Chapter 75: What They Feel

Astrid

I woke to the sound of movement in the kitchen and lay still for a few seconds, just listening. Someone was already up. I could feel the presence through the bond, warm and unmistakable, and instead of tensing the way I once would have, I found myself relaxing further into the pillow.

A few days ago, waking up in the same apartment as Reed and Xander would have sent me straight into planning an exit. Now I just lay there another minute, comforted by the fact that they were close.

Eventually I got up and wandered out. Xander was leaning against the counter, offering absolutely no help while Reed attempted breakfast.

"Look who’s finally awake," Xander said.

"It’s morning," I said.

"Barely."

I checked the clock. Reasonably early, honestly. "You’re dramatic."

"And you’re late," he said.

"Don’t listen to him," Reed said without turning around.

I sat down, and Xander dropped into the chair beside me. "You know, you’ve changed."

"Should I be worried?" I asked.

"A few days ago you woke up looking like you wanted to jump out the nearest window every time you remembered you were trapped in an apartment with us."

I grabbed the nearest thing and threw it at him. He caught it easily.

"Violence. See? I’ve officially been accepted into the family."

Reed sighed. I tried not to smile and failed.

"There," Xander said, pointing. "That’s new too."

"What?"

"You tolerate us now."

I picked up my drink. "Don’t ruin it."

"Ruin what?" Reed asked, glancing over.

"The fact that I’m beginning to tolerate you both," I said.

Xander stared at me. "Tolerate?"

Reed hid a smile behind his mug. Xander looked personally wounded. "After everything we’ve been through?"

"You survived," I said, shrugging.

After breakfast, we moved into the living room, and I watched Reed gather up the books he’d been reading about bonds. I thought back to yesterday, the warmth, the emotions passing between us, Reed’s relief, Xander’s happiness with something sadder tangled beneath it.

Mostly I thought about opening myself a little, and how they hadn’t laughed, hadn’t looked at me differently. They’d simply held my hands.

"Can we do that thing again?" I asked.

The room went quiet. Both of them looked at me, and I immediately regretted the phrasing.

"Emotional nudity?" Xander said.

I closed my eyes. "I hate you."

"That’s not what you said last—"

"Xander," Reed cut in.

He smiled innocently. I pointed at him. "Don’t make me regret asking."

Reed sat across from me, expression turning serious. "You want to synchronize again?"

I nodded, no hesitation this time.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

I appreciated that he asked instead of assuming. "I think so."

"That’s a terrifyingly uncertain answer," Xander said, settling beside me.

I elbowed him. "I said I think so."

"We can stop whenever you want," Reed said.

"Immediately," Xander added.

Something warm moved through my chest. "I know."

This time it was my choice.

Reed suggested we take turns so the attention wasn’t only on me. We sat together the way we had before, me in the middle, Reed holding one hand, Xander the other. We closed our eyes.

Reed went first. At first I felt nothing, and then the bond opened slowly, and pressure settled over me, heavy and constant. Not panic exactly, not fear either. Responsibility. The crushing weight of always being expected to have an answer.

Fragments slipped through, him younger, standing somewhere formal while adults talked around him instead of to him. Words like responsibility, future, duty. People looking at him like he already had everything figured out.

Underneath it, fear. Not for himself. Fear of failing someone else.

I understood something I hadn’t before. Reed didn’t fix everything because he thought he was better than everyone. He fixed things because somewhere along the way he’d learned that if something went wrong, people looked at him first.

I squeezed his hand, and the synchronization eased. He was still looking down when I opened my eyes.

"That must be exhausting," I said.

He looked at me, something shifting in his expression, like sympathy wasn’t something he was used to receiving. "Sometimes," he admitted, small smile following.

Xander tried lightening things immediately. "Great. My turn to emotionally undress."

"Why do you keep saying that?" I asked.

"Because Reed keeps refusing to."

"Focus," Reed said.

Xander sighed, though his joking faded as we started again. I expected warmth, humor, restlessness, all the things that made Xander himself. They were there at first.

Then something underneath caught me off guard. Loneliness. Years of being quietly compared, Reed responsible, Reed serious, Xander fun, reckless, the one nobody expected to take anything seriously. I felt the frustration buried beneath it, the exhaustion of people assuming he didn’t care simply because he smiled through everything.

Then something sharper. Fear. That I’d eventually decide Reed was enough on his own. That I’d look at Xander and realize he was unnecessary.

My eyes opened. His stayed closed for another second before he opened them too, immediately smiling. "That bad?"

I didn’t smile back. His expression shifted.

