“And the people?”
There were so many things I could tell someone about the man Theo became after college. About his arrogance and ambition and relentless need to always win the argument, which were nothing compared to his perceptiveness. The way he learned to read people and how cold and cynical this power made him. Cruel even, in the name of honesty. And sometimes I wished he were cruel to me too. It never bothered me that he could see right through me, but it always cut me open when he pretended that he couldn’t. When he pretended that everything was fine between us and that we were moving forward together instead of standing still apart.
But now there was no relationship to retain, nothing fragile to cling to, and so there wasn’t any need for him to be anything but frank with me. He wasn’t asking about my life within the Program out of curiosity. He was asking me to look him in the eyes and admit that something or someone in there had changed me. And this little honesty, I could grant him.
Quietly, I answered, “They were perfect.”
“Perfect,” he echoed with a meaningful raise of his brows. “Does that mean you met someone, Ann?”
Feeling flushed, flustered, I palmed the cool glass of water, resisting the urge to shut my eyes and press it to my face. “I’m sorry, Theo.”
He sat up straighter, the expanse of his shoulders stiffening. “Don’t be,” he said, but I could see the heat crawling up the sides of his neck. “I mean, we broke up over a year ago. It’s not like I haven’t moved on.”
I chanced another glance at him while a half-comical, half-mortifying image of a ridiculously attractive woman walking in any moment now and finding me here played through my head.Oh, yeah, don’t mind me. I’m just the crazy ex-girlfriend. Promise, I’m not dangerous, just, according to my therapist, depressed and highly self-destructive.The horror.
“Is it going to be a problem that I’m here?” I asked, rubbing nervously at my temple.
“Um, no,” Theo muttered. “I don’t have a girlfriend. Nothing like that.”
Nothing like that, meaning he wasn’t seeing someone. He was seeingseveralsomeones. Which was what normal people did after exiting a seven-year-old relationship. Not enter a simulated reality. No, that was just me.
“I see,” I exhaled. “In that case, can I maybe use the shower?”
Blinking rapidly, he shot up with such force that the sofa moved back several inches, its thin metal legs screeching against the marble floor. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him be so jittery, so ungraceful with his body. Even his voice faltered as he said, “Oh, yeah, of course. Make yourself at home. Um, let me get you a—”
“Theo,” I stopped him, taking in a slow, deep breath to remind him that it was also okay for him to breathe. “I know where everything is.”
???
We caught each other in the hallway just as I was coming out of the bathroom, with a towel wrapped around my body and my hair left in loose, dripping strands. Which he hated, I remembered belatedly. To make a mess on the floors.
He didn’t seem to notice it this time, though. He just halted mid-step, surprised at first as if he’d forgotten I was here, then pleased, his eyes softening. “Ah,” he said in a smiling, private tone of voice. “I remember her.”
Conscious of the fact that I was nearly naked while he was fully clothed, I wrapped an arm around my midriff. “I was just coming to ask if I can borrow your hairdryer and maybe some of your clothes.”
“Yeah, obviously. Take whatever.”
“Thank you,” I murmured, trying to slip past him.
He didn’t let me. Something in his expression wavered, and he let out a ragged, almost pained breath, moving closer and closer to me until I had nowhere else to go. My back hit the wall, cold against my damp skin.
“I missed you so much,” he whispered, his hands reaching for my waist. “You were so different after you deleted your memories. So distant. Now… I don’t know. It’s almost like you’re you again.”
It was strange to think that he had always loved me more when I was at my worst, when I’d be waking up in the middle of the night from a nightmare I could no longer remember, sobbing and heaving, and he would have to console me, to gather me into his arms and hum in my ear,It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. I’m here.That was a wound he understood and could even try to mend. Something tangible and controllable. Seeing me happy, or at least trying desperately to become happy, was far more disconcerting to him.
I wasn’t sure what that said about Theo as a person. Savior complex, perhaps, something formed in childhood. Because of his mother, whom he often described as an emotionally unstable woman, workaholic, almost never at home, and his father, who was always trying to compensate for her absence by being overly affectionate, controlling, begging her sometimes to not make that trip and stay with them.
In a lot of ways, Theo had tried to do with me what his father had failed to do with his mother. Fix me, save me, keep me, for to have control was all he ever wanted as a child. Same old patterns repeating themselves. Generational cycles of behavior.
“But I’m not the same, Theo,” I breathed against his mouth, which he had lowered to mine, waiting, wanting. “I have no idea who I am anymore. And I don’t want to hurt you again. You’ve been so kind to me.”
“Mm,” he hummed distractedly, touching my hip over the towel with the tips of his fingers. With glassy, dark eyes he rasped, “You can hurt me if you want. Wreck my life. Ruin me. I don’t care.”
His mouth, hot and yes, familiar, caught mine before I could protest, lips parting, breath shuddering, the weight of his body crashing me, his hand slipping over my bare clavicle, holding the base of my neck. Tight. Tighter. I pressed my palms to his chest to nudge him back, but he only made an imploring sound deep in his throat and went on kissing me.
It would be so easy now. The easiest thing in the world. Let him take me to bed, hold me down the way he liked, hurt me a little, shock me out of thinking about the mistakes I’d made, the life I had to rebuild, the other. Only that he was notthe other. No, not Kai Alwyn Park, but Kai.MyKai. And he would always be. Because the honesty and simpleness with which I had connected with him had changed something in me on a fundamental level.
I, the unwanted child, the disturbed adult, to be loved like that: quickly, wholly, irrepressibly. His gentle-voiced confessions in my ear.Tell me what you want. I’ll do anything.
