But he’s already typing.
I don’t try to stop him. What’s the point? Google exists. My past exists. The information is out there. It’s always been out there. I’ve just gotten very good over the past year at making sure no one thinks to look.
I flop down on the bed and stare at the ceiling. I might as well get comfortable. This is going to take a while.
Silence. Then more silence. Then the particular quality of silence that means he’s found the Wikipedia page for Archibald Mansley.
A choked sound comes from him.
“You won a Rhodes Scholarship when you were eighteen?”
“Well, if it’s on my Wikipedia page, it must be true,” I say, sneaking a look at him.
Leo’s face goes through about six different expressions and lands on something between awe and shock as he continues to scroll.
“It says here you were the youngest winner in fifty years. And you were offered a professorship at Oxford when you finished your second doctorate.” He looks up. “You turned it down.”
“The robes are unflattering.”
He lowers the phone slowly and sits on the edge of the bed. He continues to stare at me like I’m a stranger who’s wandered into the room wearing a familiar face.
He’s not going to give me an easy out. I doubt Leo Brennan has ever given anyone an easy out in his life.
“Why the hell do you keep that part of yourself hidden?” he asks.
I try not to flinch at the question.
“Does it change how you see me?” I counter.
“What do you mean?”
“Does knowing I’m a genius change how you see me? Do you regard me differently now that you know?”
“You’re deflecting,” he says.
“It’s a legitimate question,” I reply. “What’s your answer? Does it change your opinion of me?”
He doesn’t answer immediately, which is answer enough.
I sit up, suddenly tired of being horizontal for this conversation. Then I lever myself to standing because if we’re discussing this, I’m not doing it flat on my back like a patient receiving bad news.
“That’s what I thought,” I say to Leo.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“I’m trying to understand you, Archie. That’s all I want.”
His words cut at me.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you want to understand me?”
His dark eyes pin me. “Why? Because you’re the most fascinating, contradictory, irritating, infuriating person I’ve ever met,” he growls. “Because every time I think I’ve figured you out, you reveal another layer I didn’t know existed.”
