Yes or no, I can’t afford to believe her. For now, I need to ensure she can’t and worry later about what happens when she can.
“I care for you, Em. I know I haven’t shown you that in the usual way—” She snorts, and I break off, frowning. “Excuse me? Are yousnortingat my heartfelt attempt to apologise?”
“Call that an apology?” She pulls on the outfit I gave her yesterday, wrapping her arms around her body as she disappears into the thick wool.
“Hey, I’m a boy. Society has conditioned me to never feel the need to apologise for my behaviour. If you’re wanting to blame someone, lay it on the patriarchy.”
“Sure. The old power structures are hurtingyou.”
“Chicken and coleslaw,” I announce, curling her into an embrace and swinging her in circles. “What else?”
“Clothes that fit?”
“Got it. Children’s clothing. What else?” She slaps my shoulder and I swing her around again, smoothing my thumb over the patch of skin inflamed from the tape. “So feisty. If we’re issuing apologies, you still owe me one for attempting to deck me in a pawn shop when I was just trying to help.”
“Oh, is that what you were doing, is it? How’d that work out? I went in the shop to pawn some jewellery, you ‘helped,’ I wasn’t able to pawn my jewellery.”
“Oh, no. You had to call on your rich employer to come rescue you. Such hardship.”
She stiffens like she just caught sight of Medusa, her body rejecting me from head to toe. I hold her tighter, but she fights, really trying, not just struggling to let me know she disapproves.
“I’m sorry,” I wrap my arms around her shoulders, so her arms are pinned, scared at the ferocity of her response. When she can’t get free, she stamps her foot hard on top of mine. Hard enough to make my joints crackle and my eyes water. “Stop fighting me. I’m not going to let you go until you stop fighting.”
“Why don’t you stop being an arsehole then?”
“It’s been seventeen years. I think it’s too late for me. Save yourself.” She bucks wildly, trying to free her elbow to jam it back into me. I still remember how sharp it was from the last time she tried that. “Stop,” I growl. “I was teasing.”
She jerks again and I let her free, scared if I restrain her for much longer, we’ll escalate to an all-out war. Em staggers a few steps, backing into the corner since I’m blocking the only exit.
I hold my hands up, a gesture that makes her grimace. “Okay. Don’t mention you’re an assistant to one of the richest men in the country. Got it.”
Judging from her face, she doesn’t know what I’m talking about. Fuck Zach and his blatant uninterest in everything that isn’t immediately relevant to him. I don’t know why I ever trust what he has to say.
In a quieter voice, I mumble, “I think I’ve misunderstood something. I didn’t mean to make you upset.”
Just mentioning that last word makes her face look a thousand times more distraught than before. Sand shifts under my feet. Movement in any direction might prove disastrous. To not move at all is untenable. “If you’re not working for him—”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
There’s a sharp warning in her voice that gives me pause. A glaze in her eyes that makes it look like she’s on the verge of checking out again.
It’s here. Whatever is going on with her—outside of the harm I inflicted—it’s here. If I could hold her down and force it out of her, I would, but she’s so stubborn that’ll never work.
All that will happen is I’ll cause her more pain.
I revert to teasing instead, my new love language. “Let me guess. You’d rather hang yourself again than tell me what the problem is?”
“Is there a reason you keep cornering me in bathrooms?” she snaps back, eyes firing darts, probably laced with poison. “Some childhood trauma you want to talk through?”
“Yes. Yours.” Her hands clench into fists and I’m happy to watch the blaze of anger drive out the last of the blankness. “You’re very attractive when you’re angry, you know.”
“Could you move aside, please?”
I rock onto the balls of my feet, then gallantly step aside, pulling the door open as I do so and waving her through. “I have other ways of getting you to talk,” I whisper as she shuffles by me, running a teasing finger down her backbone.
“Sexual harassment?”
“More of the former, less of the latter.”
