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Whatcha talking about, Kaya? It’s like a normal sale. The bitcoins have been transferred. It’s done.
Bile rises in my throat,but I force it down with a thick, firm swallow.
Kaya:
Fuck. Cooling-off period?
Kenno:
Kaya, you’re freakin me out! This is serious shit. You don’t want to mess with these people.
Panic grasps me.
Kaya:
But- But it’s anonymous.
Kenno:
Not for the coders, Kaya! They’ll find us. Stop this shit. Ima call you.
My eyes gapewhen my phone rings, the sound stirring Xander. He moans as I fumble, one handed, with the device, killing the display and tossing it across the room as though it’s sweltering, peeling my flesh, stripping me down to bones.
Stripping me bare.
CHAPTERTWENTY-THREE
kaya
I’ve scarcely slept,but between the half-coherent nightmares that rehearse possible encounters with this ManXY, and the moments of consciousness when Xander groans, I’ve come up with a simple plan.
I’ll meet ManXY—clever, chromosomes,haha—and tell him I’m no longer a virgin. Kenno will give him his bitcoin back.
C’est la vie.
In theory.
I gaze up at sleeping Xander, circling the hard plates of his chest with the tip of my finger. I know, deep inside my soul, that I should tell him.
Tell him, Kaya.
But he’s struggling already.
Preventing the words that sit like lead on my tongue is the image of him losing his hot head over this. Losing his temper. Losing his mind. Losing that look—the one that growls she’s mine, she picked me, her virginitydoesmatter to us both.
My hothead is a romantic. I’m not. Or at least, I wasn’t. It’s easy to get swept up in the passionately intense, in the need and romance of Xander, but I’m not a damsel in distress, and I dug my own goddamn grave with this one—I know it.
I just didn’t think it through. Not really.Dammit.I was pissed at my mum for her idle acceptance of Dad’s cheating when I did the same—accepted it. I wanted to fix it for all of us and prove…something.
Fuck.And I was so fucking bitter about the whole situation. I couldn’t see reality. I can now.
Tracking my finger along his chest, I realise that the shift inside me that day in the shower changed everything. Like, I dropped one fucking wall down for this man, but it was load-bearing, and now my entire guard has crumbled, debris at his feet. My hothead did that.
The light from the new sun slips in as the curtain moves beneath the ceiling fan. Another day. I feel like everything is so different from last week, from yesterday. Not just because I have someone in my arms or that we love each other with the kind of intensity that burns and buries but—because he’s sick, too.
And maybe he’ll live a long life with this disease, but maybe he’ll live a happier one with me by his side to hold his hand, listen to him, and be the cure to the fire inside him. Andmaybethat possibility is powerful enough to drive my actions now. Hold my tongue about this. Fix it myself, and he’ll be no worse off.
“I don’t remember last night, Baby.”
