Excerpt Confrontation 1
He wouldn't meet my eyes when I stopped him in the hallway. There was no where for him to go, he had to face me. "Explain yourself." I had said. I remember clearly his feigned ignorance.
"What do you mean? Explain what?"
"You know as well as I that I can feel your disapproval as much as if you had slapped my face. Now, tell me what I've done that makes you feel this way toward me." He'd been avoiding me and I had sensed this sour feeling across our bond for weeks now.
"You've hurt him, Maly. You are not the only one in this thing. He is my best friend, and he loves you more than life itself, and it is tearing him up because he doesn't know why - why you ended things and why you have been courting with Thom and why you have given up on him. You and Tijer are the two people I love most and it kills me to see you both this way when it is so obviously wrong! You are making him pay for your insecurity. If he was the one who wanted another, then why has he been the one alone?"
I must have looked ridiculous standing there. I couldn't believe my gentle, calm, loving brother, my twin, had just scolded me. And, what was worse was he was right. How could I have been so wrong, so blind, so like my mother? The thought terrified me. But where did we go from here... what could I do...
"Tell me how to right this." I begged.
In an instant his face melted and his features softened, a slight smile started to form at the corners of his mouth."I thought you'd never ask." He outlined his plan for getting Tijer to attend Lapis's wedding feast, arranging for us to be alone together, he had thought of everything.
"What do I say? What if he won't even talk to me? What if he doesn't want to see me? What if he never wants to see me again?..."
"Do you love him?" Geren interupted.
"I - what?"
"Do you still love him?"
"Of course... but what if he doesn't love me?"
"Leave it to me. He will be there and he will be willing to hear your every word." He sounded confident, more confident than the feeling I was getting over our bond. I raised my eyebrows at him, and he continued,
(cont.)