by Nicole Thorn
I hoped that one day, my brain would accept that Jasmine wasn’t fragile anymore. She’d accidentally hurt me enough that I should have gotten it. We’d broken the bed, the dresser, destroyed clothes, and she’d gotten rough with me plenty. I realized that it could have been that I didn’t want to accept that she was stronger than me. She wouldn’t have needed me that way. She wouldn’t have had any reason for me to stick around.
“What?” she asked me.
I nearly kept it to myself, but I knew I couldn’t do that. “I feel like I have so little to offer you as it is. If you don’t even need me to keep you safe, I’m going to worry about when you decide to show me the door because I cause you more stress than I’m worth.”
Jasmine’s eyes widened, her mouth dropping open. “I would never do that. Did you think I was only with you for protection? That’s crazy.”
I shook my head. “No, I didn’t think that. It’s just that I don’t know what I do for you. I stress you out, I stress Jasper out too. Everyone’s worried about the unstable one.”
She gave me a look. “First off, I think people are a lot more paranoid about Verin than you. You get overprotective, but he goes on murder sprees.”
“Only one.”
Jasmine glared. “Still. And I don’t see this as me not needing you anymore. I see it as us getting to the same level. We can keep each other safe now. You don’t have to worry about leaving me home alone, because I’ll be there when you get back. I’ll be safe and sound, no matter what might try and come for me.”
I would probably never feel totally safe or comfortable leaving her alone. I couldn’t after finding her dead. I would always have nightmares. I would always be sure something terrible would happen and take her away from me. It didn’t help that we had a war coming; one that we might have to fight without whatever magical tool we were here to earn.
“What do we do now?” I asked. “All the cards are out on the table, but things still feel…”
“Icky?”
“Yeah.”
“I think they might for a while. All we can do is work on the issues we have until we’re okay. I don’t have any idea how long that’s going to take or how we’ll do, but we have to be the best couple in the family.” She pointed her finger at the table, voice intense. “We’re the king and queen of wooing, and I will not be dethroned.”
I relaxed for the first time since Jasmine had come back to the room. I could actually see a possible future where she and I were fine. One where we would stay together and be healthier than we were right now. As long as we could keep up with the new rules we’d set, then everything could be fine. Better than fine, but something that could give me what I’d always wanted. Maybe in a few years, Jasmine and I would be good enough to get married. Then we could start a family of our own, and they wouldn’t know anything about the hard times we’d had at the beginning of our relationship. Those kids would only see the perfect running machine we would eventually be. They would never worry for us, and that meant that I could eventually get to a point where I wasn’t afraid anymore. I’d never not been afraid, and the thought of being freed from that burden felt like too much to dare hope for. If it fell through, my heart would break.
Jasmine stood up, losing the hold she had on my hand. I didn’t have time to miss it, because she already walked around the table to me. She bent to give me a hug, her arms tight around me. I buried my face against her neck, taking in the scent I’d grown so accustomed to. I might have been afraid of a lot of things, but I felt safe in that room. Safe with Jasmine right there to remind me that not everything had to hurt all the time.
“I love you,” she told me, pulling back and looking downward at me.
“I love you too.”
Jasmine bent back down, pressing her lips softly to mine. She held them there, her fingers brushing against my cheek and lulling me into comfort that I couldn’t describe. My hands found her hips, pulling the girl down to my lap. We didn’t break the kiss, even as Jasmine adjusted to get comfortable. I sat back in the chair, my hand tight on her side while she ground hard against my lap.
I should have been worried that someone could come to talk to us or that we might have had things to do, but none of that could touch me then. It stopped mattering all at once, vanishing from my thoughts as Jasmine started pulling at my shirt. She got it off my head and to the floor without ripping it, which I thought was a miracle.
I stood with Jasmine in my arms, feeling her smile against me. It felt lighter than it had in our entire relationship. I pushed aside the wave of sadness that tried to come along with that thought because we couldn’t do anything to fix the past. We could only move forward and try not to fuck anything else up. We could do it, I thought. It would take work, but I saw no reason for us to have any more sadness running this deep in our relationship. It could be over if we wanted it to be.
We bounced when I dropped us both onto the bed. Jasmine giggled while we oriented ourselves, which gave me a good opportunity to get some clothes off of her. I wasn’t as careful as she’d managed to be, tearing her shirt before I got it off her. I didn’t break her shorts though, so I deserved some bonus points for that one.
We moved in a hurry, like having our clothes on for any longer would kill us both. I couldn’t tell who won that battle, but we both ended up naked in less than a minute.
Jasmine shoved me onto my back, hopping onto my lap and crushing her mouth to mine in what felt like one swift motion. Her nails scraped lightly down my chest, a smirk on her face when her hand reached my dick. Every time felt like the first time with her, so it laid me out when she started stroking me. I didn’t have anything to say, and I couldn’t do much more than kiss her as she went on. After a few seconds, she pushed me into her, making me groan as I held her body closer to mine.
