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“Weak?” I bared my teeth. “You’re calling me weak now?”
“Afraid too.” She crossed her arms. “Afraid of admitting that you’re both in deeper shit than you realise. That you’re both too damn stubborn to actually tell the truth. To let the truth have a chance.”
“I’m not the stubborn one. He is.”
“Then stop him being so stubborn.”
“How?”
“By doing exactly what you’ve been doing.”
“It’s not enough!” My temper shot free. “I’ve tried. I’ve lectured myself that what exists between us isn’t normal. That it’s worth fighting for. But how can I trust something so new and strange when the circumstances between us are so fucked up? How can I trust myself?”
Jealousy stood, wiping the sand from her apricot sundress. Plucking the diamond from the beach, she dropped it into my palm. “The bigger question is…how can he trust you?”
“What do you know that you’re not telling me, Jess?” I chose to use her real name, to imprint the seriousness of my question.
She responded in kind, her pretty face stern with honesty. “Sullivan Sinclair is a man with severe trust issues, very little faith in humanity, and from what I can piece together, he’s done monstrous things to those he’s loved in the past. He will lie to your face if you ever ask him if he loves you. He will lie to himself until he almost believes he feels nothing. He will never admit that you’ve wormed your way past his defences because that would force him to confront his very existence as a man. His whole operation. His view on the world, his empathy toward his creatures, his utter disdain for his own kind. By admitting he’s fallen for you, he’s effectively signing his own death sentence because there is no easy path from there. No easy way of admitting that his prior convictions might be wrong. That he might one day severely hurt or kill you because his trust is non-existent.”
Coming close, she ducked in front of me and balanced with her hands on my thighs. Just like when she’d come to claim me for Euphoria the first time. Just like when she’d asked if I was more afraid of evolving than the actual pleasure Euphoria would give me. “Look, I told you before…Sully is reaching burnout. He knows it himself. He knows something has to give. He knows something bad will have to happen before he can finally admit to himself that he isn’t the cold-hearted bastard he believes. And he hates you because you’re forcing him to admit it far sooner than he wants.”
Her fingers clutched my thighs. “He was the one who gave you that diamond. He was the one who fucked you in Euphoria. He was the one who told you he was in love with you because he could use the disguise to hide the truth from you as well as him. I guarantee if you get him to where he thinks he can hide behind a mask, he will be far more lenient with the truth. He’ll admit what’s in his heart because he knows he can take it all away again, and it won’t mean a thing because it wasn’t him admitting them.”
I sucked in a breath, shaking and shocked. “Why are you telling me this? How do you know all this?”
She cupped my cheeks, pressing sand granules into my skin. “I know because I watch and listen. I know because the night Sully hooked you up to Euphoria, he tripped out of that bathroom and looked as if he’d seen everything he ever wanted and knew he could never have it. He made you believe he sent you to fuck Markus Grammer, but the moment he pressed that button—” She stopped herself, sighing heavily.
“The moment he pressed the button…what? What happened?”
She smiled sadly. “Cal went to get Markus. The men are brought in once the goddess is already loaded into the program. I’d stayed lurking close by…I was the only one who saw what Sully felt after whatever happened with you guys in the bathroom. He noticed me. And it only took a second for him to snap his fingers and take me into the second VR room. I didn’t need to ask. I helped him put the sensors on me, I willingly drank the elixir, all while he copied Markus Grammer’s fantasy and…put me in your place.”
“What?” My heart dropped to my toes.
“He made me look like you. He intercepted Cal and loaded Markus into the hallucination. And then he went back…to you.” She grinned coyly. “I know that diamond is from Sully because…Markus gave me one too. He gave me a diamond that was meant for you and Sully gave it to me the night before he found you at breakfast. The only difference was the diamond from Markus was two carats. The one from Sully is at least four.”
