Page 24 of Sherwood
Marian closed her eyes a moment. “It sounds so simple, doesn’t it? Atoning. Doing right.”
I thought of Lox. I thought of myself. “No,” I said. “It doesn’t.”
She opened her eyes to meet mine. “It doesn’t?”
“Building something that’s right—or eliminating something that’s wrong—can never be simple. There are compromises, nuances. Realities that can’t be shifted no matter what your ideals are.”
She breathed out. “So you understand.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Lox wouldn’t,” she said quietly. “Lox despised the kinds of compromises and nuances we’re talking about now. Which I suppose you already know.”
Yes, I did. “So this week. Your company is trying to bring new ideas into a world that doesn’t understand them and sometimes doesn’t want them at all, and day after day, you feel like you’re losing something invaluable, a purity of vision, a virginity of cause.”
“Yes,” she said, looking down at the sand. “We need money to do good in this world. But sometimes I worry I’m doing less than the good I could be doing in order to make that money. And around the cycle goes, until I feel lost inside myself, until I feel like I don’t even know who I really am or what I really believe.”
I held her hands down a little tighter. Tight enough that she shivered, and then she let out a long, shaky breath.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“Always,” I said, and when I said it, I realized I meant it.
Which was not a good thing.
“Lox would never have this problem,” Marian murmured. “She knows herself and she’d never do something to betray her own mind.”
“But Lox would betray other people,” I said, my voice sounding harsh even to my own ears, and I let out a sharp breath, wishing I hadn’t spoken.
Marian studied me. Not warily, but carefully. “And are you one of them?” she asked. “One of the betrayed?”
I could almost laugh at how ridiculous this was. Here I was pinning an asset to the ground, and she was questioning me on the very subject I’d engaged her for. But as I looked into her deep blue eyes, I found I couldn’t untangle myself from this topsy-turvy moment. Not yet.
“Yes,” I said, quietly.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, also quietly.
For a moment, there was only the push and hiss of the waves as they fussed their way onto the shore. Only the birds overhead and the sun glowing down to spite the rain that had fallen earlier this morning.
Marian’s stare was as endless as the ocean behind me, and even as I held her down, I felt myself drowning in it.
Lox, was this how you felt? Bold and fierce as you were, you still couldn’t stop drowning in Marian’s eyes?
“Why did you want to meet me?” Marian finally whispered, and I had to regain control, I had to remember why I was here. There would be so much truth in what I told her next and still so many lies—and the next time we played together would be much the same.
If I didn’t move the pieces just right, Lox would take the board. Checkmate.
I let go of Marian’s hands, but before the instinctive frown of disappointment could settle on her lips, I was already pushing her down and crawling over her. I used my hips to pin hers, my thighs trapping hers neatly between them, and I kept myself braced on my elbows.
“This is nice,” she breathed.
It was nice. So nice that I was already painfully, achingly hard.
But this wasn’t for me. This was for what came next.
“I wanted to see you because I like you, Marian. I want to see more of you, and I want us to play. I want us to play as much as we can. But after the way we left things, I know you might have questions for me. Things you’d like to ask or say that are harder to speak aloud in a kink club.”
Marian let out a long breath. “You think Lox tried to talk me out of seeing you after you left.”
