Page 56 of Wonder

They stand there silently as I wash. If Aiden is heat, Kayden is ice, trailing across my skin and leaving goosebumps.

They don’t offer to leave. I don’t ask them.

Kayden won’t leave without an answer anyway. I can tell.

My hand slaps out to twist the handle, the water draining away. But it’s not Kayden I speak to as I step out from under the showerhead. Aiden straightens as I approach him, water dripping to the floor as I brush past Kayden’s motionless body.

“I know what it feels like,” I say quietly, before he can say anything else. “To lose a twin.”

His face pales, shutters. “You—.”

Ice, behind me. Ice, and heat. Kayden leaves space between us, but I can stillfeelhim. “You lost your twin.”

There’s no question. Only a grim acknowledgement. An understanding of what made me risk everything to save a man I didn’t know.

“Yeah.” I rasp through the razor blades that spring up in my throat, still looking at Aiden. “Like I said. I know what it feels like.”

And I’d never stand by and watch someone else go through that.

The atmosphere shifts, changes. Aiden’s expression softens into something more… vulnerable. The flirtatious humor, the charm, it slips away so easily that I wonder how thin a veneer it was in the first place.

I don’t pull away when his thumb reaches up, brushes across my cheek. “Thank you.”

Hesitation behind me. “What…,”

I turn to face him. Kayden’s eyes glitter, the blue swimming with barely-restrained anger. “You haven’t earned an answer to that question.”

He nods. Doesn’t push. Perhaps he can sense that I don’t want to – can’t – say any more.

Aiden’s voice is a whisper, brushing against my ear as he changes the subject, and I’m grateful to him for it.

“And how exactly would we earn answers about whoyouare, Alyss? Because my brother and I areverycurious.”

Kayden’s gaze flickers. But he nods once, short and sharp.

I swallow. And I give them unexpected honesty, a truth I barely even recognise myself. “I don’t know who I am, really.”

Kayden studies me. “Someone who would save a stranger to protect them from her own grief.”

Another murmur in my ear. “Someone who faces their vulnerabilities without fear.”

I wish that were true. “She sounds like the type of person I would want to be.”

“Whatever mirror you’re looking in,” Aiden says quietly. “It seems to be broken, Alyss.”

I can’t have this conversation now.

“We should get back. They’ll be looking for me.”

Curiosity flickers across Kayden’s face. Aiden shifts behind me.

“They. They’re yours?” Kayden tilts his head in the direction of the main room. “The three of them? Hatter and Buck too?”

I frown. “I… I don’t know. Maybe.”

Are they mine?

And I draw in a breath, as a finger traces down my spine. Aiden stops before he gets any lower, his finger tracing a pattern across my lower back. “If you should have any vacancies…,”