by Sadie Moss
“Has this ever happened before?” Kasian whispers.
I shake my head. “We’ll have to be quiet.” I check my phone. It’s around ten at night here, same as back in the Hidden World. My parents will probably be asleep. They’re the early to bed, early to rise type.
It takes some maneuvering, but we’re able to get down from the roof by lowering ourselves over the side and through the unlocked window into my room on the second floor.
As much as I hate it, we are definitely trying to avoid my parents. For one thing, while they would like Kasian—I’m sure of it, everyone likes Kasian—I can’t introduce him as my boyfriend when I’m supposedly dating Dean, and my parents would wonder who this strange man is with me. For another, I don’t know how to explain where I’ve been, and I’ve got no idea what Roxie’s been up to as me, so I don’t know what my parents might think of me right now.
We slip inside, and I exhale slowly, relieved that we made it without plummeting to the ground. “Let’s get out of here.”
I open my door painfully slowly, relieved when it doesn’t make any noise. Out in the hallway, it’s dark. Shane’s room is in the opposite direction of where we need to go to get outside, but I’m tempted to open his door and check on him.
No. No, you have to stay strong, Gabs. Shane doesn’t need me right now, as much as I need him. Roxie’s the priority.
I creep down the hallway, Kasian at my back. There’s a strip of light visible beneath the door to my parents’ room, and I slow my steps. Shit. They’re not asleep yet.
“I’m just worried about her.”
I freeze. That’s my mom.
“She says she’s doing better,” she continues. “But I don’t know. I still feel like there’s so much she’s not telling us.”
“We have to trust that she’s going to tell us in her own time. If we try to push her…” Dad trails off. He sounds worn out. Worried.
“But if we just let it lie and something else happens to her—she has to be in some kind of trouble, she has to be. That’s the only explanation—”
“Gabbi’s always been a very smart girl. She’s not the type to go out and do something stupid.”
“You mean the Gabbi that we knew wouldn’t do this,” Mom says, her voice gaining conviction. “But I don’t know her anymore. She hasn’t been herself for months. Sometimes it’s like I don’t even know who she is. Like someone’s replaced my little girl.”
…fuck.
Chapter 13
I stand still, my heart thudding dully in my chest as I listen to my parents talk about me.
Dammit. Of course Roxie’s not really fooling them anymore. Just like I’m not really fooling Luna. All the people in our lives are hovering on the edge of realizing we’re not who we say we are, and the only thing holding them back from the truth is the fact that the truth is so fucking insane.
It’s not like they’ve actually guessed that their daughter is someone different. But they feel like it, and I can’t blame them. Roxie didn’t do a very good job of pretending to be me—not that I did a great job of filling her shoes either, but at least I tried. I think her original plan once she swapped with me was to just live the rest of her life in the Dull World, and so she never bothered pretending to be like me. She dumped all my friends, she ignored Shane, she changed my college major, and she started dating Dean.
To be honest, I’m still a little pissed about it.
But then Roxie was kidnapped, so when I swapped places with her on purpose before Christmas, she just went on the run. My parents called the police, filed a missing persons report. It was a mess.
And now? Who even knows what she’s been up to. My parents have every reason to feel like their daughter’s been body-swapped with someone else, even if they don’t think that’s what’s actually happened. They probably think I hit my head or something, got brain damage.
It hurts to stand here and listen and not be able to go inside. I want to crawl into bed with them and cry. Mom, Dad, it’s me, it’s the real me, and I still love you, I’m still here. I’ll always love them. And I want to be there for them.
But I can’t. I could be selfish, technically. I could stay here with them. Live out my life.
Until the Cult of Singularity destroys my entire world.
Yeah, no. I can’t go in there. And how would I possibly explain myself? Last time I swapped with Roxie, I promised my parents I was okay and then disappeared again. I probably only made things worse.
So I have to stay out here and do whatever it takes to keep them, keep my entire world, safe. No matter how much it hurts.
