Chapter 62: An Exception Part 1

Gwen POV

The first night after I came back from the science trip, I barely slept.

Every time I closed my eyes, I remembered the faucet coming off in my hand or the lock breaking when I tried to open the door.

Neither should have happened so easily, but I hadn’t even been trying.

After that, every ordinary thing in my room started feeling fragile.

I kept staring at my hands, opening and closing my fingers slowly, trying to convince myself that I was still in control of them.

Mom knocked on my door several times.

Each time, I told her I was tired or busy and waited until I heard her walk away.

I knew she was worried, and normally I would have opened the door just to stop her from worrying, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

What if she touched me and I reacted without thinking?

What if I grabbed her arm too hard?

The idea of hurting Mom because I couldn’t control my own strength scared me more than anything else that had happened.

So I stayed inside and tried to figure it out myself.

I spent hours searching online for sudden increases in strength, genetic disorders, chemical exposure, diseases that affected muscle density, and anything else I could think of.

Nothing helped.

Every explanation either had nothing to do with what was happening to me or created even more questions.

Eventually, I closed the laptop and sat there staring at the wall.

That was when I started thinking about Chris.

He had left before any of this happened, so blaming him for not being here made no sense.

He didn’t know I’d been bitten or that something was wrong with me.

Still, I found myself wishing he would come home.

I thought about trying to contact him once, but stopped when I realized I didn’t even know what I would say.

Telling him that something had bitten me and now I was afraid I might accidentally break someone’s arm sounded ridiculous.

The longer I sat there, the more my thoughts wandered back to something else.

I remembered opening Mom’s bedroom door and finding her and Chris asleep together.

Mom had been holding him, and the sight had bothered me enough that I’d even noticed the next morning that they smelled the same.

Chris had dismissed it because they’d only been talking before falling asleep, and I knew there was nothing wrong with that.

I also knew Chris cared about both of us.

He had never made me feel like I mattered less than Mom, which only made my reaction harder to understand.

Neither of them had done anything wrong, yet remembering Mom holding him still made something uncomfortable twist inside me.

Now, sitting alone and wishing he were here, I finally had to admit what that feeling was.

I was jealous.

The realization was embarrassing enough that I buried my face in my pillow.

Mom was my mother.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with Chris being close to her, and I didn’t want him to stop caring about her.

Apparently, knowing all of that wasn’t enough to make the feeling disappear.

By the next day, I was exhausted.

I still hadn’t figured out what was happening to me, and I’d barely slept.

I was sitting on my bed with my laptop when I heard the doorbell downstairs.

I assumed it was someone for Mom until footsteps came upstairs and stopped outside my room.

“Gwen?”

I froze.

Chris.

He knocked again, but I didn’t answer.

I’d spent hours wishing he would come home, yet now that he was actually outside my door, some part of me was still angry that he’d been gone when all of this happened.

When he warned me that he was going to break the door, I still stayed silent.

A moment later, the lock came off and Chris entered with Mom behind him.

“GET OUT!”

The words came out before I could think about them.

Chris stopped but didn’t leave, and as I looked at him, the anger inside me mixed with something completely different.

Nothing about my situation had changed.

I still didn’t know what was happening to my body, and I was still afraid of my own strength, but the fear suddenly didn’t feel as overwhelming as it had a few minutes ago.

Chris was home.

He kept asking what was wrong until I finally told him.

I explained the faucet, the lock, and how I couldn’t control my strength properly.

Then I admitted what had really been frightening me.

“What if I’m not human anymore? What if whatever got into my system is turning me into something broken? What if I’m a monster?”

Chris didn’t laugh or tell me I was being ridiculous.

Instead, he asked whether having power made someone a monster or whether it was what they chose to do with that power.

Then, when I still couldn’t get past the fear, he told me something I had never known about him.

Chris was a mutant.

He explained the X-gene and how mutants were biologically different from normal humans.

Some were stronger, some had psychic abilities, and others could manipulate different forms of energy.

Then he asked whether knowing that changed what I thought about him.

Of course it didn’t.

He was still Chris, and that was exactly what he wanted me to understand about myself.

But the secret itself stayed with me.

Chris didn’t trust people easily.

There were places he went without explaining and parts of his life he kept hidden even from us, yet he’d revealed something that important because I was scared.

He hadn’t just told me everything would be fine.

He’d given me something personal enough to prove I wasn’t alone.

Then he found the bite marks on my wrist.

After that, things finally started making some sense.

Something had bitten me during the trip, and whatever it was had probably caused the changes.

We still didn’t know exactly what was happening, but Chris immediately started taking control of the situation.

He called someone to handle Mom’s work and made it clear that she wasn’t leaving until we understood my powers.

He was protecting both of us, and that was when everything I’d been holding back finally collapsed.

I hugged him and started crying against his chest.

“I didn’t know what to do…” Then, despite knowing it wasn’t fair, I asked the question that had been sitting inside me for hours.

“Why did you have to leave?”

Chris hadn’t known I needed him.

I understood that.

But I’d spent all that time alone, afraid of myself and too scared to even let Mom near me.

For those hours, understanding why he wasn’t there hadn’t made me want him any less.

Chris didn’t point out how unreasonable I was being.

He simply held me and told me he was here now.

Eventually, exhaustion won and I fell asleep.

When I woke later, Chris was still beside me.

As soon as I realized he was going to move, I wrapped my arm around his waist and pulled him back down.

I didn’t think about it much.

I just knew that after spending so long wanting him home, I wasn’t ready for him to leave again.

For a while, I stayed against his chest before finally asking something I’d wondered about for a long time.

“Have you killed someone?”

Chris went still before answering.

“Yes.”

I’d always believed killing was wrong.

I’d even argued with Mom that loving someone didn’t mean accepting everything they did.

If someone you cared about did something wrong, you were supposed to help them find a better path.

So after Chris answered yes, I should have pulled away.

Instead, I held him tighter.

“I like you, Chris.”

…..

Author’s Note (28|08|2026)

I’ve seen the comments about the direction of Chris’s relationship with Gwen and Helen, so I’m leaving the final choice to you guys.

I’m putting up a poll that will be available to everyone.

The poll will stay open for three days, and the option with the most votes will be the direction I follow going forward.

After the three days are over, the result will be final, and I won’t be taking any more requests to change the relationship direction later.

So if you care about where this goes, make sure you vote now.