Page 6 of Genesis (Alter Arlo #2)

I WON’T BOTCH IT LIKE YOU DID

CADOC

Not everyone needed tenderness and soft-hearted compassion. Love could be brutal and love languages could be savage. Passion could be aggressive and still convey the same message and meaning as warm love.

Zan tried to tell me that the real gift of giving love was to give it in the way that conveyed the message best to you. He said, ‘It doesn’t matter if you love differently than everyone else, as long as I know how to receive it in the way you intended for it to be received.’

As a person, I was fake. I covered deep hurt with nonchalance.

I cared too much about some things, but faked indifference as a means of self-preservation.

I ignored deeper feelings because I didn’t know how to process them, and I pretended to lack empathy to protect the things I loved.

It kept me distant, detached, and apart from anything that could get hurt because of me.

But that all changed when I met Zan, a strange boy in the lake who swam up to me as I tried to pee through battered and bruised kidneys, using the water to hide my physical pain.

It didn’t help that I met him during a particularly low point in my life.

I’d tried, but there was no hiding my pain, and as ashamed of that as I was at the time, he never made a single comment about it.

He faked it for me because he knew I needed it.

I’d never faked it for him. Not once in our whole relationship.

I fucked up by trying to conform my style of love to something more conventional, but with a few words written on the back of a receipt, Zan reminded me that he loved me anyway, and he didn’t want me to stop loving him in the only way I knew how.

Zade was different. He faked the opposite of how I faked.

I tried to dim down my aggressive feelings, and he tried to tamp his anger and act happy despite being the most unhappy person I’d ever encountered.

I knew it. I saw it. I recognized it because I understood it, had been through it, and knew what it felt like to put on a smile I didn’t recognize.

Zade did that every fucking day. He did it to make Zan happy, and that made me love Zade even more.

He picked his brother. He chose his twin as the winner, the chosen one, the one who got to experience life, and Zade chose himself as the tribute, to suffer for all of us.

No vices. No crutches. No coping mechanisms. No tranquilizers.

No pain medications. Zade did it all out of sheer willpower to give his brother a better life.

His mind dipped into dark realities while Zan’s soared into the freedom of love and connection.

While Zan got to feel the good things in life, Zade suffered through the bad on behalf of both of them.

I knew it. I knew it and I thought about doing something about it.

I never did. All I could ever do was recognize it, because if I called him out on it and tried to get him to let it go, it would ruin the only good thing he ever had.

He chose to suffer so Zan could be happy, and if I acknowledged it and brought it up to Zan, Zade’s life purpose would have shattered before his eyes.

So instead of talking to Zade about it, I sometimes sat with him while he healed.

I stayed with him while his mind fought to come back to his body after an intense mental torture by his father.

I always left before he opened his eyes, but at least he could feel that someone cared.

Someone knew. Someone knew and thanked him for the sacrifice he’d willingly made.

It made him angry, but who wouldn’t turn angry after that? He got to watch us have everything he ever wanted, and the only reason we got it was because he sacrificed himself. Their father was a sadistic fuck who needed to control someone’s mind. If it hadn’t been Zade, it would have been Zan.

I never knew how to thank Zade for that.

Not even now.

Because I was ashamed that I ever had the nerve to be happy while a man as sick as their father tortured his son so completely. How had I allowed that? How had I lived with it? How cowardly was I?

He wasn’t dead, but he wasn’t here either.

Somewhere lost in the high of morphine, fighting to either leave this world or return to it, I kept my fingers linked with his and didn’t move my shoulder so he could continue resting on it.

I had no idea when he’d found me or for how long he’d been passed out, but he was here, and I wasn’t going to leave him alone again.

I knew he hated me, but a part of me always loved him. For everything he did for Zan.

“Thank you,” I whispered to him, needing to say it now that I had a second chance. “For everything you gave up for him. For us.”

He looked so much like Zan right now. Head on my shoulder, like Zan always used to do. Hair all fucked up and messy. It reminded me of Zan after he got out of the lake. Or after a good fuck. Legs spread, but ankles together, almost crossed-legged but not really. So beautiful. So sexy.