I squeezed his hand. "Look at me."

He did.

"I didn’t choose you because Reed wasn’t enough," I said.

His smile disappeared completely. I turned toward Reed. "And I didn’t choose him because you weren’t."

Silence stretched between us.

"I chose both of you," I said, looking back at Xander.

He swallowed, and when he finally spoke, his voice was quieter than usual. "Good answer."

"That’s all you’re going to say?" I asked.

His smile returned slowly, though through the bond I felt it meant more than he was letting himself admit.

"For now," he said.

I rolled my eyes but didn’t let go of his hand.

Then it was my turn, and nerves hit harder than yesterday. I knew now what deeper synchronization could reveal.

"We don’t have to do this," Reed said, noticing my hesitation.

"Seriously," Xander added.

"I know," I said. "I want to."

I closed my eyes and reached for something safe. My mother.

At first, warmth. Her hands moving through my hair, her voice scolding me to cover up properly in the cold, threatening to drag me back inside if I caught a chill. Ordinary. Simple. Love, plain and undeniable.

Then the memory shifted, warmth bleeding into grief so completely I couldn’t separate one from the other. I tried to pull back. I’d already opened too far.

Suddenly they were feeling it with me. My terror. My helplessness. My mother, gone. Fragments crashing through, footsteps, fear, running, not knowing who to trust, the constant need to keep moving, to stay hidden.

Then loneliness, the kind that didn’t disappear just because a room was full of people.

"Stop," I said. The bond didn’t close.

"Stop," I said again, voice breaking.

Reed tried to help, telling me to breathe, to focus on his voice, though I could feel how much what he was sensing through me was affecting him too. Xander looked completely shaken, every trace of his usual self gone.

I pulled hard, and the connection finally broke. The sudden absence felt almost worse than what had come before it.

I gasped for air. Nobody spoke for a moment.

Then I understood what had just happened. They’d felt all of it.

My face burned. I stood up fast.

"Astrid—" Reed started.

"Don’t," I said.

"We didn’t mean—" Xander tried.

"I know," I said, voice trembling. I wiped angrily at my face. "You weren’t supposed to see that."

"I didn’t want you to know," I added.

"Know what?" Xander asked.

I laughed once, no humor in it at all. "How pathetic I was."

The silence that followed was worse than anything else. I turned toward my room.

"Astrid," Reed called.

I kept walking.

"I would have been terrified too," Xander said quietly.

I stopped, hand already on the door.

"You were alone," he said.

Something in me broke at that.

I turned around, face wet, hating that they were seeing me like this.

"And you survived," Reed said.

I laughed again, closer to a sob this time. "I didn’t survive because I was strong. I survived because I didn’t have a choice."

The apartment went silent.

"That still counts," Reed said finally.

My face crumpled, and this time I couldn’t stop it. I started crying, really crying, ugly and uncontrolled.

"I hate this," I said. "I hate that you saw that."

"You don’t have to hate being hurt," Reed said softly.

"I wasn’t supposed to be hurt anymore," I said.

"Who told you that?" Xander asked.

I didn’t have an answer.

Reed moved closer, slow, giving me every chance to pull away. I didn’t. He pulled me into his arms, and I broke completely against him, messy and loud, trying to breathe and failing. Xander stayed close on my other side, quiet, not joking, not trying to fix it, just present, his hand finding mine.

"I’m sorry," I said, the words tumbling out immediately.

"Stop," Reed said.

"I didn’t mean to—"

"Stop apologizing."

Xander squeezed my hand. "You don’t have to make this easier for us."

That broke something else loose in me, because I’d spent my whole life trying not to be a burden, trying to survive without asking anyone for anything.

They didn’t tell me to be strong. Didn’t tell me to move on.

They just let me cry.

Eventually exhaustion won out, and we settled together, me between them, head resting against Reed while Xander held my hand. The apartment stayed quiet.

"Does it ever stop hurting?" I finally asked.

Reed didn’t answer right away. When I opened my eyes slightly, he wasn’t reaching for a comforting lie. He was actually thinking.

"I don’t know," he said.

Of course he didn’t. How could anyone.

"But you don’t have to hurt alone anymore," he added.

Xander tightened his fingers around mine.

I thought about everything they’d just felt, everything I’d spent years hiding because I believed being seen only gave people another way to hurt me.

But they’d stayed. Neither had moved away. Neither had looked at me differently.

For once, I didn’t feel the need to close myself off again.

I let the bond stay open, not completely, not enough to lose myself in it, but enough to feel them there.

Enough to know they weren’t going anywhere.