But he’s taking a step closer, his words sticking me to the ground. His face is open and earnest and Faust andkind. “I’m not going to tell anyone. If you’re—if you’re really here just to fuck with him.”
“What else would I be doing?”
It’s only a crumb of the whole truth. Confession shavings. It’s enough to make him start talking faster, though, andthat’sdisorienting. Nervous Faust. “I thought you were working with him, to fuck me over, or—I don’t know. I saw you at his wedding, then you’re here, and he’s gone. I thought you were trying to ruin this year for me.”
“I’m not. I…” His promise from a moment ago processes for me. “You don’t want to tell anyone?”
The air between us is charged, audible static running from him to me, and it’s like I can hear Faust’s brain whirling with this confirmation. He watches me. Carefully.
Something clicks behind his eyes.
“I want to help you.”
I don’t move. Staring, frozen. And then, like a train crashing into a brick wall, I understand what he just said.
“You’re—” I stop. Blink. “You’re joking. You’d help me break Bernard’s heart?”
“I would,” he says, and I can tell he’s serious. He usually is, so it isn’t a stretch, but there’s an honesty to his face. They don’t often make faces like Faust’s. He’s the kind of person you look at when life explodes around you: he’s steady, stable, and clear about his feelings even when he’s trying not to let you see his opinions. As much as I hate when he turns his staring on me, I do like that clarity about him. Negative emotions pass through his guardrails like water through fabric. You look at him, and you know if you’re in danger or not.
And I don’t think I’m in danger.
Nevertheless, I feel like I’m falling down a long and mostly abandoned well. “No. You don’t even know who hired me. Or my plan. That’s… no. I don’t need your help.”
Faust’s mouth curves down. “Do you want it?”
“I just said—”
“Do youwantit?”
How he sayswantreminds me of the things I’m trying not to think about. I lick my lips, searching for the next exit sign to slip out. But there isn’t one. This time, I don’t know where else to run.
And he seizes on my silence. “Do you think you’re alone in this?” Faust’s eyes flash to my mouth, then lower. He’s looking at my necklace again, just like the second time we’d met. “Do you think it’s been easy, seeing only pieces of you? Knowing that you’re this brilliant, fucking unreal woman, and you’re hiding her from me? I can’t get you out ofmyhead and I didn’t even know if you were real.”
My skin prickles like he’s reached over, found a loose thread hanging from me, and torn me down the seam. Brilliant. Me. Therealme. This has to be another game to him, and I shouldn’t let this force between us push me into saying—“You don’t mean that.”
Faust drags in an impossibly long breath. “You don’t know how much I do.”
That’s the problem. I don’t understand him at all, and I understand everyone. My fingers shake, knees trembling. There has to be somewhere else I can go. I can’t let him stop me, here. And I try to explain that, but I don’t know how to talk as openly and honestly as he does.You’re moving very quickly, and I need space to think about thisisn’t a sentence in my vocabulary. Neither isI have to go back inside to the man who thinks I’m falling in love with him.
So I don’t say any of that, and I just go.
Faust
Wednesday, March 26
I think I am obsessed with her.
Chapter 16COMBINATIONS
I float through the nextfew days.
Meetings. A team dinner. Seeing Faust again, always with people around. Never alone.
All I can think is—he knows. He knows, and he didn’t lecture me, or demand that I pick a more moral lifestyle choice. He knows, and he likes it. Me. My job, my secret. He wants to help me. He wants to do… a lot of things with me, judging by what he’d said.
Why?
“You’re red,” Mei says when I meet Christine and her in the lobby of our Japanese hotel.
