Falling in Love with the Man of My Nightmares (That's [Para]Normal #4)

by Camilla Evergreen

If you come across a child who raises the same red flags that Andromeda does for Kassandra in the following story, please do not assume that child is fae.

Zahra grabs a gold and black helmet with cat ears off the corner of her daybed.

“Well, well. The plot thickens. How terrible is it? Are we talking Kyo from Fruits Basket level?”

“It couldn’t have been in winter,” she continues. “The shepherds the angels got wouldn’t have been in the fields. Had to be during lambing season.” She draws a couple more talons, then she gasps and looks up at me. “Wait, is this one of those holidays that was stolen by people who didn’t like the original holiday? Oooh, I wonder how positively dreadful it had to be for the squeamish to slap the entire birth of Christ on top of it. Doesn’t it make you want to research all the details and add its history to your lesson plans?”

“Are you intentionally seducing me right now?” “I am distracting you from the fact you’re being pick-pocketed.” I blink.

“If you ask Willow and Alana, it’s because they’re starring as the leads in a book series and their humanity makes them…” He clears his throat, muttering, “…hashtag relatable.”

“A relationship works when both involved parties want it to work. We have many things in common, Kassandra, but even if we didn’t, so long as I find it fascinating the way you light up when you talk about what you enjoy, your interests will begin to become mine. When someone is important to you, whatever is important to them becomes important to you as well. Your values, wishes, and dreams will become what I value, wish, and dream. We are both adults capable of mature deliberation. Loving you is a decision I make with full awareness. I hope, one day, loving me will be one you make as well.”

Willow: Anyway. Bookstore. Page Turner. Downtown. Two co-authors I like just released a sequel to their first mythology retelling.

“Tell me what I’m supposed to do, Pollux. It feels like I’ve spent too long embedding a list of other people’s rules in my skin. I’m a collection of scar tissue. It hurts just to breathe. I don’t know how to be correct anymore, but…”

“It’s illegal how pretty you are.” “Cael has yet to reprimand me on those legalities.”

The dubstep tune my heartbeat adopts does not fall within my usual music tastes. “I don’t think love is that simple?”

Kiss, kiss, fall in love.”

My entire self-worth really relies a hundred percent on the people I care about, huh? I do not exist. I am an extension of those around me, meant to create a fuller experience for them. That’s all.

“There was a kerscuffle, but nobody went kersplat.”

Pollux’s tears weren’t as pretty as Kassandra’s, but his mom held him through them all the same.

Reality needs to collapse every now and again, anyway.

I’ve been played. Friendship is a scam.