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Will looked down and shook his head.
“That’s not…. Leo, I don’t want to stop.”
“But how? How can you want them if you care about me at all? I would never do that to you. Maybe you’re just scared to admit that we could actually work!”
Will frowned and took a deep breath. “I’m trying not to lose my temper because I know you’re upset. I never promised you anything. In fact, I stood right here and told you that if we went down this road, it was with the knowledge that if things didn’t go the way you wanted then you were choosing it with your eyes open. And you agreed. You agreed that it was okay and that we’d still be friends. You’ve always known who I was. The fact that you didn’t want to admit it to yourself doesn’t make me the bad guy. It doesn’t mean that I’ve betrayed you or broken a promise. Just because you wanted something to be true doesn’t make it true. You don’t get to decide how things go and make them be that way.”
“No, you always decide! Everything’s always on your terms. You decide exactly how close I can get. What I can ask you about and how much I can know you. When I can stay and when I have to go. I’m always waiting for you, hoping that you’ll—”
“I get to decide those things! Everyone gets to set their own terms. That’s how being a goddamned adult works. It’s my fucking apartment, so of course I get to decide when you can stay and when you have to go. And, Jesus, you already know me better than any—”
He broke off, glaring at me.
“And then you just let yourself in here like it’s a damned clubhouse or something, and you see something you don’t want to see and you call me a fucking whore, like it’s not my right to act exactly as I want to in my own house!”
He spun away, grabbing paper towel and squatting down to clean up the tiramisu splattered in the bedroom doorway.
My heart pounded in my throat and my ears rang. I wanted to punch him, kick him, rip at his hair—somehow mar the beauty that mocked me. Make him hurt the way I was hurting right now.
“I think you’re doing it on purpose!” I choked out.
“Yeah, Leo, sure,” he said tiredly. “I orchestrated bringing some guy back here at exactly the moment you were going to burst in completely unexpected just to prove a point to you that I’ve been making from the beginning.”
“No.” I shook my head, eyes squeezed shut. “I think you hurt so much sometimes—hate the world so much—that you think I’ll never understand, so you’re trying to hurt me so much that I turn into someone who can understand.”
Will rocked on his heels, dropping to the floor as if the force of my words had propelled him backward.
“Jesus Christ, no,” he said, horrorstruck.
I bit my lip, tears streaming down my face.
“I’m done,” I said. “I can’t do this anymore. It hurts too much.” My voice was ragged, choked. I felt blasted out. Hollow.
Will was still on the floor looking up at me, blond hair mussed, bite marks starting to come out as bruises on his neck, one hand raised as if he could touch me though I was steps away.
“But you knew,” he insisted again, clinging to the sentiment the way he clutched the dirty paper towel in his hand. “You knew from the start.”
His eyes were bright and his voice quavered slightly.
I bit my lip and nodded, suddenly so exhausted that for once I had nothing to say to him.
“Yeah, okay. I guess I did.”
The last thing I saw as the door swung shut was a footprint in tiramisu marring the rug the way the man’s bites marred Will’s skin.
Chapter 11
February/March
THE NEXT month passed in a haze of sleep, forcing myself to eat, going through the motions of attending class, mindlessly making coffee, and, yeah, fine, a lot of crying.
The night I’d walked in on Will with that man, I’d called Daniel sobbing while walking aimlessly. Daniel had gotten freaked out that he couldn’t understand me and then, when I’d calmed down enough to explain what had happened, been so furious at Will that he’d threatened to come down and beat the shit out of him, and Rex had taken the phone away.
When I’d hung up with them, Rex having extracted a promise from Daniel that he would not take the early BoltBus to New York and defend my honor, I collapsed in bed, pulled up the covers, and slept for twenty hours. When I woke up, I had the bizarre synchronicity of having inadvertently set myself on Charles’ schedule. We went to the dining hall together, and he monologued about how the schedules of modernity enslave us, bending our minds and habits to the patterns enforced by business hours, greeting card designations, and department store sales.
