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Amani was clearly not impressed with him. Not that he could blame her. “I don’t know…the satisfaction of having me admit that I was pain?” He wasn’t sure why he was using the past tense. He was no longer in so much pain that he couldn’t think but there was still this soreness that demanded his attention. Listening to Amani talk was a good distraction though, so he focused completely on her as she explained what she had done to heal him. He knew that her mother was a healer of sorts and so it made sense that Amani would know some of the same techniques. However, her last statement made Tae question if she actually knew what she was doing. “Wait, did I just become a lab rat?” He asked, questioning his choices.
“Well, that would require Azriel to want to have a conversation with me but I haven’t heard anything from your father.” Tae rolled his eyes when he mentioned her fiancé. He was well aware of the fact that he was not Amani’s fiancé’s favourite person and he enjoyed being as big of a pain in his ass as he possibly could, which didn’t exactly make Azriel want to spend any more time than was necessary with him. He still hated how Amani was being kept in the dark about her own wedding.
Tae laughed when she asked if he was supposed to be the mature cousin. This made him wince as it activated some of the sore parts of his body. “Don’t make me laugh.” He meant this in both a sarcastic and literal sense, but it was ironic of her to expect the youngest of the Duman cousins to be the most mature. “You see the irony in that right?” He asked as she went to this corner of her room to change. To respect her privacy, Tae looked up at the ceiling. “Some guys were gossiping about whether Renlin and I would speak to each other at the sleepover this year. One of them mentioned my brother and then Renlin decided to open his mouth and chime in with ‘half-brother’. It was just the way he said it.” He explained to her, relaying what had led to him starting the fight. Saying it out loud really made Tae think about how stupidly impulsive it was. “He calls me half as if it’s a slur. As if not sharing a mom had any effect on my relationship with my siblings or my grief. Liss, Isaac and I never called ourselves half-siblings.”
“He’s never getting over it and he’s never been grown up. I get that he wants someone to blame but the way he resents me, you’d think I was more than just a passenger.” He told her before thinking back to the night before. He didn’t remember any embarrassing outbursts from his cousin but then again, he had been a little…preoccupied. “Made a fool of himself? How?” He asked her, wanting to hear whatever details Amani had. He playfully rolled his eyes when she told him that she wouldn’t have continued speaking to him if he’d let himself lose the fight easily but when she got more serious, so did he. “When and…and what happened?” He asked when she told him about her dream. The dreams that she was talking about always felt so strange to him, he wanted to have as many details about it as possible.
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@Kristi - Amani