“Once I was living the life we both thought we wanted—me running M2G, her running Aurora Gardens—it became rapidly clear that it wasn’t what I needed, and she wasn’t what I needed either.”
Is it possible to feel slapped in the face on someone else’s behalf at the same time that relief floods your body for yourself and worry pops up for him? What does that mean,she wasn’t what I needed? “Did you tell her that?”
“As clearly as I could at the time.”
“She told me last week she’d take you back,” I whisper.
He sighs.
This one sounds defeated.
“Why are you pushing this?” he asks.
“Because I want to know what to tell her when I get back home if she ever finds out about…this.”
“You won’t tell her anything.”
“But—”
“Would it make any difference at all if you found out your last boyfriend couldn’t put into words why he didn’t want you in his life anymore?”
I snort. “I’d have to date for that to be an issue.”
Dammit.
He tricked that out of me. Swear he did.
“You don’t date.” He says it like he’s repeating my assertion that the sun revolves around the moon.
“We’re discussing Margot.”
He thrashes about on the bed again, this time turning so he’s facing me. I can see his outline. The tilt of his head towardme. The drape of the white sheet low across his stomach. “That subject is closed. Why don’t you date?”
I could tell him it’s none of his business.
Except—
Well, it sort of is.
If he’s going to assume a brand-new identity whenever he gets where he’s going, if he’s going to never again claim any link to M2G, then it’s kind of my job, as part of our agreement, to tell him.
Give him a heads-up on how fucked he might be.
And honestly?
I probably need to talk this out too, if I’m ever going to work through why I don’t date, why I have panic attacks at the thought of my sister eventually abandoning me, and why I often have insomnia.
It’s all related.
All tied together.
And no matter how much work I’ve done on myself in the past four years, there’s more to do.
“Because the people who know I was rich only want to date me because they think I’ll come back into money—it’s hardly a secret that Margot would prop me up for life if I ever asked her to—and the people who don’t know I was rich haven’t been people I trust deeply enough to let them find out.”
Silence settles thick in the room.
Oliver’s not me.
