Page 210 of The Devil We Crave
I start to open my mouth, but she holds up a finger.
“Keep in mind that I’ve known you my entire life, buddy,” she snaps. “And I know you ahellof a lot better than you think. Truly. I’ve seen the way you look at Yelena. The way you act around her, and even when you’renotaround her.” She shakes her head. “Achilles, you very clearlychoseher. You made heryours. You surrounded her withyourworld,yourrules,yourone door out.” She shrugs. “But did you ever once consider ifshechoseyou? Or did you both sort of skip that whole part entirely?”
Well, fuck.
FUCK.
That didnot, in fact, occur to me.
Ever.
The two of them look at me sharply as I shove my chair back and stand.
“There is no way I wasthaton the nose…” Selene gapes at me. “Seriously?”
“I have to go.”
Not to apologize for something I don’t feel requires an apology.
But to ask her the one question I never actually asked, because I was too busy assuming I already knew the answer.
It’s cold outside when I step out of Kingsward. I zip up my black Privateers hoodie and glance in the direction of Morvaine Manor before I head out into the darkness.
Did you ever once consider ifshechoseyou?
I…didn’t.
I was too focused on making her mine.
I have never in my life operated on the assumption that the other person's sense of agency was a variable I needed to account for. Part of that—a large part—is that I’ve never seriously dated anyone before.
But with Yelena, I identified that I wanted her, identified whatshewanted, and then created the perfect conditions for that to happen.
I gave her the chase she'd been fantasizing about. I gave her the darkness she'd been consuming in private by way of steamy books and MaskTok. I gave her the one person in the world who looked directly at what she was and didn't ask her to be something simpler oreasier.
I protected her, removed threats, and stayed when every instinct said this was becoming something I didn't have a framework for, because it was moving past dark fantasy into something else entirely.
And my fucking cousin is right: I gave Yelena one andonlyone exit. I made it an all-or-nothing choice and pushed her to the fucking brink.
What the hell did I expect would happen?
Yes, I gave her everything when it came to her darkest fantasies, but I didn’t give her agency.
Yelena didn’t just want towant me. She needed to know that her wanting me washerchoice she had made, and a decision she arrived at herself. Not the only exit from a maze I built from the pieces of her I collected before she knew I existed.
I took that agency from her.
But I’m going to fix that right the fuck now.
I’m going to give her a choice. A real one, not a bullshit one.
I grin to myself as I cross the dark, shadowed Knightsblood campus and approach Morvaine.
Time to make this right.
Time to tell her everything.
But mostly, time to stop pussyfooting around and decide if it’s “too much” to tell her that I’ve been in love with her for longer than she’d ever guess.
