“Yes?”
“There is one thing we can do.”
Her eyes suddenly turn cold, all the warmth of violet petals replaced by cold shards of amethyst.
“I said, I don’t want to talk about that.”
“But Hyacinth,” I say desperately. “Something happened tonight, something huge. It meant something to me, and I know you felt it, too. It was powerful—”
“That doesn’t mean shit!” she snaps, slapping her hands down on the table. “Do you think that just because I had an orgasm, you now have full rights to my body?”
“No, I’m not suggesting that—”
“Do you think that because we bonded over dinner, I owe you affection?”
“No!” I almost yell. “You’re being unreasonable.”
“Am I?” Hyacinth shrieks, standing up and glaring at me. “How dare you.”
“Do you think I even want to have sex with you?” I yell back. “Especially when everything is this fucking complicated? All I know is that I keep hearing it’s the only way, and since we had such a good time earlier, I—”
“Typical,” she says scathingly. “It’s all about your pleasure, isn’t it?”
“Excuse me?” I snap back. “Who had multiple orgasms while I had none?”
Hyacinth glares at me, but something deep in her eyes wavers, as if a thin crack has split the frozen surface, about to reveal the turmoil underneath.
“Fuck you!” she yells. “You don’t get it, and you never will. You don’t know what’s happened to me—” Her voice lowers as if her throat is closing, and she gasps, almost sobbing.
My anger immediately cools, and I feel a tugging in my chest as if my heart is responding to her pain. “Hyacinth—”
“No,” she chokes out. “No.”
She runs from the room, and in her wake, the silence of the kitchen feels almost violent. For the first time, I think about Hyacinth’s past, wondering what happened to her before she came here.
I hear her anguished voice echo in my head.You don’t know what happened to me.
I suddenly feel intense guilt that not only did I never ask her about her past, I also didn’t care until this moment.
It’s a two-way street, though. I don’t know what happened to her, but she doesn’t know anything about my past, either.
Chapter 16 - Hyacinth
I bolt down the hall and tear into my room, slamming the door shut behind me. Crawling onto the little camp bed, I wrap the blankets around me as if I could protect myself from all the evils in the world if I just bind them tight enough.
It wouldn’t be so bad—if I didn’t feel such a spark between us.
Tears well in my eyes, and I shake my head, denying my past and every foreseeable future with Shane.
I was safe. I was so safe. Why did this have to happen?
I’ve been fighting the memories from my last relationship, even as they started to leak through into my current reality. But now, the gates open, and every past moment crashes through my brain.
The night I met Dan, I thought he was the most handsome man I’d ever seen. His cool blue eyes shone like chips of arctic ice, especially when he looked at me. I learned soon enough that the glow about him when he was with me had nothing to do with love—only power.
I couldn’t believe he was interested in me. It seemed impossible that a man like that would even look in my direction.
I worked nights in a little café where I also did most of the baking. Dan started coming in late, and I gossiped with the other waitresses about how hot he was. When he started requesting me to serve him, I was almost overwhelmed with excitement.
