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Again he shrugs. Knowing him, he’s starting to regret complaining right about now.
“And it’s worse when that goodness is taken away,” I say.
I want him to know I get it. He deserves something real, something that’s not part of my fake identity.
He takes my hand, warm in his. He turns it over and traces the surface of my palm, as if to learn it.
Recklessly, I continue. “My mom was great when she was off drugs. But when she was on? Not pretty.”
He stills. “She was on drugs?”
“Meth,” I say. “And there were things she did when she was desperate for money, for another buy, the deepest betrayals.”
I’m getting into dangerous territory—I’m not contradicting my fake identity, but I’m definitely off-roading from it. It was safer when we were enemies. Enemies hide things from each other. Now I just want to know everything about him, and I have this crazy idea that I could bare my heart to him, and it would all be okay.
Except it wouldn’t.
Still, I continue. “Much as I had cause not to trust Mom, I’d always think things would be different the next time around. I always hoped.”
He says nothing. Doesn’t even flinch. He wants to hear. He wants to know things about me.
“The last betrayal was the biggest. You wouldn’t even believe.”
“And then your parents died,” he says. “And you were alone with your sister.”
My pulse quickens as he searches my face, as he fits our hands together, like fitting the pieces of my story together. He turns the knot we make over, so that mine rests on his.
“And you had to leave Prescott,” he adds.
I lean into him, wanting to stop talking about my fake life.
“But you made it,” he says.
“More or less.” What the hell am I doing? “Hey,” I lift my head. “April said it was almost your birthday. Happy early birthday.”
“I don’t celebrate my birthday,” he says.
“Why?”
“I just don’t.”
He doesn’t have to say why. I know. Bernadette. God knows how a woman like that did birthdays. “Okay.”
He lifts my hand, still trapped in his, brushes a kiss over each knuckle, then looks into my eyes. “So, FYI, no birthdays. Now that you’re in my life.”
My heart flops upside down in my chest. The air stills. The cacophony of horns outside the window seems to fade. Now that you’re in my life?
I feel stunned. Happy. He considers me to be in his life—not on the other side of enemy lines, but in his life. And he’s in mine. Henry, with his fierce beauty and loyal heart and amazing vision for things, he’s in mine.
I’m ecstatic for a fraction of a second, like I won some kind of lottery.
Until I remember why it could never work with us.
Vonda.
I never want to see hate in his eyes when he learns I’m Vonda. It would pierce me clear through to the bone.
He traces soft circles around my knuckles with a finger. I’m glad he has something to do, because things are turning too dangerous and too beautiful, all at once. And the air between us runs thick and wild. And I want him like mad.
