“Funny, because I’m terrified of you.”
“Stop.”
“I’m serious. You scare the shit out of me. Look.” He moved,huddling closer, and gently picked up my hands to open them so that my palms faced upward. “See this? Here’s where I am, right here. You have all the power. You can fucking crush me,” he said in a low voice. His face was near mine, bent low. “All you have to say is that you’re done with this. I’m the side piece. Second choice.”
“Don’t say that,” I whispered. “It’s not true.”
His breath hitched as he started to say something, then changed his mind. Started over in a rough voice. “I havenothing. Nothing to give you, and no power. No right to ask for anything from you. But I’m asking anyway.”
“Fen…”
“What makes you get out of bed in the morning?”
“Huh?”
“The things that make all the shit you endure worth it. You, Cinderella, toiling away in the palace… for what?”
I didn’t have an answer. It wasn’t a word-pixie thing. I just didn’t know, really.
“You have to have reasons. Day after day we sat through the nothingness of school,” he said, “and we didn’t learn anything, because half the time we knew more than the teachers anyway. Do you know how many times I had to correct my history teacher? It was supposed to be an AP course, and he didn’t know anything about the Cold War.”
“Um…?”
He exhaled. “Sorry, off track. What I’m trying to say… There are only a few things that make my life worth living. Music.My family—not including my father or brother, who I hope both burn in a fairy-tale witch’s oven until their eyeballs pop out—”
“Good God,” I whispered.
“But the rest of my family, yes. I care about music, them, and this tree.”
“This tree,” I repeated.
“Ilove this tree,” he said deliberately. “I have a deep spiritual attachment to this tree. I brought you here because I wanted to share it with you.”
“I’m glad you did.”
“But, Jane, I just want you to know that if you told me the only way I could be with you was if this tree was dead, I would take a rusty axe to this two-thousand-year-old beloved tree and chop it the fuck down for you.”
He wasn’t joking. I mean, I knew he was aware that he was driving Exaggeration Train off Hyperbole Cliff. But the sentiment behind it was all too serious. “Um, please don’t?”
“I’d do it for you. Because now I have another reason to wake up in the morning. Told you—all the power.”
“Fen.When you talk like this, it sort of scares me.”
“It scares me to feel this way.”
“It’s not fair of you to say this to me when you know I’m with Eddie.”
Slow blinks. “I know it’s not fair. I wish it were—fair. For you. I wish we just met each other, and there were no strings or baggage. Are you sorry you got involved with me?”
It felt as if we were on a great fault line that was about to giveway, and that Ididhave power. I could walk away right now and prevent all kinds of tragedy. Save lives. Homes. Entire towns.
But I could not.
“Not one bit sorry,” I confessed.
He made a low noise.
His eyes were dark and hooded. He lowered his head to my hands and kissed each of my palms. “I swear to all the saints, if you don’t touch me again, I’m going to fall to pieces.”
