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“Why did you kiss me?” I asked. “In my office. You said you wouldn’t kiss me and then—”
“I break all my rules around you, Poppy. Every single one.”
“No kissing is a rule?”
He nodded, staring down at his hands.
“What other rules do you break?”
He sighed, rubbed at his face. The silence stretched and stretched, and I was sure he was never going to answer me. And if he couldn’t answer even one of my questions then what was the point of him? Us. I opened my mouth to tell him to go, to let me rest. To leave me alone.
But then he started to talk. “When I was a kid, Da got us a place in social housing. A shit bag flat. Leaky roof. Gangs, fucking everywhere. Every corner,” he said.
And I sat so still. So quiet. Terrified if I moved or said something, he might walk away.
“School was miles away, like. And I was saving up money running errands for some of the old folks around so I could get a skateboard.” He took a deep breath and let it out real slow. “Just so I could get to school. But my Da kept finding the money, and I’d have to start all over. And then this family moves in next door. And there’s a kid my age and I’m like . . . crazy with happiness. I’m like on his step at dawn looking for this kid.”
His smile broke my heart. Broke it right in half.
“And his family wasn’t too happy with him hanging out with the likes of me, but we got on all right. And then it’s the boy’s birthday, and he gets a new skateboard and he gives me his old one. And I reckon I lose my mind I’m so happy and I . . . show it to my Da. Which, I honestly, don’t know what I was thinking. But he grabs the skateboard, and it was just cheap plywood over some shit wheels but he smashes it over my shoulder. Breaks it into two pieces, dislocates my shoulder, and then he grabs me and the two skateboard pieces and we go outside where my friend is playing with his new board in the street, and my Da pushes the kid off the board, picks it up and smashes his skateboard on the ground.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why would he do that?”
“Well. The best I could figure being just a kid and with a dislocated shoulder and all, was that I couldn’t be happy. I couldn’t have the skateboard, and I couldn’t have a friend. The boy never talked to me again.”
“Ronan,” I sighed, aching with sympathy.
“If I gave my Da even the slightest idea that I liked something, he’d ruin it. And I thought for awhile, I could hide it. Hide what I wanted. So he’d never know.” He shook his head. “But I wasn’t very good at hiding anything.”
“How old were you?”
“Seven.”
“You were just a boy.”
“Well, I was boy who learned that the best way to not have the things he wanted broken or stolen or thrown in the trash was to not want anything.”
“And that . . . that was a rule?”
“I’m twenty-seven years old, Poppy. I’ve lived by that rule for almost twenty years. And then you came along with your fucking eyes, that spirit I watched get put away and then start to come back out again, it was like watching—” he shook his head, “—spring. It was like watching those little stupid flowers that put their heads up through the frost.”
“Are you calling me stupid?”
“So fucking stupid.”
“Ronan—”
“But not as fucking stupid as me. Because you’re going to get hurt, I know you are. I know it. And the only thing that can save you is you leaving.”
“Did you set the fire?” I asked. “To scare me off?”
“No. I mean, I thought it, but I didn’t do it.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t—” He stopped shook his head and got to his feet, like he was going to leave.
I grabbed his hand, his fingers curled into a hard fist, like armor against me. “You don’t what?”
“Want you to leave.”
I stood up, his hand still in mine. My thumb traced the scar on his wrist. “I’m not leaving,” I said.
“Cos you’re a fucking fool.”
“Probably. But there’s something here I want too.”
He was shaking his head. He yanked his hands free of mine and grabbed my shoulders, lifting me off my feet so I was nearly eye to eye with him. It hurt, his grip on my body. But when everything hurt, you took the pain that had the greatest chance of turning into pleasure.
“You don’t want me. You want the way I make you feel.”
“I want all of it.”
“I haven’t even fucked you,” he said, like I was pathetic. And I knew what he was doing. Maybe I’d always known. But he was trying to hurt me so I’d stay away.
