Page 97 of The Bargain

I’m not pretending. I’ve not been pretending since Christmas. Since the observatory. Since long before that.

“Is that what you’re worried about?” I tell her, soft and low. “That I’m using you?”

She laughs, cold and derisive. “Oh, come on. We were both using each other. How naive do you think I am?”

It’s started raining—maybe it’s been raining for a while. The rain is so cold it’s practically slush, heavy in my hair, making thick curls droop over my forehead. I’m not wearing a coat, and my entire body feels numb with cold, but not from the rain. The cold comes from inside me, right from the middle of my chest, where my heart has furled like a clenching fist, grown once more tight and hard and closed.

“I don’t think you’re naive at all,” I say hoarsely. “If anyone is naive between us, it’s probably me.”

Naive enough to believe that our deal was ever anything more. Naive enough to believe that I could be loved by someone like her. Naive enough to allow myself to picture a future I have no possible way of ensuring.

I’m still holding the Harvard letter Mazzati gave me, what now feels like a lifetime ago. No, not a lifetime. Someone else’s lifetime. My chest is heavy and tight, sealed irreversibly shut. I curl my hand into a fist at my side, the paper crumbling in my fingers.

“Don’t pretend to be something you’re not,” Desdemona whispers, eyes boring into mine.

“You mean like you do?” I answer, just as softly.

“Hah.” She takes a deep breath and releases it in a shuddering laugh. “Fine, yes. Call me fake. I am, you’re right. I fake it all, just as you’ve always accused me of, because I’m just a terrified little coward, like you’ve always implied.” She raises herself up with a smile so cold I physically flinch. “At least I’m not a liar.”

This time, a flash of something else bolts through me, electrifying.

Anger.

“I’ve never lied to you.”

She smiles, pure cold fury.

“You’re lying right now.”

“Don’t accuse me of something I haven’t done,” I snap, stepping closer.

She mimics me, and we’re now so close that I can see the breath misting from her lips, the icy raindrops suspended on her eyelashes. Her gaze is fierce and accusatory and brimming with pure, unadulterated, naked pain.

“You know that lying by omission is still lying, right?”

I frown. “What?”

She sneers. “You want to tell me what you and my little sister have so much to talk about?”

The earth opens up beneath my feet. I’m falling—and I have so far to fucking fall, and I’ve been so scared of it for so long. Falling, falling without anything to hold on to, from an impossible height, with nothing to catch me.

I gaze at her, helpless, utterly defeated, sick to my stomach.

“No?” she says, low and deadly. “No. I didn’t think so.”

She pushes her wet hair back from her face. She looks like an avenging goddess, an angelic being burning with righteous fury, with unimaginable sorrow.

“Our bargain is over. I’ll deal with this on my own. All I need is the phone back.”

I shake my head slowly. The fall is a black rush around me, dulling all my senses.

Since I’m already falling, since I’ve been judged and condemned, I commit the crime I’m being accused of.

I lie to her.

“I got rid of it.”

“Don’t lie to me.”