Jasmine’s hands nearly had me pinned to the bed, tight against my shoulders as she rocked on top of me. The bedframe slammed into the wall, but nothing broke yet. It wasn’t like we could get billed for damages, so I would have been fine if we tore the whole room down around us. If anything, it would make me feel better to destroy as much as possible before this whole ordeal ended.
It was just this side of painful when Jasmine thrust her hips with mine, but I would have been fine with the pain. I would have been fine if she clawed the skin from my shoulders. Things like that didn’t exist during these moments. I could only see her and me, and things like flesh and blood hardly mattered.
I held her by her hips, though she didn’t really need the help with her balance. I just wanted to hold her the faster she moved on top of me. Her wild eyes wouldn’t focus on anything, her hair a tangled mess in her face. I wanted to stare at her like that for hours, making sure the image stayed etched into my mind. There was nothing better than that.
As I started moving Jasmine even faster against me, she let out a moan that could’ve been heard in the hallway. I almost cared about who might have heard, but the thought left me as fast as it came. If they didn’t like it, they could have gone to another room. I also decided not to care that the gods might have been taping the hotel room. I’d freak out about that later and possibly look into killing some gods.
It ended for both of us almost at the same time, Jasmine moaning my name loudly while I made a groaning sound that I should have been embarrassed about. I wasn’t, and again, it didn’t matter who heard or not. They could deal with it.
Jasmine collapsed at my side, a smile on her face as she stretched her toes out and her arms in the air. “Well… that’s how we should end every discussion from now on.”
“Sure,” I panted. “That could only be good for us.”
“I agree. It could even get us to talk more.”
“Oh, you’re right. That’s not a bad idea. In fact… maybe we should have another talk right now.”
She nodded. “A talk that should last at least ten minutes?”
“If you insist. Go.”
That threw me for a second, racking my
brain for something that could buy me time. “So… what do you want me to make for breakfast when we get home?”
Jasmine
I didn’t want to talk to my brother or sister, but I knew that I had to. After all the damage that I had done to our relationship, I felt like I owed it to them to apologize every day until they told me I really should stop. Then for at least three or four days after that.
Zander asked if I wanted him to go with me.
“No,” I said, shuffling my feet. “No offense, but whenever you and Jasper are around each other, things get weird. I don’t even know why they get weird, or how, but they do.”
Zander frowned at that, cocking his head. “Do they?”
I nodded, still feeling guilty for saying it. “Most of the time it’s not hostile or anything like that. It’s just… weird. I don’t know. It’s like you guys never learned how to be around each other and hang out, or something.”
“We don’t,” Zander said.
“Don’t what?”
“Hang out,” he explained. “You, Juniper, and Kizzy spend time together all the time, but Verin, Jasper, and I almost never do. Is that weird?”
“I… don’t know,” I finally said. We all lived in the same house together, so it was kind of impossible not to spend a lot of time with one another. But while I could hang out with my sister and Kizzy, or I used to be able to hang out with them, I couldn’t remember the boys ever doing something together. I didn’t think they got along very well.
Zander rubbed the back of his head. “I’m questioning everything now, wondering if it’ll be another trial we have to face, or if it’s just something that’s not right in our family. I wish we could go back to a week ago when things didn’t feel this crappy all the time, even if only because we didn’t pay attention to the things that we should have been more concerned about.”
I sighed. “Let’s just focus on us for right now. If we have family issues we need to work out, we can do that after the trial.”
“Deal,” he said, touching my side. “If you need me, then please come and get me. I’m sure that Jasper won’t do anything that’ll upset you, but… yeah…”
“I promise,” I said. “And the way things are going, I think I’m more likely to be the one upsetting everyone else.”
He didn’t disagree, which really told me how bad I’d been lately. Even knowing that I had told the truth, Zander would normally disagree with a statement like that, just to make me feel better. Since I hadn’t felt right for months, I didn’t think anything good would come from Zander’s comfort. In fact, I hadn’t felt right since before we got turned into gods, since before we died.
I left the room with that thought souring my mood and went to find my brother and sister. They were both in their own rooms and they both came out when I asked them too. Kizzy looked worried and Verin eyed me like I was a bomb that would go off in his face.
His nose had healed already, but I still felt guilty when I looked at him, remembering what I had done. Even though part of me felt like he had deserved it.
Juniper, Jasper, and I sat down in the hallway away from the rooms so that our significant others wouldn’t be able to hear anything we said. I just didn’t trust that Verin wouldn’t charge out of the room to accuse me of being a terrible sister to Juniper if I said something he didn’t like.
We sat in a circle, not saying anything for several long seconds. I started the conversation the only way that I could think. “I’m sorry. I know that I’ve said that a few times, but I just wanna say it again. I’m sorry for the way that I’ve been acting and I’m sorry for the things that I’ve said to you guys and I’m sorry that I’ve made it harder for you to get through your trials. I’m sorry that I drank and lost a trial because of it, and I’m sorry that I punched Verin in the face.”
Juniper shifted around. “I didn’t enjoy seeing that, but I get why you did it.”
