"Which is why I made the offer."
Chapter Thirty-Nine
RAIN
It was the middle of second period before I got back upstairs to check on Aspen and Keir. The rest of the court came with us, but Keir and Aspen were acting off. They kept trading looks. Worried ones! Sadly, we were all told to head back to class for third period, which meant I didn't really get to ask.
But in my combat classes, I tried to get Keir to say something. He told me he'd tell me tomorrow, but I had to be patient. Ok, that sounded like some sort of surprise, so I tried not to think about it - as if that would work.
That night, just when I was almost asleep, Aspen snuggled up against my back. "Rain? Are you still awake?"
"Barely," I admitted.
On his perch, Jack grumbled about the noise.
But Aspen merely whispered something in Faeril, making the Moon Shine light up softly. It was enough to make me roll over to face her. There was worry in her eyes.
"What's wrong?" I immediately asked.
And she squished up her face in the most guilty way I could imagine. "I did something, and I don't want to hide it from you."
Immediately, my guts clenched. "When?"
"When you were helping Ms. Rhodes this morning."
I searched her face, hoping for some sort of a hint. "How bad?"
So she clenched her eyes closed and blurted out, "I kissed your boyfriend and it was horrible!"
For a little too long, all I could do was stare at her. Aspen? Had kissed Keir? Aguy? Nope, that did not compute, no matter how hard I tried. But after a moment, I realized she was serious. My lesbian girlfriend had just kissed my very male boyfriend.
I couldn't have stopped the giggle if I'd tried. "You did what?" I tittered.
"Stop!" she begged. "I was trying to talk about it. Being up front and everything. Torian thought it would be the right way to handle this."
I managed to stop the giggles, but not the smile. Struggling a bit to hold it in, I just nodded. "Ok? Why did you kiss Keir?"
"You said I should!"
And that made all my amusement vanish. "What? No! Aspen, that's not what I was trying to do. I just didn't know if you knew, because I hadn't."
"But Rain," she whimpered, "there's this thing in my head. And he said something about you'd know when you want to touch them, and sometimes I do, so I wanted to check if it was me. I mean, you had a good point about Torian being in my head, and the more I thought about it, the less sure I was, then we were up here alone, and that made it less weird."
"And?" I asked, trying to imagine how I'd feel about the answer.
Because if she liked kissing him, was I ok with that? Personally, I hated the way guys always thought they could get girls to make out for them. It pissed me off, but mostly because they never cared about whether or not the girlswanted to. It was more like they felt they deserved it, and that was just shitty all the way around.
But what if she hated it? Would that mean she didn't want him around? Never mind the fact that I had a boyfriend and a girlfriend! They'd told me over and over that it was ok, and just when they'd convinced me I didn't have anything to worry about, she did this? My mind immediately jumped to feeling guilty.
I was cheating on her in a way. Well, that was what anyone else would've called it. The fae said it was ok - natural even. They had all these ways of desiring people, and accepted that one person couldn't be all things. That was how they'd explained it to me, but Aspen didn't exactly have other options. There was just me.
I'd been confused about that initially. Plenty of girls here dated other girls. She'd made it sound like she was the only lesbian in the world, and when Harper had been bullying her, I'd figured that had something to do with it. Now, I realized it was more about her being not only a Winter fae, but the actual queen of that season. Most Summer fae hated Winter for some reason, and those who didn't would likely want to use their relationship against her at their first convenience.
Which meant I really was her only option. That sucked in a different way! Did she like me just because someone was better than no one? Was I the scraps she had to deal with in order to have a girlfriend at all? No, I knew better than that, and yet my stupid insecurities reared up and spiraled out of control in the few seconds it took her to reply.
"Blech," she said, making a face that included sticking out her tongue. "Boys are gross."
"And?" I begged this time. "Aspen, what does that mean?"
