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“You need to take a breath,” Fenway reasoned, voice calm, frustratingly kind.
I couldn’t take him being nice.
Not after what I’d done.
“Don’t,” I demanded, trying to pull away. “You don’t have to be nice to me,” I told him, yanking out of his hold, throwing myself across the car to the other seat, hand closing around my throat.
“Wasp…”
“I get it, alright? I fucking get it,” I snapped, breathing coming out in strange strobes. “I’m a bitch, okay? I’m an asshole. I hurt people for a living. You hate me. I get it, okay? I get it,” I added, voice cracking as the floodgates finally failed, tears overflowing, spilling down my cheeks in fast, hot waves, blurring my vision.
I’ve had a lot of low moments in my life.
Havig a panic attack and hysterical breakdown at the same time in front of the only man I’d ever cared for? This was the lowest of the lows.
“I don’t hate you,” Fenway’s voice said a moment later, low, almost hard to hear over my frantic breathing, the sniffling as I tried to pull myself back together.
“Bullshit,” I shot back, swiping at the tears that refused to stop cascading down my cheeks.
“I wish I did,” he said as though I hadn’t spoken. “It would be a lot easier if I hated you.”
“Of course you hate me,” I said, placing my elbows on my thighs, pressing my head in my hands. “I hate me.”
That admission, something I had been trying to tamp down for weeks, this realization that was too ugly to admit even to myself, seemed to create a crack right down the center of me, making my voice catch on a God-awful shrieking, dying animal noise.
“Alright,” Fenway said, voice soft, making me realize he had moved across to my side. “Okay,” he hushed, arms reaching for me, holding on even when I tried to jerk away, pulling me until my legs draped over his, until my face was tucked against his chest.
I had no right to take comfort from him right then. A small part of me—the sliver that was still capable of rational thinking—knew that. The other part was too busy crumbling to care that my fingers were curling into his suit jacket, that my tears were soaking through his shirt. “Wasp, it’s alright,” he told me, voice a little louder, trying to break through.
“No, it’s not,” I managed to choke out before the sobs became the loud and utterly humiliating sort. Even knowing that, even feeling that, I couldn’t seem to stop them, they overtook me completely.
Fenway said nothing after that, just held me tighter, like maybe he thought if he squeezed me hard enough, he could keep me from falling apart.
It was too late for that.
I was dust.
Nothing could put me back together again in the exact same form. I had no idea what I was going to look like after all of this, but I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be pretty. Just a vague facsimile of the person I had been before.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered into his neck what felt like forever later, when my insides felt dry as sandpaper, when my face felt raw from the tears.
“I know you are,” he told me, fingers sifting into my hair. I had no right to enjoy that either. But I did. God, I did.
“I’ve never slept with a mark,” I told him, truth spilling out. What was the use trying to protect myself anymore? There wasn’t much left of me to protect. “That’s not how it works. I don’t get involved. I don’t get attached,” I added, struggling to get that last word out.
“Attached,” he repeated.
“Yes, attached. I don’t do that. Ever. Not on a job. Not in my personal life. I don’t do it. It’s not me.”
“But?” he prompted, sensing it hanging there in the air.
Squeezing my eyes tight like the admission would somehow be easier if I did so, I let the truth slip out. “But I felt more like myself with you than I think I ever have.”
“That’s why you had to leave? Because it wasn’t just a job?”
“It was a job.”
“But not just a job. You weren’t just a conwoman. And I wasn’t just a mark.”
“You were supposed to be.”
“But I wasn’t,” he pressed, hands sinking into my shoulders, forcing me backward.
“No,” I admitted, gaze lowered, unable to give him the truth with those eyes boring into me.
“When did it stop being a con?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“Before the cave?” he pressed, refusing to let up. And after what I had done, I had no right to deny him the truth.
“Yes. I think sometime between arriving in Bali and the pool. And then more after the pool and during the day that followed. It was more me than it wasn’t me, if that makes sense,” I said, gaze on his throat.
