.

Discreetly, he rifles through the albums until finding the second-hand title that he and Merry had sampled. Its humble price is beneficial to Anger, who covertly drops his foraged coins—enough to compensate for the record—on the counter as he leaves.

Returning to the observatory, Anger checks the roof’s fern paths. He pauses in the alcove, staggered by the consideration she’d put into outfitting it.

No one has ever gifted him with a room before.

What if she doesn’t want to see him? What if this is a ridiculous idea?

Anger heads for the doors leading to the garret. He peeks through the partition, into a dim space flushed with neon and…and her.

Merry reclines on her back. She stares at the ceiling, creases cutting through her forehead, those pink eyes unfocused. She has changed out of the overalls, taking solace in a satin nightgown. The cloud slippers rest on the floor, the sight lifting the corners of his mouth.

He realizes what this sensation is, gushing through him. It’s tenderness, a prelude to sentimentality.

Strangely, it doesn’t make him feel weak. Rather, it’s the opposite.

Tentatively, he knocks. Merry’s head swings toward him, and while he expects a theatrical rebuff, her chin merely stiffens.

She whips her gaze back to the ceiling.

Anger twists the knob and steps inside. He approaches the bed while her attention glues itself to nothing in particular. Her skin prickles as she rubs a toe against the opposite ankle.

“Will you look at me now?” he murmurs.

“What for?” she inquires briskly, as if there’s nothing wrong.

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