I closed my eyes, waiting for him to wake up—hoping he’d wake up.

I failed at saving Zan and I failed at killing myself. Typical.

I’d been replaying that day over and over in my head.

Zan told me he was going to talk to Zade about our plan to take out his dad.

The plan wasn’t for Zan to do it. He was supposed to take Amelia away while Zade and I handled it.

He fucked me over and lied to me because he didn’t want me carrying all his burdens.

If only he knew how many burdens Zade had already been carrying for him.

If only he knew how many more Zade would have to carry for the rest of his life now that his twin was gone.

Zan was never supposed to do it. He was never supposed to be there.

It was a truth I could never tell Zade because it would only take away the power of Zan’s death.

I needed Zade to believe that his twin sacrificed himself by choice, not by stupidity.

He could blame me all he wanted; I’d gladly take that blame to keep Zade’s memory of Zan alive and positive.

There was no point in tainting it now. I’d rather Zade hate me.

His fingers twitched in mine, drawing my attention to my terrible nail polish job.

I almost smiled at it, but the expression felt foreign and unfair.

Zan used to paint my nails because of the nicotine stains on the tips of my first two fingers on both hands.

I never cared, but he did, so I let him paint them and I learned to love the times when he’d get that bottle and sit me down.

I wasn’t allowed to touch anything or do anything, and that’s when Zan really came alive with his own style of love language.

Those moments meant a lot to me, and I didn’t think there’d ever be another person I’d let paint my nails.

It was an act of trust and honour now, and it’d never belong to anyone but the man I loved.

Zade groaned, but it almost sounded pleasant.

He was in the foggy state I’d been in right before I woke up.

The one where you didn’t really know if you’re alive or dead, but everything felt okay for a moment.

It’d crumble soon and reality would crash into that momentary lapse in judgement, and then the pain and the anger would come back.

I stayed still to give him the time he could buy in that state, not wanting to interrupt it.

A few minutes later, I knew he was awake, and he knew I wasn’t dead. Neither of us moved, afraid to scare off the rare tranquillity of the present.

His voice sounded like absolute shit, but he managed to say, “You ever leave me again, I’ll fucking kill you for real. I won’t botch it like you did.”

Weirdly, I laughed at that. I had botched my own suicide. I was supposed to be dead right now, waiting to reunite with Zan at the bottom of Synner’s Lake.

“You smell like shit. Go shower or something.” He pushed away from me, grabbing an old pair of Zan’s glasses off the top of the dresser.

When he put them on, I had to look away.

Holy shit, he looked like Zan when he wore those.

I peeked, and it hurt too badly, so I pushed myself up and tried not to cringe when I realized I’d pissed myself again.

I’d been high for days, attempting suicide with every bottle I could find in that tiny little bag.

The water was cold as ice, but I barely felt it.

The routine was monotonous, and then I changed into clothes I’d left here long ago.

Zade showered next, so I lit a cigarette and tried to find something to eat in the kitchen.

I didn’t even know why I came here. I knew it’d hurt.

Too many good things and too many bad things happened here, and memories weren’t good for people like me. I didn’t know how to feel them.

When Zade walked into the kitchen, I was on my fourth cigarette.

I avoided looking at him because I knew he’d be Zan.

He’d be wearing Zan’s clothes from the closet, and maybe even Zan’s glasses.

I didn’t trust my mind enough to separate wrong from right, and sometimes I couldn’t help the way my body reacted to that body.

It’d be as hard on me as it’d be on Zade, and there was no point in putting both of us through it.

“So,” he started, voice a little better, “what now?”

There was a box of crackers and a jar of peanut butter in the cabinet, so I set it on the counter and kept my eyes down.

When I saw the Punisher logo on the sleeve of his hoodie, I sighed a breath of relief.

That was a Zade thing. A Rev-Enge thing.

His crew’s symbol. Nothing like Zan would wear.

Risking it, I looked up, passing his chest, noticing he’d shaved a bit, and stopped when I got to his eyes.

The glasses.

I straight up broke a little inside, and my teeth chattered on a choppy exhale.

“I can take them off,” he said.