Page 53 of Puck My Life

“What?” I ask aghast.

“That’s the answer; we need to fall in love with her. That’s how we keep her.”

I stare at him and sit back down, feeling my stomach bottom out. “I don’t think I’ve ever been in love.”

“No, because you run from your emotions, hiding from them. Deacon has buried his capacity for love under his refusal to face consequences and reality, and I numb all my feelings by escaping into my music or whatever is distracting me. We are the typical dysfunctional foster brats. We’re too scared to love because the person we love might leave us. It’s classic.”

“You sound like a therapist.”

“Oh, I talked to them at length. It cost a fair chunk of money. But this was her answer. We are all too afraid of committing to anything. It’s why you guys aren’t part of the team, and you hold back, and why I have not gone further with my music career. We won’t put our hearts on the line. Not for our dreams, not for love.”

“But the bonds.” I protest.

“Didn’t we do the bonds just to stop the temptation for each of us to leave? It was a way of forcing the others to stay. But did we need to do the bonds? Not really. We treat the omegas and betas we date as though they are here for a good time and then we cut them loose. No one but Vae has any power over us.”

“If that’s true, then the same can be said for her. So, why is she leaving?”

Raynor tilts his head back. “She doesn’t have a bond.”

“So?”

“So what if we leave her? There’s nothing holding us to her. We keep dating and moving, following our dreams and living our lives, and she is just cleaning up after us. She’s the only one with a choice or no choice, depends on how you look at it. But maybe Vae has been watching us all these years and is sick of waiting for us to dump her.”

I stare at him, and his words start to sink in.

“Vae thinks we’d leave her one day. She wants a family; that’s her dream, but she thinks we’d choose someone else? That’s stupid!” I shout.

“Is it?”

“Of course, it is! No one is like our Vae.”

“So…we circle back to the problem.”

Raynor stares at me until the question he asked earlier comes back to me.

“How do we fall in love?”

Raynor raises a glass in a salute while my stomach sinks.

I don’t have an answer, but I know that I will throw my all into figuring it out because no one matters more than our Vae.

Vae

PAST

Maria stands at the stove, but I can see her hands shaking. She coughs weakly, but before she can even turn, I’m up helping her into a seat.

“Let me cook.”

“Don’t fuss.” Her words come out sharp, but I don’t take offense.

“This isn’t fussing. I don’t want a side of the plague with my risotto.”

Maria snorts a laugh and slumps into the chair.

The fact that she’s not really fighting me worries me.

“You’re in love with those boys.”