Kasian gently places his hand on my shoulder, offering silent support. I wipe furiously at my eyes, realizing that I’m crying. Fuck. My family is the reason I’m still doing this. I have to take care of them, that’s what family does, and in this case, taking care of them just means… doing really hard and scary things.
I just hope that someday soon I’ll be able to explain everything to them, and that I’ll be able to be with them again. To hug the hell out of them and tell them I’m sorry for putting them through all this.
Kasian gives me a gentle tug, wrapping his arm around me, and I back away. We have to keep moving.
We creep downstairs and manage to get out of the house without alerting my family, then we walk down the street toward Dean’s house. I can’t just leave Roxie’s disc lying around, and Dean can keep it safe for her until she gets back. I trust him.
The moment we head up the front path outside his house, someone emerges from the front door. I have a split second to realize it’s Dean before he’s grabbing me and pulling me to him. “Oh, thank God! I was—Gabbi?”
Dean halts whatever he was about to do—I think kiss me—and stares.
I wave. “Heya.”
“You’re Dean?” Kasian asks, an unusual growl entering his voice.
I roll my eyes, even as Kasian’s unusual display of alpha behavior makes my heart beat a little faster. My sweet, serious boyfriend is always so even-keeled that seeing him get a little possessive of me is a huge turn-on.
“Yeah. This is Dean.” I step back from him, gesturing. “Roxie’s boyfriend, my neighbor growing up.” I look at Dean. “How’d you know that I wasn’t Roxie?”
He shrugs. “Just the moment I pulled you in—you resisted and went stiff, and you were wearing a different perfume, and I just—I just knew.”
Kasian nods. “I’d know the same, at this point. You just can tell.”
I wonder if my parents can tell on some fundamental level, and that’s why my mom is saying that it’s not me, that her daughter is like a whole new person. Even if she has no proof of it, even if the idea is logically ludicrous, she knows that something isn’t right.
“We need to talk,” I tell Dean hurriedly. “Roxie’s okay, she wasn’t snatched. I initiated the flip this time. But we need to be fast.”
He nods, then glances back up at the house. “Not here though. My folks are still up. I don’t want them to overhear anything.”
Dean drives us to a twenty-four-hour diner nearby, and we get a booth in the back. There are some other people around, but nobody’s paying much attention to us. There are a few exhausted-looking construction workers in one corner, a long table of what I’m guessing are theatre kids celebrating post-show, an older guy at the counter nursing a coffee, and what appear to be some students trying to finish a project at a table by the door.
Everyone’s wrapped up in their own world—even the waitstaff with their indifferent, blank faces. This place could possibly catch on fire and their expressions wouldn’t change.
And once we sit down, I realize I’m starving. I didn’t eat much of anything at the ball, and that was hours ago. I was a little busy schmoozing it up for Roxie and her family. Kasian looks pretty hungry himself, so we all order. Unfortunately, it’s all on Dean’s dime, since I’m pretty sure credit cards don’t work across dimensions.
“Remind me to give you some of Roxie’s
jewelry to pay you back, you can pawn that for something.”
“Don’t even worry about it.” Dean waves that off. “It’s all good.”
“So what’s been happening?” I ask. We need to give him the disc and get back to the Hidden World quickly, but I can’t pass up this opportunity to find out what’s been going on for Roxie. It’s so hard to coordinate with her when we can’t fucking communicate.
Dean sighs, then double checks subtly to make sure the waitress who took our order is out of earshot. “When you and Roxie swapped back, I was pretty upset with her for lying to me. I had this big speech planned, you know. I get why she might not have been able to tell me the truth at first, but after I proved she could trust me—why didn’t she tell me then? It was hard to wrap my head around. It was actually easier to accept the whole secret magic world thing.”
Kasian nods. “Theo and Cross, the other two men in our…” He looks at me. “What would you call us? A polycule?”
“I don’t even know.”
