When Seth told her how many werewolves he knew, the simplicity of his answer might have struck Alex as funny, at any other time. It wasn’t in his delivery; there was just such a straightforward truth in what he said that it made it absurdly relatable in a very hard to grasp situation. Wolves lived in packs. It made sense that werewolves would, too. She couldn’t find a response that she could shape into words, though, so she just nodded after a pause.
The pause remained so intact that Alex felt like she was walking through it when she moved; invisible strands fluttered from her fingertips and snagged on the surfaces, catching at her attention in a way that made everything else seem like she was experiencing it in a delay. The rush of emotion that had driven her all the way back down to their house was static, turned into the same sort of white noise as the water that had flowed from the faucet when she’d filled her glass. When she sat down on the arm of the chair, she didn’t feel the sturdiness beneath her or the fabric against her skin when she braced her hand against it. Emotions clashed in such a tight weave that they blended together, until the most vibrant threads emerged.
When Alex started talking, she didn’t plan what she was going to say. It was generally true that she was an impulsive person. There were a lot of times when she thought before she spoke, but unless she was constructing a narrative, she spoke freely. Words flowed in the same current as her emotions. The sound of her voice refocused her and sped time again until she felt caught up, but she didn’t realize how significantly she felt what she was saying until she heard it. Whatever agreements they had in place, Alex couldn’t imagine keeping something like this from someone she chose to tie her life to, at least not after so much time had passed. It made her feel more minimal in relation to Seth than she ever had.
Alex didn’t get so lost in her own thoughts that she didn’t hear Seth’s reassurances. She did. She listened to him and there was a logic to what he was saying that pierced through her reasoning. She knew she knew about things in Seth’s life that no one else did, by merit of being part of something with him that no one else knew about. The same was true for her; Alex couldn’t say that she shared things the same way with Seth that she did with her sisters, but he knew as much. He knew more. That didn’t make his withholding this information hurt any less. That didn’t imply care, or value in the way that she wanted it to. It made his disagreement sound hollow. She exhaled slowly throughout the end of his statement, but at the end she just shook her head.
It wasn’t until Seth aired his own grievance that Alex looked up at him and when she did, her eyes were wide. When he said that she’d pounded it into his head that her stay was temporary, Alex instinctively looked to her other side, like he must have been talking to someone else just out of sight. Turning back, she blinked, before her eyebrows knit together in confusion when he continued. Her eyes sparked when he described how she thought she was treating the house, but she didn’t start shaking her head until he got to the end. Setting her water glass on the nearest table, Alex stood up. She understood why, for him, one subject blended into the other and how it was all relevant to why he’d acted the way he had and that he was saying that she’d made him feel marginal, too, but to her, they were two separate topics.