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“Just an observation.”
She smiles as she looks back out across the cemetery. “The night you pulled me out of the grave . . . you didn’t step in straight away.” My jaw tightens, but I don’t confirm or deny it. “You waited until the last possible second.”
“You were fine and didn’t need me.”
“I know I was fine—that isn’t what I’m saying. You waited on purpose, and I want to know why.”
This is the thing about Kayla that unsettles me—she notices a lot more than she lets on. “I wanted you to need me—it’s what I do. I create moments where I am needed. It’s an instinct. I am aware it’s not a good thing for other people, but I would have to actually care for that to affect me.”
She stays quiet, possibly shocked that I am giving her my truth. Yet she needs to learn this from me and not anyone else, since they all seem to fucking know it though only recently let it slip.
“So what you are saying is, you don’t care about me at all. You care about what I need from you.”
I shrug. “It’s not that simple, and I do it for everyone, not just you.”
“So you feel nothing for me at all?”
“I don’t know. And that’s the first time I have not known something about myself in a very long time.”
She looks at me, studying my face. “I don’t understand why feelings and needing people to need you can’t be separate.”
I don’t know how to explain this to her, so I stay silent.
“Let me ask you this,” she finally says. “If someone hurt Vero, Clay, or Brawley, how would you react?”
“I would fucking kill them,” I snap.
“See? You care.”
“No, Kayla, they fucking need me and no one gets to touch them. I have worked hard for years for us to get where we are. To be in control of when they need me and how. And someone else doesn’t get to ruin that for me. You don’t realize that killing them isn’t about revenge for me—it’s about the outcome. I would get to be the hero, and I would manipulate that in a way to benefit me.”
“Okay.”
I open my mouth and snap it shut.
What the hell does okay mean? I came to the conclusion that telling her would work in my favor—it would gain her trust, since she has not been as easy as I anticipated. “When people find out the truth, they normally have a lot to say.”
“I’m not most people,” Kayla replies with a shrug.
“No, you’re not,” I agree.
“Thank you for telling me.”
“You would have figured it out eventually.”
“Maybe, but you telling me yourself means a lot to me.”
I don’t answer because now she knows, and what she does with that information is up to her. I can’t keep trying to change who I am, or how I operate. Besides, I need to know how she ticks, and how I can use that, but she has just thrown me another curveball.
“Come on, let’s look at the view.”
She climbs back up, and we walk along the wall, finally finding a place to sit and watch the people run around the island, chased by masked strangers. For the first time in as long as I can remember, I am not with someone because I have an agenda. I am here in the moment with her, and though I want to hate it, I don’t. I reach out and take her hand, and she intertwines her fingers with mine, then we sit together in silence for a time.
“You know I’m not running, Ares. If you need me to need you, then you have to give me a reason. Since you have given me a truth, maybe it’s time to give you one.”
“Why would you want me to know anything when the first thing I will do is try to exploit it?” I wonder aloud.
She chuckles. “Because when you know it, you will realize you can’t use it against me. Using it will make me run, and then you will have some pissed-off friends that you have worked so hard to keep under your thumb.”
