The Gender End by Bella Forrest (the giving tree read aloud TXT) 📕

I looked at him, and then adjusted so I could wrap an arm around his shoulder, taking care to share my warmth but only barely brush his skin. “Why do you say that?” I asked, curious.

He shrugged under my arm, and then smiled up at me, his gray eyes still stormy. “You gone. Married. No room for—”

“You stop right there, Tim,” said Owen softly. I looked over at him, and he shifted nervously, pulling on the sleeves of his sweater. “I was an older sibling too, and believe me… there’s always room for your brother. Nothing’s going to change. Your sister’s never going to abandon you, and you will always be loved—by her, by Viggo, and by everyone in the room.”

I heard the pain in his voice as he spoke, and started to reach for his hand, but stopped when I saw Morgan already doing so, her hand going over Owen’s and squeezing. The blonde man looked up, his blue eyes rimmed with red, and then slowly pulled his hand out from under hers, standing up.

“I’m, uh, going to check out the food situation,” he mumbled, before moving off. Morgan followed his movement, her brows furrowing together as her green eyes tracked him, and then she leaned back in the chair with a look of disappointment on her face.

Ms. Dale and I exchanged looks, and Henrik softly announced that he could also use some food and got up. I looked at Ms. Dale, who gave me a shrug, sipping her own mug of tea, and I sighed. Clearly this was for me to handle.

But before I could say anything, another voice beat me to it. “You really shouldn’t take it personally, Morgan,” announced Amber, manifesting from seemingly nowhere with a plate filled with—heavens, it was fresh vegetables. My mouth watered when I saw the pile of cherry tomatoes, and I looked up at her questioningly as she sat down in the chair Owen had just evacuated. She nodded, and I grabbed one, popping it between my lips and crunching into it, the fresh, distinctive sweetness almost causing me to moan with happiness.

Amber watched my display with an odd smile, and then turned back to Morgan. “By the way, since when do you have a crush on Owen? I’ve known you both since I arrived with the Liberators, and I never picked up on that.”

“Because you never saw us together,” muttered Morgan, picking at some lint on the tablecloth—and I noticed she didn’t try to deny Amber’s realization. “Owen and I never really… got to spend any time together. He was Desmond’s number two, remember?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t really answer the question, does it?” Amber teased. “Go on, when did you realize you liked him?”

Morgan shifted slightly in her seat and then gave Amber a direct look. “The first day I met him,” she replied tersely. “The first day I was in the Liberator base. I was scared and… and angry. Desmond didn’t tell me what was going on, I’d been stuck in that stupid workhouse for over a year, and then suddenly I wasn’t anymore. It threw me. Anyway, he was running the training the first day I was there, and I didn’t want anything to do with it, or him. He comes over, and before he can even say anything, I grab him and throw him across the room.”

“You didn’t!” Amber gasped, a wide smile on her lips.

“I did,” Morgan replied dryly. “I thought he’d get up, scream at me, say something horrible, hate me forever, but instead he held out his hand to me and said, ‘You going to be a lady and help me up?’”

I laughed around a mouthful of tomatoes. That sounded like Owen. Good-natured ribbing that helped to defuse difficult or awkward interactions was his specialty. Or it had been, at least. After his brother died, he’d been so different… but even now, I could see peeks of the Owen we knew coming back once in a while, and I knew he was healing, if slowly.

“After that I guess I was curious. I’d never been around anybody who could defuse a situation like that. My family, we’re—well, I just told you. Everybody turns small problems, these simple little things, into gigantic arguments with pitfalls that are, by design, meant to make you angry and shoot off at the mouth. Then they’d turn all that around and hold it over you, bear slow-burning grudges, before bringing it up in some new argument weeks, even months, later, to repeat the damn cycle all over again. I’d never been just forgiven like that before.”

Her expression turned deeply inward as she talked, and I could only imagine how much something like that had meant to her. I’d grown up with a lot of the same kinds of expectations, actually—but Morgan’s had been multiplied by her unusual family situation and her sisters’ enhancements. Morgan’s face turned rueful.

“At first I couldn’t understand it. I thought he must be a huge airhead who had never had any real problems. But I asked around, and when I found out about his brother… I don’t know, I just thought about how brave he was to still find a reason to laugh, after such tragedy and heartache.”

I looked around at the rest of the table and realized we were all hanging on her words, hoping there would be more to the story. “Oh my God, Morgan,” Amber said after a moment, her eyes sparkling. “That’s the sweetest story ever. Makes Owen seem, well, almost attractive. Which is gross.” Amber shuddered theatrically, and managed to bring a smile to the other girl’s face. “So, yeah,” she added, her voice thick with dry sarcasm. “Thanks for sharing. I’ll be having nightmares all week.”

“Yeah, well, I wish I could just… admit it to him, y’know?” Morgan said ruefully, her smile at Amber’s quip dimming slightly as she ran a hand through her hair. “But it’s not a good time.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” Amber said,