“I’ve punched Verin in the face myself, so I don’t have much room to be angry about it,” Jasper said.
I cracked a smile at the memory. Jasper had punched Verin at Juniper’s behest because the demigod had been bothering her.
“I think I’ve hit him too, actually,” Juniper said, smiling sheepishly. “I love him with my whole heart, but Verin’s one of those people that kind of always has it coming when someone hits him. That being said, if anyone I’m not directly related to does it, then I’m taking action.”
“Because you don’t want blood on the floor?” Jasper asked.
“Maybe,” Juniper said, smiling softly
It felt comfortable for that little bit of the conversation, but the comfort disappeared as another awkward silence rose up. We all shifted around, not quite looking at each other. My chest tightened, and I swallowed hard. “Is there anything that you guys wanted to talk about?”
“Lots,” Juniper said. “Do you hate me?”
“No,” I said, not asking why she’d wonder that. “I’m just confused as to why none of you would tell me something like that. And why the gods would insist on bringing it out in the way that they did. It doesn’t feel like they’re trying to test us. It feels like they’re trying to break us.”
Heracles’ words washed over me. He certainly seemed to think that the gods wanted to punish us and break us.
Juniper looked down at her lap. “I didn’t want you to hate Verin or think that he had done something wrong.”
“He did do something wrong,” I said. “He killed a man.”
Juniper winced, glancing away. “I know that. I know that he shouldn’t have done it, but I just… I can’t be upset about it, because whenever I think of Dad, I think about how he would have turned us into slaves so that he could get whatever he wanted. I think about how he abused us, and what we’ve become because of that. Jasper is the only one that’s gotten significantly better.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Jasper said. “I eat and sleep because Kizzy makes me, but his voice is still in my head every day, telling me that I’m not good enough, not strong enough, not assertive enough.”
Tears popped into my eyes.
“It’s just, we’ve had to do some really bad things to keep people safe,” Juniper said. “To keep ourselves safe. We’ve gotten thrown into the middle of a war and we have no fucking clue what we’re doing, but we still have to do it. We have to listen to the gods, we have to jump when they say jump, we have to save everyone. And I can’t help but think that if we didn’t know Dad, we would’ve killed him ourselves to save a different set of kids. If we now had met the Dad from seven years ago, don’t you think we would have done the same thing that Verin did? Does the fact that he didn’t have any children to abuse in the house when Verin killed him, mean he didn’t deserve to die?”
Jasper shrugged. “It’s hard for me to feel too bad about him, to be honest. I think Kizzy would have killed him herself if she had gotten the chance. I’ll always remember the look on her face when she found the photo album.”
None of us could look at each other for a couple of seconds. The photo album had contained dozens of pictures from our childhood, but only pictures of when we had screwed up. Dad only busted out the camera to document our failures as his children, so that he could remind us how good he treated us. That any other parent would’ve sent us away so that they didn’t have to watch us fail.
To this day, I kind of flinched when cameras came out. I could smile like I meant it, cock my hip like I felt sassy, but inside, I shriveled up until the flash had gone away. The demigods didn’t take too many pictures of us, but when they did, I sensed my siblings wishing we could disappear.
“I can’t say that I’m upset he’s dead either,” I said. “Which scares me. I feel like I should care. I cried so much when he died and then it stopped mattering.” I rubbed my eyes. “Just, please don’t keep secrets like that from me again. It hurts to know that you don’t trust me. Even though I haven’t exactly earned that trust.”
Jasper touched my hand. “We won’t.�
��
Juniper nodded, staring down at her lap. She cleared her throat, “As for why the gods made me tell you, I think they were forcing me to do something that might make you leave.”
I frowned.
She shrugged, refusing to look at me. Her mismatched eyes held a world of pain, the two colors both shimmering in the dull fluorescent lights. “Ever since we moved out of Dad’s house, I’ve had this worry in the back of mind that you guys would leave. I’ve had panic attacks when you’ve been out drinking because you weren’t where you were supposed to be. There was a Jasmine spot, and you weren’t in it, and the thought of that would send me spiraling.”
My heart broke right down the middle. I took Juniper’s hand, squeezing. “I’d always come back.”
“As long as nothing bad happened,” Juniper whispered. “There was so much that could go wrong, every time you left the house. It scared me every single time. I thought that I could lose you.”
And she probably felt that way again when I had gotten drunk a few nights ago. My eyes closed as guilt swamped me from all sides. I’d known that my drinking had hurt Jasper and Juniper, but I’d never really thought about what would’ve happened if I got myself killed. I never thought about what it would do to them, to be a set of triplets without one triplet. What it would mean for them to wake up every day and have the knowledge that I’d died.
I couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried, picture my life without one of them. It felt like a nightmare.
I swallowed the hard lump in my throat, shifting around on the floor. “And I’m sorry about that, too. I should never have made you feel that way, and I swear to you that I won’t again. The last time I got drunk is the last time. I swear to you.”
Juniper smiled at me. “You can’t promise something like that, but thank you for trying.”
