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Circles, vicious, awful circles.
We were all seemingly doomed to them.
Even people like me and Renny who made our lives figuring out why people were the way they were, who understood human frailty, who knew how to take those predispositions and use them against people or use them to try to help people understand them too.
We were still caught in our own circles.
"See, now you know something about me," I said, turning away to the soup again, knowing I didn't want to mess with it, but stirring it to distract myself.
"So what did you find out about him then?" he asked, all easy charm again, leaning against the counter beside the other side of the stove.
I took a breath and turned my head to him. "You're allowed to have your dark moods, Renny. And I'm allowed to be resentful about what you said when you were in one."
"Sweetheart..." he said, eyes going just a little sad and I found I didn't like that look there, but that didn't change anything either.
"No," I said, shaking my head. "I understand that you maybe can't help it, Renny, but it doesn't make that behavior okay. I know you can turn it off like a light switch, but I don't work that way."
"So what you're saying is..." he prompted, tone cautious. Worried, he was worried.
Maybe that was a good thing.
"I am saying you need to walk away and leave me alone and I will talk to you again when I want to talk to you again."
"Mina, I don't want..."
"Too bad," I cut him off. "You don't get to have what you want when you want it all the time. And right now you don't get my forgiveness. You'll get it eventually. When I am ready to give it. Until then, a wide berth would be appreciated."
I said it.
I even sounded like I meant it.
But the last thing I truly wanted was a wide berth.
In fact, a strange, prominent part of me actually wanted to walk over to him, curl into his chest, and feel his arms wrap around me.
But that wouldn't work.
Because if things progressed with me and him, as they seemed like they would be doing, despite my better judgement, then there needed to be ground rules and there needed to be an understanding about what was and was not acceptable. Then there needed to be consequences to actions outside of those boundaries.
If I gave in, if I forgave him like it was no big deal over something small like the confrontation we just had, then it would give him permission to keep doing it, to let it escalate.
And that wasn't okay.
So as much as I felt like I was choking on my own tongue when I said it, I got the words out.
Renny watched me for a long minute, looking for a fracture he could dig into and use to collapse my anger.
But he found none.
So he nodded, eyes even sadder. And his tone when he spoke was almost defeated. "Whatever you need, sweetheart."
With that, he was gone.
And I tried to convince myself that that was what I wanted.NINEMinaI went to bed early.
But only in the literal sense.
I brought myself into the room and climbed into the bed early.
I didn't sleep.
Of course I didn't. Because after Renny left and Lazarus came back into the kitchen and declared that I hadn't fucked up the Kitchen Sink Soup, we called everyone to dinner and everyone took their bowls to various spots to eat.
Renny respected my wishes. He took his bowl and sat with Reeve and Lazarus on the couch, watching some kind of survival show on TV and all having strong opinions on the survival methods used by the contestants.
I sat with Cyrus who was, as one would expect, and easy conversationalist. He went on and on about the new coffeeshop, She's Bean Around, and the 'crazy ass chicks' who owned it. He told me some stories about growing up around The Henchmen compound, though unlike Reign, Cash, and Wolf's mothers, Cyrus and Reeve's mother tried to keep them as far away from the place as possible. From what I heard about the way Reign's father ran things in his day, I didn't blame her. And once her husband was gone, she took them as far as fast as she could.
"Why didn't you guys come back to prospect sooner?" I asked, taking my last spoonful of soup and deciding it was my favorite recipe. And I was even pretty sure I could make it again.
"Eh, you know how it is. Reeve had moved out when he was eighteen, got an apartment, started training and working. As soon as I aged up, I just showed up at his door. We were young and liked the independence and lack of rules. Our ma was a real hardass. We had ten o'clock curfews even on Friday nights in senior year. We were just having fun. We would see the guys around from time to time and talk about 'maybe one day' but it never felt right."
