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“So that’s why you’ve been silent,” I say.

“I wanted you to have fun. I never thought you’d let his dick hypnotize you.”

“Phone, that’s not what has happened. If you’ve been peeping at us like a perv you know that it isn’t. You must be able to see that this is all just coming from me and I don’t know how, I don’t know why—” I try to say.

But she cuts me off before I can flounder any further.

“I know why. Because you’re not in your right mind.”

“If this is about what he did inside me, it doesn’t work that way. It makes you super horny, it doesn’t force you to have feelings for someone. It can’t even make you want to have sex with them, it just charges your libido.”

“Maybe for you it’s all the same thing.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’re not used to sexy feelings. So you’re confusing them for love.”

I turn her over then so she can’t see my face. Just so I can consider fully and freely if what she’s saying is correct. But then I remember the kissing, the cuddling, the things I didn’t think I should do yet did anyway. How hard it was to let myself give in to them, and how right it felt when I did.

And I can’t agree.

“Honestly, I think it’s the other way around. I fell for him first, and it made me want to fuck his brains out. It’s the reason I think that the library thing even happened—I wasn’t afraid of him. I wasn’t disgusted by him. I liked him, and so when he did the things he did I was able to feel the exact way I wanted to.”

“The exact way you always have.”

I shake my head at nothing and no one. “I didn’t love evil Halsten.”

“Then why does some version of him just so happen to be the first man you ever have? Because that’s the case, isn’t it. You’ve never loved anyone else, just him now, the moment he’s kind. The moment he love-bombs you.”

“It wasn’t all the love talk that did it.”

“Then what?”

The question hangs in the air, heavy and unsettling. But not because I don’t know the answer. It’s because the answer comes to me as wild and strange as anything I’ve ever known. I know this man, I think. Not the Halsten I’ve fought all these years but the one underneath. And it feels so true when I do it steals my breath. Somehow, he’s as familiar to me as breathing.

But I try to sound more sensible in my reply.

“I just like everything about the way he is,” I say.

And that’s true, too.

“He’s weird, Marley. He says by Odin’s beard.”

“Yes, I know.”

“He sometimes sings advertising jingles.”

“I’ve heard him. Yesterday he did it in the bath.”

“And he’s so earnest, all the time so earnest and passionate.”

I close my eyes at that.

But only because even her saying that idea with a sneer fills my heart.

“That’s all I’ve wanted all my life,” I say, without even thinking about it.

“Even though it’s probably just a lie.”