She corrects, "I'm trying to get honesty."
"Honesty about what?"
"About love," she answers, her tone calm, as if she's ordering off a menu. "And about sex. And about the thing men do when they confuse those two."
I let out a slow breath. "This is ridiculous."
Her eyes narrow slightly. "Is it?"
I cross my arms. "You brought me to the middle of nowhere to have a conversation about love and sex?"
Demi shifts her weight, crossing her arms loosely. "I know what Blue does when she's scared, or lonely, or thinks no one is coming."
"You know?" I ask, my chest tightening.
Her face turns serious. She nods and quietly declares, "I saw her hip, and she told me."
"Then why didn't you get her help?" I snarl.
She holds her hands in the air. "Whoa! Don't shoot the messenger! I tried to get her to go to therapy, but she wouldn't. She is an adult, you know."
I scowl.
Demi's mouth lifts. "You want to protect her, but you don't want to admit what you are to her."
"I'm her therapist," I say, and the words taste wrong in my mouth now because the role doesn't fit the reality anymore.
"Youwereher therapist. Now, you're the man she reaches for. Aren't you?"
I hold her gaze. "What do you want from me, Demi?"
Her voice drops slightly, not soft, just intimate enough to change the air. "I want to know if you're going to hurt her."
"I'm not."
Demi studies me, eyes tracking my face, my posture, and my hands. "Men say that and mean it in the moment."
"I've never had any desire to hurt Blue. I've only wanted to help her," I firmly assert.
She tilts her head, studying me. "Then answer my question. Do you love her?"
My chest tightens. Not because the question is hard to understand. Because it demands something I can't give cleanly without destroying someone.
If I say yes, I become evidence in a war I don't fully see.
If I say no, I become the blade Blue will press against her own skin when she's alone.
So I keep my voice even. "I'm not answering that."
Demi's eyes sharpen. "Because you don't know?"
"Because the answer isn't yours."
"It is if my family is going to decide whether you survive," she says, and the casual delivery makes it worse.
I take a half step back, the first retreat I've given her, and it irritates me. "Your family?"
She clarifies, "My father and the men who still think they own what their daughters touch."
