Her other eyebrow joins the first. “You don’tthinkso?”
“I didn’t have much opportunity for relationships at the time when my hormonal teenage peers were running around.” I shrug. “And then I joined the IAF, and there was no point in even trying.”
Marlowe stares at me like I’ve given her the answer to a long-pondered equation. “Huh.”
Something tells me I don’t want to know what she’s thinking. Except, of course, I do.
“I fell in love with Dominik when I was young. He wasn’t always the way he is now. Determined, yes. Obstinate, yes. But there was a time I thought I’d never get him out of my system. I didn’t even want to.”
I watch as Marlowe sets her tea down and dredges up her past. “He had this way of talking. People called him silver-tongued in this jokey manner, but he really was. He knew how to work a room. Now, of course, I see him for what he is, but at the time, I thought he was incredible.”
Her words build the perfect picture of a young, idealistic woman still married to the belief that people are inherently good, determined to find romance in everything. In a twisted way, I envy her that experience. To be...soft.
“I grew up fast, of course, when I found out I was pregnant. Dominik wanted me to have an abortion, but I knew from the beginning I wanted to be a mother, even if it was way earlier than I ever imagined.”
Her hand rests protectively on her stomach, even now.
“Was that when your view of him changed?” I ask.
“Fuck, no.” Marlowe snorts. “I knew his flaws, and I’d accepted them in the face of his better traits. Compromise, right? Except, the more I thought about being responsible for a child, the more I realised I could never again be so frivolous. It was entirely his right not to want to be a father. It was everything else that shook me up.”
She turns her head and spears me with those eyes, amused in the half-light, even as she grimaces. “Simply put, Dominik was morphing into the kind of man I wouldn’t want parenting my child. And that was that.”
“You know, every time someone tells me a story about being in love, it almost always does nothing to endear itself.”
Marlowe bursts into laughter and rolls onto her stomach, shooting me a narrowed look. “You’re too aloof to fall in love? Much too smart to be in these trenches.”
She’s joking, but it feels like scrutiny anyway.
“I don’t disparage the notion. Really,” I add when she cocks an eyebrow. “I just don’t think I ever wanted to see myself in a situation like that.”
“Like what? Like mine?”
“No, no. In general.”
Marlowe reaches out and traces a finger over my ankle, exposed by my rucked-up trouser hem. Carefully, she avoids my eye as she continues. “No one ever modelled healthy love to you.”
A statement, not a question. She’s good at that, I’ve noticed, though I haven’t decided how I feel about her observations of me. They make me feel cold, but in a brisk way, rather than painfully. It’s the sensation of being thoroughly seen when I thought I was invisible, safe behind my mask.
“No, no one ever did,” I say.
Even myNayya, as much as I love and respect her, couldn’t protect me from the harms of our home—being depended on at that age was hard for me, and shaped my entire future. I expect Marlowe to prod at the admission, as so many people would. I don’t even know if I’ll answer her, if I can, but I steel myself anyway. Maybe I could pare it down to bare bones so it’s more palatable: gambler father, abused mother, poor upbringing, parentified teenager.
Instead, Marlowe drags a fingertip across my skin, sending sparks all up my leg with the friction of her nail. I almost miss her next sentence. Is the distraction for me or her? How deep is she in my head?
“I owe you an apology,” she says softly.
I manage a grunt of some sort, but I’m equal parts frazzled and astonished. Words won’t come to me.
“I was angry at you for something that wasn’t your fault at all.” Her mouth twists into a scowl. “And I’m not telling you this because I want to know the answer to my earlier question. I’m telling you because you deserve to know. You saved me from a world of pain and didn’t even scold me for recklessness.”
This is important, and I have so much respect for her for owning up to it. But the heat of her hand against my skin is short-circuiting my synapses, and I can’t focus if she doesn’t stop. I pull my legs away from her hand and into the lotus position, then lean into her personal space again. I just don’t want her to think I’m uncomfortable with her touching me. People don’t do it very often, but I crave it, just like anyone else. Platonic, romantic—it’s all good for the soul.
Marlowe bites her lip and lets out a breath. “I think it’s obvious I’m attracted to you.”
I’m frozen in place, not sure where this is going, but trying very hard to lock down my expression. And though all I want to do is reach out and touch her, finally kiss her after all this time, I don’t. That wasn’t consent, and despite the last time we were this close, I need to hear her say it. I don’t know if I’ll survive it, but I need to hear it.
“I’m an adult, I can admit it. But I don’t share my diagnosis with anyone because I just don’t care to. Having you find me on the floor like that... was humiliating. No, let me finish.” Marlowe holds up her hands at the protest that slips from my throat. “The logical part of my brain tells me it wasn’t, of course not. I have a condition, and it came to bite me in the arse. All you did washelpme. Gaia knows how long I would have lain there before I could summon the strength to get up. Right? I know that.
