The True One

Chapter 21

Verity

As I breathed out, wisps of soft, black hair flittered up and down on the back of Alek's neck. Sometime during the night, he'd rolled over and I'd nestled against his backside, his bare skin a reassuring warmth. Now, in the light of mid-morning, I had an opportunity to examine my decision and found that I had no regrets. Even if it all fell apart today, even if the conflict of what our parents had done when we were children, and the deaths that resulted from their actions made us fall back into our old patterns of distrust, last night had been a moment of peace. We'd granted each other grace, and so much more; I would never be ashamed of that decision.

We had set aside the bad and focused on the moment, letting pleasure and connection guide us. I sighed, running a finger down the center of his spine. This had been the reset that I needed.

Awakened by my actions, Alek twisted, his eyes opening and a playful smile forming. "Hi there," he said, folding me back into his arms. "How are you feeling?"

How was I feeling? I could write a song about that.

A bomb fell

Aimed at my heart

but you shielded me

The earth trembled

I was ground zero

But when the smoke cleared

I still stood

With you next to me.

"I'm still here." The temptation to unblock him from my thoughts, to let him feel what I felt, hit hard. But he didn't want that, and I wasn't sure it was the best thing either. Not yet. Some walls had come down last night, but not that one. "What about you?"

He hugged me a bit tighter. "I keep thinking. About everything. We'd found where our answers lived and now... we walked away with nothing."

I eyed the shorts I'd worn yesterday, tossed on the back of a chair on the opposite side of my bed. "Well... not exactly nothing."

Extracting myself from him elicited a groan. "Don't leave!"

"I'm not." I grabbed the intake form from my back pocket and hopped back onto the bed. "I may have stolen this yesterday."

He took the form from me and unfolded it. "Shit, here it is." He scanned through it. "You already told me about it but it's still so weird to see our names typed out."

"It's probably not very useful since it doesn't give a whole lot of details. But it's one piece of evidence they lost to us. That feels like a small victory."

"It is." He turned the form over then went back and read the front again. "What about trying to find the person who filled out this form. Maybe she would have some answers for us."

"What person?"

He pointed to the very bottom. I froze on the name, my mind taking it in but refusing to accept it. The universe really wanted to fuck with me hard lately.

Alek saw my expression. "What's wrong?"

"The name of the intake nurse."

He read it out loud. "Val Marquez. What about it?"

I hopped off the bed again and retrieved my phone, sending a text while Alek stared at me expectantly.

"Do you want to have brunch with Flora today?" I asked.

"I was kind of thinking maybe it could just be to two of us today." He patted the bed and put his dimples on display. "Maybe we wouldn't even need to leave the room."