But as quickly as he touched me, he’s gone.
Standing straight up.
Powering the phone off.
Shooting me injured looks like it’s my fault he had to touch me and now he’s disgusted with both of us.
I shimmy back in the chair and pull my legs to my chest, wishing it didn’t suddenly feel cold as an iceberg in here. “Some of us have jobs that we’ll get fired from and then be unable to afford rent if we don’t call in and take vacation time.”
A muscle clenches in his jaw.
“And I didn’t tell anyone who you are, where we are, or why we’re here.” Goddammit.
Why do I suddenly feel like crying?
I hate crying.
Hateit.
The number of times I got yelled at for crying when I was little—and then the way I was accused of weaponizing myfeelings to get my way—and then the time I overheard my mother telling one of my friends’ mothers that I wassooooverdramatic and then both of them laughed about how much my friend and I both cried…
Yeah.
Crying makes me feel like an asshole and then reminds me that everyone in my life for the first twenty-four or twenty-five years of it were all assholes too for making me feel like that.
Bea was the first person in my life to hug me when I cried and tell me to let it all out, that crying was the body’s natural response to stress and it was okay to cry.
The first person.
How was that even possible?
“Fine,” I spit out. “Fine. You win. You’re in charge. Happy now? Get out of here and let me sleep. I’m tired of your ugly face.”
It takes every ounce of control I possess to not let him see how angry and hurt and desperate I feel right now, and honestly?
I’m probably doing a shitty job even with every ounce of control I possess because let’s be real here.
I might not be the Daphne who gets kicked out of colleges and regularly arrested for going overboard at protests anymore, but I’m still impulsive and I still love to have fun and I want to know that I’m lovable despite my flaws.
And Oliver’s making it incredibly clear that I’m not.
Not to him.
“Ungrateful asshole,” I add.
He flinches, and then he’s gone, striding up the ladder so quickly that I barely register him leaving.
I grab the blanket and shove it over my head, in case he comes back.
He’s gotten all of the satisfaction out of my discomfort that I’m willing to give him tonight.
And if he leaves without me in the morning—well, I hope he does.
Because then he’s not my problem anymore.
13
LIFE WOULD BE EASIER IF I COULD GET RID OF MY CONSCIENCE