“Well, the other two in our relationship, they figured it out on their own, before they developed a romantic relationship with Gabbi. I didn’t—I thought she was Roxie. And it hurt to think she had lied to me.” Kasian puts his hand over mine, as if to remind me that he’s not angry anymore. “It took me a while to overcome my frustration. But Theo was kind enough to remind me that I’d never been in her shoes, and I couldn’t know what having my entire world upended like that would be like.”
“Exactly.” Dean nods, his brown eyes shining. He’s tall, with olive skin that shows his Italian roots, dark hair, and a boyish face. “Yeah. When I really thought about it, everything made a lot more sense. Roxie was in an entirely new world, and from what Gabbi told me, people were after her. She didn’t feel safe. What if I’d just been pretending to like her to earn her trust?”
I shiver. God, that sounds uncomfortably familiar. That’s why it took me so many weeks to admit who I was to my guys—I was terrified of exposing myself.
Dean’s expression softens. “So I forgave her. Told her it was okay. I needed to think about it for a little bit, but… we’d already been together for a while. I knew her. Even if I didn’t know her as Roxie, I knew her better than I’d ever known Gabbi. I knew there was a difference between the two of them, and I just thought of all the other ways that Roxie had shown me she trusted and loved me. Once I told her it was okay—she told me everything. It was really, really nice to have things all out in the open.”
My heart warms a little. Dean’s a good guy, and I always felt bad that I couldn’t reciprocate the feelings I knew he had for me. I’m really glad he’s found someone who can actually give him what he deserves.
And I’m glad Roxie has someone she can talk to about all of this. My dimension-twin frustrates me to no end, but she’s still a good person, and she deserves someone to be able to rely on. She’s been through a lot—and she had nobody to confide in for a long time.
“She was a bit injured when she came back. Bruised ribs, twisted ankle,” Dean notes, his voice hardening as if he’d like to get his hands on the people who did that to her. “I patched her up though.”
“I’m glad that you were able to forgive her,” I say.
Dean blushes and waves it off, and I get this twinge in my chest. He really does have feelings for her. And she really does have feelings for him. I could feel them when Roxie and I were swapping back and forth. For the first time in her life, I think, Roxie’s found someone who cares about her and sees the real Roxie, instead of the persona she puts on. Not even Bianca, I think, saw this much of who Roxie really is. I don’t think Roxie let herself be that vulnerable.
“By the way,” Dean adds, “I was with her tonight, before she swapped again—we were in my room, just relaxing.”
Uh oh. I hope that’s not a euphemism for sex. Swapping dimensions topless is no fucking fun. I speak from experience.
“We were talking about your family, actually,” he continues. “Roxie’s told me about hers, now that I know the truth. They don’t seem, uh, all that great.”
I shake my head. “They’re not. They’re manipulative, competitive, just… ugh. Frustrating doesn’t even begin to cover it.”
Dean winces in sympathy. “Well, I was talking to her about your family, and how I’ve known them all my life. And she explained to me how when you two swap, you go through this weird middle space, and she can see your memories and feel your emotions? Is that right?”
“Basically.”
“She said after seeing and feeling all those things, she realized how important your family is to you. And she’s trying to take care of them while you’re not here. They still know something’s up—I mean, she’s never told them why she ran away that one time, and that’s pretty big. That’s not really something you forget your daughter went and did.” Dean pauses as our food is delivered, and I dig in immediately. Damn, I’m hungry. “But she is getting better, and I promise that she really does want to make it right. She doesn’t want to hurt anybody.”
“Thanks, Dean,” I murmur, tears stinging my eyes. “And tell her thanks too, will you?”
“Of course.” He smiles, then his face grows serious again. “So, why are you two here? Is everything okay? Is Roxie okay?”
“We’re just here to give you this.” I slip him the disc, sliding it across the table. “It’s a tool that’ll help Roxie if the cult comes after her again. She knows what it is—it’s what allows us to flip back and forth between the worlds. If the cult gets her, she can use this disc to flip back.”
