I sputtered unintelligibly. This was new.
“Genie, I thought you were dead,” Quentin said. “The last thing I saw was Princess Iron Fan about to murder you.”
He took deep shivering breaths, and the back of my shirt grew damp. “After the explosion, it took me hours to pick up on your aura again. That was hours of me thinking you were gone forever. I nearly went berserk. Guan Yu and Guanyin and the Great White Planet had to restrain me from tearing down the mountain.”
That seemed disproportionate. Not to humblebrag, but I hadn’t been that scared for myself during the encounter with Princess Iron Fan because everything had happened so quickly. It wasn’t the slow-motion horror of watching Quentin fall under the flames of Red Boy or seeing him suddenly bleed from Princess Iron Fan’s assault. Those were the worst experiences of my—
Oh.
That was the terror I’d put him through. That gut-wrenching, would-rather-the-world-end kind of pain. Normally Quentin was the one who tanked more hits from our enemies, so seeing Princess Iron Fan nearly kill me must have been a fresh kind of hell for him. If he’d felt for my safety what I felt for his . . .
I shook my head. I didn’t want to think about him hurting inside that much. I reached behind me until I found his shoulders and squeezed him further into me.
“I thought I’d lost you,” he said. “I thought I lost you again. And that the last memory we’d have of each other was being angry.”
He spun me around so fast that it made me woozy.
I lost my balance, and he caught me like a romantic pirate holding his swooning betrothed.
“Genie,” he said, looking more desperate and vulnerable than I’d seen in any yaoguai fight. “Genie, I’m so sorry. I’ve been acting like a jerk. I got needlessly upset because you’ve been surprising me so much lately. When you named Guanyin for the mandate. When you talked about not going to college.”
Each time he sniffled he sent a gigantic yank on my heartstrings. “Of course you’re not obligated to only do what I expect, and I’m sorry for implying it,” Quentin said. “It’s just that all of these surprises sent me back to a really bad place, to when you first threw me for a loop by disappearing from my side as the Ruyi Jingu Bang. That was the first time I thought I’d lost you forever.”
The confession came pouring out of him with ease. He’d beat me to Ji-Hyun’s advice about self-examination. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Sun Wukong had the power to learn fast, and I had the power to be an emotionally stunted doof.
I couldn’t fall so far behind. “The only reason I’m surprising you is because I’m surprising myself because I don’t know myself as much as I thought and that terrifies me!” I yawped.
It took my competitive unwillingness to let Quentin “win” at honesty to force the words out of me. Not healthy at all, but effective for now. The blockage had been loosened.
“Back when we first met, I had one goal,” I said. “One. And now it’s like life is getting way more complicated. The future’s not a single checkbox anymore. And it’s overwhelming me. I feel like I’m drowning sometimes.”
I gripped him tighter—my personal flotation device. “I’m sorry. I’ve—I was such an asshole to you. Saying you’re not family. But Quentin, you know what happened to my mom and dad. They are all I’ve ever witnessed when it comes to relationships and family, and I’d do anything not to follow their example.”
He looked troubled. “Should I give you space? Should we not be a thing for a while?”
“No!” I said with certainty. “I want you close by. I—I need you close by. But we don’t always have to be perfect together.”
I pulled myself out of his arms and sat down in the clearing. He plopped down next to me. The two of us, not staring into each other’s eyes, but facing the same direction, like a team. This was easier.
Ji-Hyun’s advice was working. Quentin and I had finally gone down the path she’d told us to take. She was like a . . . drunk Jedi or something. I needed to thank her once we got home.
I threw my arm over Quentin’s shoulder and rested my frame on his. It wasn’t the most comfortable, given how dense and hard he was. Embracing him was always a little bit like trying to cuddle with a V8 engine block.
“What I mean is, I’ve learned there’s going to be times where ‘you-and-I’ have to take a backseat to more important business,” I said. “Like with the Mandate Challenge, for instance. There were plenty of moments this weekend where I forgot about you entirely.”
“Gee, thanks,” he muttered.
I smacked him on the shoulder. “And that should be allowed. We’ll drive ourselves nuts if we try and live inside each other’s heads. I get enough of that with my mother as it is.”
He leaned on me. We sat there, enjoying the comfortable silence.
“I’m also sorry for how I treated you when we first met,” he said after a while.
I looked at him, interested. It was true—he did owe me an apology for messing with me the first few days we’d known each other. “What brought this on?”
“I went to the wrong campus party and saw some stuff.” Quentin shuddered. “Stuff too reminiscent of how I acted back then. I should thank Heaven every day that you still let me into your life.”
He rubbed his thumb over his knuckles, making me believe he’d dealt with any issues he’d seen in the same manner I would have. I liked apologetic, worshipful Quentin. I couldn’t resist teasing him while I held the upper hand.