I’m jealous of how good Farrow is at navigating rough terrain in relationships. I feel about as graceful as an ox on a ship.
Those five start to jog away. Footsteps trailing in the distance.
Luna Hale nicknamed that group “House Fit” since they’ve been running through hallways and up and down stairs. Sulli invited me, but I have little patience for group workouts unless a punching bag or gloves are involved.
Normally Akara would join the runners, and I’m not sure why he declined. Beckett is also noticeably missing from House Fit. His absence isn’t a mystery.
Sulli invited everyone but him.
I hear piano music, and I focus back on Charlie. I want to be there for Jane’s brothers, so I leap over a professional line and ask, “How’s Beckett?”
Charlie blinks for a long second and then motions to the spread cards. “Pick one.”
Jane glares on my behalf. “He asked you a question.”
“And I chose not to answer it.” Charlie breathes into a tired sigh. “As is my right to choose.”
“Well, I’d also like to know how Beckett is doing,” Jane snaps. “He won’t talk to anyone but you.”
Charlie plays an angrier melody with one hand. “Let’s be thankful he’s talking to me then. Because if he were smarter, he wouldn’t be. I’m just as complicit in bringing him here.” He looks to me. “Put me out of my fucking misery and pick.”
I tried.
I peel a card off the piano and hand it to Jane.
She reads, “‘Tell us if you believe in love at first sight. Explain.’” Her eyes are like saucers, and my pulse pounds in my ears.
“We don’t have to agree here,” I remind Jane before either of us answer. “It doesn’t mean we’re incompatible.”
“Right.” She nods, more confidently. “It just means we view love differently, and two adults can have different opinions on love and still have feelings for each other.”
“Right,” I confirm, feeling Tony watching us from the door.
Charlie hits louder keys on the piano.
“Right.” She wafts her sweater. “My answer is no. I don’t believe in love at first sight, not as much as I believe in fascination at first sight. Which I felt with you—which, you must know.” She blushes. “Right?”
I shake my head. “I didn’t know.”
Don’t stare below her neck. Don’t look at her like that. I narrow my eyes on the window, and I revisit our first encounter at the Hale house. How she was frazzled but poised, how she tried to capture and harness her black cat. Did I think that someone like me—poor Italian-American trash, too serious, too stern, fresh out of war—would interest an American princess?
No.
Before I start reevaluating our first encounter, I remind myself that she was seventeen. For fuck’s sake.
“You helped me with my cat,” she says like a fact, cheeks beet-red as I look back down at her.
“I did,” I say. “She’s a cute cat.”
Jane can’t holster a smile.
I ask straight out, “I fascinated you from the beginning?”
She nods. “You very much did.”
This is when I’d pick her up and carry her towards heaven, but we’re still living inside my hell. Where I can’t touch the woman I love.
Charlie drills his eyes into me. “It’s your turn.”
I tell her the answer. “I don’t believe in love at first sight either.” But I also can’t imagine a time where I wouldn’t love Jane.
Her brows crinkle. “Why not?”
“I can’t love someone until I know them. Attraction—that’s not love.”
She smiles. “I concur.”
I stop short from adding more. I might if her brother weren’t here. I’d say how attraction is just my cock wanting pussy. It’s my hands wanting her body. It’s my ears wanting her voice and to be drowned out by her. It’s lust.
Love is more.
It’s the days I wake up, feeling a need, an urgency to protect her. Not just her body but her spirit—her entire soul. It’s the days I imagine losing her, and I’m met with a bottomless empty, nothing there but hollow numbness.
Worse than death.
It’s the days I yearn for her laugh, for her companionship, and thoughts. It’s every day she makes me feel worthy of her and this life. All of it and more.
Charlie rubs at the edges of his eyes, almost irritably. “Pick another.”
“We can break,” Jane suggests for him.
“No.” He points at the deck.
She draws a card and passes it to me. I glance at the words.
Fuck.
No.
My jaw hardens.
“It’s that bad?” Jane wonders.
I rake a hand over my mouth before reading, “‘Tell us if you’ve seen a Rose Calloway and Connor Cobalt sex tape.’” I solidify.
Worry cinches my girlfriend’s eyes.
Shit.
Is this a deal-breaker question? Will my answer put a chink in our relationship? And I wonder if that’s the purpose of these cards: to make sure I’m the perfect man for Jane.
I go cold. Colder than the already frigid-ass room.
Jane shifts her weight uneasily.
She can’t read me. I’m suddenly a fortress unwilling to be unlocked, and I’m aware that’s the opposite intent of Truth or Dare.
Jane addresses her brother, “I haven’t seen any of the tapes. Nor do I ever want to.”
Charlie cocks his head. “You never stumbled on one?”
She gapes. “Have you?”
“A thumbnail,” Charlie admits. “I didn’t click into it. I’m not that much of a fucking masochist.”
I’m not either, but things were different when I was a teenager.
I didn’t know the Hales, Meadows, and Cobalts.
I didn’t know her.
Charlie sizes me up. “And?”
Jane frowns. “Thatcher?”
“I didn’t go looking for it,” I explain, my voice void of emotion. “Guys in my unit were playing a clip. I saw maybe three minutes.” I can barely even remember the images in my head. It was just another porno that my platoon laughed at or jerked off to. It didn’t mean anything then.
Her jaw is unhinged. Completely fucking shocked. “You didn’t…”
“I did,” I say again.
“Oh my God.” She cringes, fingers steepled to her lips. “You’ve seen my parents having sex.”
I grimace. “Yeah.”
I think she already believed I’d never watch one of their porn tapes. Because the man I am now would never. But I was eighteen. I was just a kid, and I didn’t know then what I know now.
“You didn’t look away?” she asks, confusion and hurt cinching her eyes.
I’m hurting her, and it’s like stepping across broken glass, rolling around in it, willfully slicing and tearing apart my flesh.
“I didn’t look away,” I confirm. “I was eighteen. Back then, it was just porn to me.”
Deep wrinkles crease her forehead in a frown, and she shakes her head. “But you knew how their sex tapes came about. They didn’t consent to have them taken. They were illegally filmed and leaked online.”