“So it’s probably a good thing that I do.”
Simply knowing that I passed a background check with Mr. Lundberg should not elicit this kind of trust.
Nevertheless, my flesh is tingling.
Honesty.
Complete and total honesty.
From someone. Anyone. Under penalty of justice according to my own moral code.
It’sbeautiful. Alluring.Addicting.
“Do you promise?” he asks.
If I promise, he’ll be honest with me until February. Maybe by that point, he’ll have formed a habit. Then, after, assuming he doesn’t hate me beingmeso much that he throws me out the second our work agreement ends, my work environment will improve. I won’t have to feel like I’m constantly playing a game trying to decode what he’s thinking.
It places an awful lot of hope in him not hating me by that point, but I’m in pink today.
I’m in pink today because I was happy and hopeful.
It’s a bit terrifying to be hopeful that someone might like me in the way Fawn likes me when it took me eighteen years to find her. And to hope that someone I don’t even really care for might like me seems silly. Really silly.
I don’t, for the life of me, know why I want the chance.
My lungs shake when I inhale, and I whisper, “I promise. If you do.”
“I promise,” he says, and something unwinds in my body, like a twisted elastic finally being set free. “I’ll have the paperwork handled by tomorrow night, but I trust you, so we can start now.”
I nod. “Okay. So…tell me the truth. Why did you have me pressed to my car like that the other night?”
“Because,” he begins, rough, as he tips forward onto his knees and cups my cheek in his hand, “I wanted very badly to kiss you.”
My heart stops.
Chapter 17
?
She hits now.
Damion
“Call me by my name,” I say, shuffling through Halloween costumes made of, I assume, recycled garbage. The fabrics my fingers are colliding with cause a revolt inside my skin.
Beet red—a shade Mirabelle hasn’tstoppedbeing in my presence since I told her I wanted to kiss her three days ago—she hisses, “No.”
Lowering myself to her ear, I say, “Damion.”
She swats me. Because she does that. Apparently unfiltered Mirabellehits.
I amlivingfor it.
“No. Get away from me.”
This whole situation is terrifying, a real gamble. I only have until February to turn her disgust into something else, lest she leave me forever. I keep trying to convince myself that this option was the best one, because if I’m not honest with her, we risk collapsing like the third-act in a cheap Hallmark film.
This way, she gets all my depraved honesty, and I get the same from her—in both wordsandactions. No muting. No censoring.
