I frowned up at my twin. “A curse?”
“Apparently so.” He scowled at me like I was a moron. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“That the random witch had to die.”
“In Wilder’s back yard? Really?”
“I have a really good clean-up crew.” A guy named Quill who I’d worked with since before my time with the Morozov Mafia. He was also a really good tattoo artist and was already getting pally with my twin. Bishop was covered in tattoos, whereas I only had the one that we shared.
“That’s not the point, Byron. It was reckless and impulsive.”
“You say that like you don’t know me.” Reckless and impulsive were my middle names.
Bishop threw his hands up in frustration. “Why go after a target you don’t know in the middle of the day when anyone can see you?”
“He was about to break into Wilder’s house,” I said simply.
His eyes narrowed in my direction. “And how do you know that?”
“Because I was standing in Wilder’s house.”
“And let me guess,” Bishop sassed. “You’d already broken in.”
I grinned. My twin knew me too well.
Bishop stood up and pinched the bridge of his nose. “What is this, Byron?”
“What is what?” I sat up and the world span for a moment. I gripped my knees to steady myself and it was only then that I saw the state of my arm. My fingers were black and the veins along my forearm and up my biceps were also black. I brought my hand up to my face and wiggled my fingers, watching them in avid fascination. It didn’t look like my hand, but it definitely was. How long was this curse going to last? Was it even possible to reverse it?
“Are you even listening to me?” Bishop snapped.
I dropped my hand and turned my attention back to him. “No.”
“Fucking unbelievable,” he muttered in exasperation, his tattooed fingers dragging down his face.
I patted the spot on the sofa next to me. “Come here.”
Bishop grumbled something under his breath, and he made to resist for a few seconds but eventually gave in. He always did.
We knew our relationship was…abnormal, but it worked for us. We were two halves of a whole and now that we were back in the same space again, we weren’t ever going to separate.
There was no me without Bishop and vice versa.
There had always been rumours that we were closer than two brothers ever should be, but those people could get fucked. What we had transcended the mundane. It was beyond the physical. It was… cosmic.
As Bishop sat down, I grabbed him around his waist and pulled him backwards with me until his head was lying on my bare chest.
“I’m worried I’m losing you to him,” Bishop confessed quietly.
“I know,” I replied. “You’re not, though. I don’t know how to explain it.”
Bishop tilted his chin up to look deep into my eyes. “Can you try to explain it? For me?”
I stroked my thumb down the length of his jaw. “You’re my other half. When you’re not here, it’s like this gaping hole grows under my skin and festers until it’s painful and it becomes all I can think about. You and me, we’re like fire and gasoline. Explosive and unpredictable. But Wilder, I think he grounds me. He pulls me back from the brink and helps me breathe. It’s… fuck, I’m not explaining this right.”
Bishop smiled softly, finding my confusion amusing. “No, I think I get it. I’m just trying to figure this all out and to adjust to the new dynamic between us.”
I understood what he was saying, we’d been apart for so long and only recently back in the same space. We hadn’t had a chance to really adjust to that before I’d let this obsession with Wilder manifest.