Page 93 of The Comedown

“Twins who fell in love in the womb, but that’s not the important part.” It’s not even the craziest part. “The important part is Isis was this fucking badass that didn’t let anything stand in her way. After her brother, Set, killed her brother-husband, she went around and found every piece of Osiris’s body that Set had chopped up and spread out all over Egypt. She reassembled the pieces and brought Osiris back with her magic.”

Her eyebrows crease. “What does that have to do with honey?”

This is it.

“You know my nickname for you? What’s the one thing that little bear never stops reaching for?”

“Platonic friends,” she says, half-laughing.

“Honey. Nothing keeps him from searching for his pot of honey…or finding it.”

Her eyes drop to the tat for a split second before coming right back.

“Why the crack down the middle?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” I ask after a swallow. “I’m broken.”

We stare into each other’s eyes. Hers give nothing away, but she doesn’t let go of me either. Maybe I didn’t freak her out. Maybe—

“What happened to Osiris?”

She didn’t ask about Isis, only Osiris. She cares about me, too.

She. Cares. About. Me.

“Isis brought Osiris back, but she couldn’t keep him with her for long, so he ended up in the underworld where he became the king of the dead.”

“Do you want to be found?”

“That’s not why I got it,” I tell her instead of answering. Wanting to be found and thinking I deserve to be found are two different things.

“Why did you get it?”

“I got it so you’ll always have a reason to reach for me.”

“I don’t have magic.”

“Then what’d you use to bring me back to life?”

Using her free hand, she places a finger where she usually does, which is now the top of the tattooed pot, the lip overflowing with thick honey, and I know my pulse is a fucking wreck under her touch.

“This,” she whispers. “I touched you here and everything changed.”

Everything?

“You’re a hell of a deity.”

Her smirk slips when I drop to one knee, then the other, keeping eye contact the entire time.

“They didn’t deserve to touch you. I hate that they did,” I say, pressing my forehead into her stomach. “Give me permission, Collette, and I’ll erase every touch of theirs until only mine is left.”

I’m not begging…yet. I will though. I’ll beg ’til my voice gives out.

The hand in my hair jerks my head back so my throat’s exposed to her.

Just when I think she might let me, she says, “I’m tired of being touched. Since I was sixteen years old, I’ve been touched every single day by hair, makeup, stylists, fans, strangers… Most days my body doesn’t even feel like my own.”

Compared to her, I’ve only had a small taste of that. Not only have I been at this gig for a lot less time than her, but I can jump into crowds without being molested every time. It has happened but nothing like what Collette’s suffered.