The words fester in the air between us, toxic and sharp. I regret them immediately—I can see the impact on her face, the way she flinches like I’ve struck her—but I can’t take them back.
“Shit. Audrey?—”
“That’s rich coming from a man who doesn’t talk to me aboutanything.” Her voice is dangerously quiet—and I can see the moment she realizes she’s said it. The flash of oh shit in her eyes, like she’d been holding that grenade for weeks and it just slipped out of her hands.
That stops me cold. I feel my jaw unhinge, the heat going out of my anger and pooling somewhere else, colder and deeper. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
Audrey’s hands clench into fists on the armrests. Her knuckles go white. “It means you keep things from me,” she says, voice steady, almost academic in its ruthlessness. “I’ve let you into every part of my life. My apartment, my family, my history—I told you about my mom, Logan. I told you why I got into this field. I gave you everything. And you can’t even invite me to your apartment.”
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. For a moment all I can hear is the faint whir of the air exchangers and the distant hum of the recirculating chiller. The silence is a vacuum, pulling at the edges of every word I want to say.
Audrey just watches me—the same way she’s watched me in bed, at dinner, on the dance floor—but now her focus is clinical, an assessment. I want to laugh, or yell, or hug her, anything to clear out the jagged glass that suddenly lines my throat.
“Why are you making this about my apartment?” I manage. “We’re on the verge of?—”
“I’m not making it about your apartment. I’m making it about us.” She pulls her hands off the chair and folds them, tightly, in her lap. “You share your body with me, your ideas,your brilliant mind. But when it comes to real intimacy, Logan, you lock every door and throw away the key.”
“That’s not fair,” I say, but even I don’t believe it.
“You never invite me over,” she says quietly. “You never talk about your childhood, barely mention your parents. I asked about your family once and you changed the subject so hard I thought you’d gotten amnesia. Look, it’s fine if you’re private, but you don’t get to throw me the fuck under the bus for wanting the same standard of disclosure I’ve been giving you for weeks.”
My hands are trembling. I want to walk out of the room, or launch my water bottle at the wall, or just crawl under the desk and hide. But I don’t do any of those things because I can feel Audrey watching me, measuring out my every reaction, like she’s testing which version of me will survive the next round.
“My parents are there,” I say, then realize I’m out on a high wire, nowhere to go but down. I clamp my mouth shut, taste copper.
“In your apartment,” she clarifies, voice probing, “Like… as in, you live with them?”
“What? No. They livewithme. No. Not really live. They live on one of the family estates. But they stay with me when they’re in town on business. And they’re herea lot.”
She goes very quiet. It’s the kind of quiet that isn’t a truce, but a crosshair slowly coming into focus.
“Your parents are in town,” she says, and suddenly it all clicks for her. I see it the moment she aligns my silences, my deflections, my tendency to avoid any talk of staying anywhere but her apartment. “Your parents are in town and they’re staying with you, and you didn’t tell me.”
“It’s not like that,” I say, but it is indistinguishable from what she’s just described. “The estate is undergoing renovations. They come and go.”
She absorbs that, but her face only hardens. “But they’re there now?”
“Yes.”
“And that’s why you never invited me over?”
I swallow, hating the taste in my mouth. “It’s… not a big place. Well, itis,but not when they’re both here. And you wouldn’t like it.”
“Why wouldn’t I like it, Logan?”
Because my whole life is a closet I kept shoving parts of myself into, hoping no one would ever come open the door and see what’s inside. Because my parents are the kind of people who can fill any sized home with tension by the sheer force of their expectations. And I know—have always known—that introducing them to anything I love, anyone I love, is like drawing a bullseye on it. This is a secret so old and basic I’ve stopped even naming it, like I stopped naming the constellation of scars my father left in my sense of self-worth.
But Audrey is looking at me now, and she’s not going to look away until I answer.
Why wouldn’t she like it?
Because she’s brilliant and awkward and unpolished, and my parents eat girls like her alive.
Because if I ever brought her home, if I ever let her all the way in, it would mean surrendering the only thing I’ve managed to protect from them my entire life.
“Are you…are you ashamed of me, Logan?”
The question nearly plants me on my ass.
