He clears his throat above my head, and I force my arms to let go. Looking around, I notice everyone is staring at me with indulgent smiles. Fuck, he hasn’t even stepped in, and I’m already monopolizing him. The others surely want to greet him, too.
I move back to allow him and Kevin inside, and the latter offers me a grin. One after the other, they all welcome Lex back home, giving him hugs and friendly embraces. My eyes never let go of him the entire time, my heart so full of love and pride. My baby is out. He’s back, and he will get better from now on. All that mess will become our past, and we have an entire future to look forward to.
As he talks to the others, I pick up on a few details they might not have noticed yet. His body language is stiff, his motions uneasy. For over three months now, he’s been building walls around himself and sheltering his entire person from the world. He needs to learn to trust people again, that he doesn’t have to protect himself so fiercely. And I’ll be with him every step of the way.
About ten minutes after he arrived, we still haven’t exchanged a word—merely brief glances. He needs space, and while the others might not have caught on to that fact, I did, so I hold back.
Lex lasts about five more minutes, and then asks, “Can you all leave?”
A little takenaback at first, they quickly get over it and proceed to respect his wishes. Within a minute, they have all said their goodbyes, hugged him, and left.
Once Lex and I are alone, the silence that falls around us becomes tense, charged with something so heavy it’s uncomfortable. He can’t ignore me anymore, not with everyone gone, and when his eyes fall on me, they’re dark and intense. “I ordered some food,” I explain, motioning toward the kitchen. “I didn’t know what you’d want, so I ordered a bit of everything? There’s—”
“I meant you as well, Andrea,” he dryly cuts me off.
“You—What?”
“Leave.”
Dismay. Pure, unaltered dismay invades every single part of my mind and body. It fills me with a nauseous feeling, a heavy ball pressing down on my stomach. No, he doesn’t mean it. He isn’t actually kicking me out. Notme.
“Lex, you just got back. Let’s eat something, and then we’ll talk.”
“I mean it, Andrea. I want to be left the fuck alone right now,” he insists.
The curse has me flinching. I guessed he’d be mad. What I did was dangerous, and I always knew that he never would have approved of it. But now that he’s out, he has to realize I did the right thing. I succeeded. There’s no reason to still be mad, is there?
“I’m not leaving. You just got back,” I argue, determined to win this one.
He turns to me with something in his eyes that makes my skin crawl. He takes a few steps toward me, and with each of them, I have to fight the urge to take one back. I’ve never been this intimidated by him, this scared of what he might do. I want to enjoy the proximity, to cherish having him so close again, but everything in his attitude is aggressive.
“I’ve been surrounded by people for three months. All I want is to be alone. Or can’t you even respect that?”
The coldness of his tone and the harshness of his words feel like a stab through my chest. “Lex,” I start, failing to control my shaky voice, “whatever is going on, we can talk about it.”
“I can’t handle you right now, Andrea. Or I’ll do something we’ll both regret.”
The implication makes me recoil, as if he’s physically pushed me away. He’s pissed at me. No, I can handle pissed. After what I did, I expected it. But this is pure wrath. Searing hot anger, and all of it is targeted at me.
“Lex, I didn’t do anything you wouldn’t have done for me,” I try.
“You can’t reverse the situation to justify what you did, Andrea,” he counters angrily. “If the roles had been reversed, I would have known what the fuck I was doing, because I’ve been doing it for half of my life. But you knew nothing about it, except that I never would have approved. And you still did it. I was stuck in there week after week, worried sick as I wondered every fucking hour what you would do, unable to stop you or make you see reason. You abused my position of weakness to go behind my back and pull this shit.”
“But I knew what I was doing,” I protest. As much as his words hurt, I need to remember they come from a place of care, love, and concern. That’s his worries about me talking, not his heart. Tears pool in my eyes, no matter how hard I try to contain them. I’m too sleep-deprived for this, too emotionally unstable to handle his temper. One spills over and runs down my cheek, so I swiftly wipe it away.
“Had you hacked into anything before?” he demands.
“I learned.”
“In three fucking months?!”
“It was more like, five weeks.”
That, of course, doesn’t appease him. “Do you have any idea how infuriating you are?!” he practically roars. “I would do anything,anything, to protect you. I was ready to go to fucking prison if it meant you wouldn’t get involved. And then you go and do something that could send you there for the rest of your life.”
“Do you have so little faith in me, Lex?” I ask, now insulted by his lack of trust in my abilities. The sadness I feel slowly morphs into something else—something closer to his state of mind.
Exasperated, he pinches the bridge of his nose, taking a deep breath to calm himself down. It barely works, and when his eyes fall on me again, he’s still fuming. “I can’t do this right now. I need more time before we can talk about it calmly. So, leave, Andrea.”
