Page 80 of Fool Me Twice

The words hit Hart like a physical blow.

“Did you even tell them why you didn’t pick up?” Cane pressed the point home.

“I couldn’t,” Hart whispered.

“And I don’t get that. I thought they were your family,” Cane said. “I thought that was how you worked. Codependent and all of that. All up in each other’s business. Why would they care about this? About us?”

Hart shifted his gaze to something above Cane’s head before speaking again a few moments later. “It wasn’t always like that. The way we are now.”

“Hard to believe.”

“Nexus… The cursebreaker institution affects people differently. We were put together as young kids or teenagers. Expected to work as a team and to get along right off the bat. It can be volatile. Like throwing a bunch of stray dogs together and then watching the fallout.”

Hart had his full attention. “I have no fucking clue how the process works.”

“We’re taken from our families the moment we’re born with the mark. We spend the first years just being raised by staff, being told we’re special and destined to do great things. Being assessed for affinities for different curses. Being placed into different groups to see who we click with to form a team. It’s a lot of trial and error. A lot of attempts before a team starts feeling right.”

Cane wanted to ask questions, but he had a feeling interrupting Hart might stop him. It was the first time Hart had ever gotten this far, opened the door into the area he kept barred and locked. Cane thought that it wasn’t even from him, it was from Hart himself.

“We were castaways,” Hart said finally. “My brothers and me. We didn’t really click with anyone. Fix spent so long at Nexus they’d started wondering what to do with him. He was getting too old to team up. So when he was placed with us, he latched on. Too tight sometimes. Too intense. Ash was too volatile for a team, too loose and careless. Black is…way too happy about what he does. Way too excited about things no sane person should be excited about. Wren was…hurt and lonely and sad and angry and he just didn’t want to be there. Midas was just as aloof as he is now. Unbothered. Cold, almost.”

He paused again.

“And you?” Cane asked.

“I was always good at following the rules,” Hart said, with one of his pristine fake smiles that dissolved into a tired grimace. “I always thrived on order. The team needed someone to keep them on track. Someone who seemed at least somewhat balanced.”

“So you took over,” Cane said.

“Someone had to.” Hart closed his eyes. He looked worn and tired. “And like I said, it’s not like it’s not me. I fit the role perfectly. Prim and proper, rule-abiding Hart. I felt on top of the world knowing my type A personality had finally become an asset.”

“Which is why you can’t let them see you weak. Let them see that you’re not perfect and that you need something.”

“Yes,” Hart whispered.

“You need to hold on to it because you think if you let it slip a little, the whole thing will fall apart.”

Hart blinked his eyes open and met Cane’s gaze. A slow understanding began to build between them. An unexpected affinity.

“We’re not so different,” Cane said.

Hart’s eyes tracked over his face. The piercings and tattoos and scars. He lingered on each one, all the contrasts to Hart’s own unblemished skin. On the outside, they couldn’t have been more opposite.

“I guess not,” Hart said quietly after a time.

Cane ate the admission up—that small piece of Hart that he was willing to give over to him. He fucking needed to hear it. He needed that one thing to be something he had. Especially now, when everything else was lost.

“Maybe it was for the best that you broke it off between us.” Cane rested his head back against the wall.

Hart swallowed, face twitching. “Why?”

“Because there was gonna come a point where I wouldn’t have let you go.”

Hart’s breath hitched, and a charged silence brewed between them as the words sank in.

“What about now?” Hart whispered.

Cane lifted the corner of his mouth. “I’ll give you a day to decide before I make the decision for you.”