Dean nods. “I’ll keep it safe for her.”
“I’m glad that you’ve found someone,” I tell him honestly. “You deserve someone who really appreciates you.”
“Thanks. And so do you, Gabbi. You’re a great person, there’s a reason I had such a crush on you.” He shrugs. “I’ve just come to realize that you’re not really the person I thought I was waiting for.”
His words could sound harsh, or like a dig at me somehow. But they make me think of something Cross said to me weeks ago, and my heart warms.
Kasian grins as he finishes off his food. “I like this guy.”
“Oh, no, you don’t,” I warn, grinning. “I’m not having you two ganging up on me.”
“What?” Dean says innocently. “It’s not like I have a bunch of embarrassing stories about you from when you were ten years old that I could share with your boyfriend…”
“I will stab you with this fork, Dean, don’t test me.”
We finish up and Dean pays the bill, and then we slip outside so that nobody will see Kasian and me disappear.
I dig the second disc out of my pocket, then step forward and hug Dean. “Thanks for watching out for Roxie. Tell her we’re working on finding a way to stop the cult.”
“I will,” he tells me.
We break apart, and Kasian grins at Dean as I tighten my grip on the Disc of Eile. “Nice meeting you, man.”
And then we’re falling.
Chapter 14
It’s okay.
I think the words as hard as I can as we fly through the blackness and I briefly merge with Roxie. I have no idea if she gets the message, but at least she’ll get it from Dean when she gets back.
A second later, Kasian and I land on top of each other in a heap on the floor.
“Ouch!” I groan and rub my head.
He landed on top of me, and he quickly stands, moving quietly. It’s almost midnight, and even though it’s a Saturday night, I don’t want to disturb anyone. We’re in the hallway of a dorm building on Radcliffe’s campus.
Kasian helps me up to my feet, and I look around. “Well, I got us close.”
“Close?”
“I was aiming for my dorm, but at least we’re in a dorm.”
“Hey, better that than the roof of the building.” Kasian laughs softly. “This is my dorm building. Come on, this way. You can just sleep with me tonight, if you want.”
I like that
idea. I don’t want to walk across campus in the dark and cold right now, and it’s late. I’m sure Cross and Theo were waiting up to make sure we got back safely, so I pull out my phone, sending them a text to let them know we returned safely.
Their responses are immediate.
THEO: Welcome back, love.
CROSS: Love you, cupcake.
I smile, my heart seeming to settle in my chest from just that small contact with them, as if everything is right with the world again.
Kasian’s room is a little larger than mine, but so much more organized. It even has decorations, like proper matching curtains and rug and bedspread, the whole nine yards. It’s my favorite of the guys’ rooms, although I would never admit that out loud, and if we ever do get the chance to live together after all this mess is said and done, I know that I’m letting Kasian be in charge of the interior design.
Theo will be allowed to help a bit too. Cross won’t be allowed to do anything except paint the walls in the exact color we tell him to paint them. And I say that with love.
“Do you think this was a smart idea?” I ask as Kasian sits down heavily on the bed to untie his shoes. “Or did we just make a massive mistake?”
“I think we did the right thing,” he assures me, glancing up to meet my gaze. He seems so solid and handsome with his dark skin, broad shoulders, and strong, square jawline. “It’s hard to know what to do in a situation like this. And I think giving Roxie the ability to control her own fate again—not to be too poetic or anything—will be good. Besides, what were we using the second disc for anyway? It was just sitting there and not helping anyone.”
“Okay.” It feels like all of the energy goes out of me and I collapse on the bed next to him. “I just hope Roxie is okay. I… I didn’t expect to care so much about her.”
Kasian gives me a small smile. “That’s a talent of hers. Cross would probably say the same thing, that’s why he was so annoyed at her all the time. Roxie is a good person, underneath it all. It’s just getting to the underneath that’s the bothersome part.”