Chapter Text
I used to think love was a trap.
Not because of a bad breakup or some dramatic heartbreak—but because I grew up watching two people who claimed to love each other treat that word like a leash. A leash that pulled one person down and gave the other full control.
My dad… he’s loud. Opinionated. Misogynistic in the kind of way that thinks it's just “traditional values.” And my mom—she’s not cruel, not unkind—but she’s always quiet when she should speak up, always shrinking herself down so he can feel bigger. She lets him win every argument, even when he’s wrong. Especially when he’s wrong. And I watched that for years .
That’s what love looked like to me.
So, I decided early on: no, thank you.
Even before the powers came in, before I could rearrange atoms or hover over my bed at night without even meaning to—I already knew I didn’t fit into their world. I wasn’t the perfect American daughter with soft curls and soft opinions. I was the girl who broke the family TV because I accidentally turned its components into citrus molecules at age sixteen. I was the one who could recite the periodic table before I could ride a bike. I was too much . Too smart. Too strange. Too loud for a girl. And when the powers started manifesting? That was just another reason to be "wrong" in their eyes.
So I stopped hoping for approval. And I definitely stopped hoping for love.
Because if that —that angry, lopsided mess between my parents—was love? Then I wanted no part in it . I would rather be alone and whole than partnered and hollow.
At least… that’s what I thought.
Then I got older. Got braver. Got out .
And then I met them . Rex and Mark. One messy, smug idiot with more heart than sense. One stubborn, overly noble dork with a jawline that could cut glass and morals just as sharp. And it wasn’t like a lightning bolt or a fairytale. It was slow.
Complicated. Confusing. Real.
It didn’t look like my parents’ kind of love. It didn’t feel like it, either. It felt like breathing. Like being seen. Like hearing, “You’re too much” and having someone say, “Good. You should be.”
They didn’t just make room for me. They wanted all of me—the messy, powerful, overthinking me. And more than that, they wanted each other, too.
And for the first time… I realized love didn’t have to look like a leash.
It could look like freedom .