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“It’s how my life’s going to work,” he states.
I know his parents’ rocky marriage clearly impacted his view of love, so I can understand his severity about it. I know deep down it’s really fear, and I get that, too.
“I think you have to trust someone a lot to marry them, and even if you do, you can be completely wrong about them. Someone you believe will be reliable can change their mind, or you can find out things about them they hid from you while you were getting to know each other. People guard their secrets, and even if they share some of them… can you ever really know someone else?”
“I think you can,” he says, his gaze fixed on my shoulder, but then his gaze shifts to mine. “This is more stuff I shouldn’t tell you, but the Blue Bloods have a set procedure for bringing in a new member and building trust quickly. It’s like you said, people guard themselves and their secrets, and that’s the biggest barrier to finding out who someone really is. So we exchange secrets right up front. Blue Bloods can’t hide from each other, so we make it so we don’t have to. It would never work if we weren’t genuinely bonded to and invested in one another. We make the stakes high so people take it seriously. It’s not a club you join or leave as you please. If you take the oath, you’re a Blue Blood for life. Only way out is death, same as a marriage—well, in theory, but Blue Bloods take their commitments to each other more seriously than a marriage. There aren’t real stakes in getting married for most people. It’s not a true commitment it’s just what they feel like doing at the time and then they quit if they change their mind later. But there’s no option to quit being a Blue Blood, so you have to mean it when you opt in. And people know that, so they do. They know there’s no out, so they put more effort into making it work. I think my membership with them is part of why I don’t feel that way about marriage. I know how a commitment can look with like-minded people. I’ve seen it work if you focus on the nuts and bolts without emotion clouding anyone’s judgment. My brothers and I, we don’t love each other, but we are committed to each other. We’d kill for each other. We can always count on one another to show up, and that’s because we made a logical choice to, not because we give each other butterflies,” he says mockingly.
His deconstruction of marriage is fascinating to me. He ignores the romanticism that makes it appealing to most people and finds the commitment aspect appealing without the romance of it.
My baby has some deep abandonment issues.
I can relate, I think I’ve just been more honest with myself about mine, so they don’t have as much power over me.
I want to dig a little deeper with him, but we don’t have time right now.
Especially because we really do have to get to class. At this point, I won’t have time to do my hair or makeup, and I can kiss my hope of getting to school early so I could cram a bit before class goodbye.
“Well, you give me butterflies,” I tease right back, “but you can still count on me to show up for you. You seem to believe love weakens commitment, but those two things aren’t mutually exclusive. They can go hand-in-hand.”
“I don’t believe love weakens commitment, I just think people who don’t use their brains to make decisions… their commitments hold very little weight.”
I lean in to give him a kiss. “I want to return to this conversation later when we have more time.”
His hold on my waist tightens, apparently anticipating my attempt to escape. “We’re skipping class, remember? We have all the time in the world.”
“We absolutely are not,” I say, shooting him a playful warning look. “Now, let me out of this bed so I can get dressed.”
He tightens his grip even more and tilts his head to kiss the side of my mouth. “Make me.”
Pouting, I ask, “Why do you have to make this so hard? I want to stay here, too, but I’m going to fail my class and fail out of school and then I’ll end up panhandling. Are you trying to ruin my life?”
He smirks. “Maybe.”
I sigh dramatically, but he finally releases me.
“Fine. Get dressed if you must.”
Before he changes his mind and grabs me again, I roll out of bed. I expect him to follow me since he needs to get dressed and head to class, too, but he just lies there, one hand resting on his chiseled abdomen as he looks up at the ceiling.
A frown flickers across my face. I thought he was playing before, just tempting me to play instead of work because it would be more fun, but looking at him, I’m starting to wonder if there’s more to it than that.
Maybe it’s just the stuff we were talking about weighing on his mind, but he truly doesn’t look like he wants to get out of bed.
It makes me want to climb back into bed with him and blow off all our responsibilities, but I can’t, so… reluctantly, I leave him in the bedroom and slip into the bathroom to get myself ready.
Chapter Twenty-two
Brynn
Inevitably, I’m on the brink of running late by the time we get to school.
I hate being late.
I feel out of sorts and stressed as I fall into my seat at exactly 10:30. The professor glances my way since I’m never running late like this, and I shoot her an apologetic grimace as I settle into my seat.
It’s a test day, so the good news is my entire day isn’t irreparably thrown off. This is the only class I had to panic about getting to. Now I’m here, I can take my test and probably leave early, and I like to hit the athletic center and get in a little gym time on Wednesdays. Between that and lunch, it’s the perfect way to fill the gap until my humanities seminar at two.
I also know if I don’t work out on Wednesdays, I probably won’t do it at all. I usually do a short pilates routine on my mat at home on Mondays, but this week with Killian, my routine has been thrown off a little.
