Page 133 of Adam
He shakes his head.
“Now you know there was nothing wrong with you. They just needed someone to dump their crap on.”
I exhale through my nose, all the revelations from earlier flooding my mind.
“Who told you?” I ask.
“Anderson.” He chuckles. “He was quite chatty right before I chopped off his head.”
“You what?”
“Oh, come on. You’d have done it too if you’d heard him.”
“But …”
“He was a problem. I removed the problem.”
That should’ve frozen me and flipped some survival instinct I swear I used to have. Any sensible part of me should be screaming to run, to get away from someone who can say something like that without blinking.
But it doesn’t.
Instead, this awful mix settles in my gut. That grim, quiet understanding I don’t like examining too closely. And I hate that. I hate that some twisted corner of me thinks he isn’t wrong. It feels like justice, or something sickeningly close to it, and maybe that says more about me than it should.
If that makes me messed up, I don’t have the energy to deny it.
Suddenly, he shoves a hand into the pocket of his pants, grabs something, and opens his palm in front of me.
“My hairpin,” I breathe, my lashes flicking. “I thought I left it in the house.”
“I’ve had it since our gym meeting.”
“Thank you,” I say, taking it.
“What’s so special about it?”
“I don’t know.” I shrug. “I just like it. I’ve had it since we lived in Italy.”
He studies me for a moment. “Orchids will always remind me of you,” he says, voice low enough to make me look up. “You stand apart. You don’t fit with everyone else … and you don’t need to. You’re always off to the side, alone, cut off from everything. Yet somehow you’re the one thing everyone sees.” He takes the pin and twists it into my hair the way I always wear it, his eyes melting into mine.
“People ignore what they don’t understand, and they push it aside because it’s easier to pretend it never mattered.” He doesn’t look away. “Like you.”
“And you.”
I stare into his eyes. Those dark and far-more-complicated eyes than I ever let myself believe. Those eyes that have learned to bury loneliness and damage so well it almost looks natural on him. But it’s there, all of it, sitting just under the surface, waiting for someone careless enough to notice.
“You’re different with me,” I say.
“I’m fucking mellow.” He snickers.
“You’re Dr. Jekyll. Which is hilarious, considering I’ve seen the version you don’t show anyone.”
He lets out a dark chuckle, taking his eyes away from mine.
“I told you before. You gave yourself to a monster, little orchid. I don’t stay the same. I show whatever face works. Trusting any of them is a mistake.”
“Then why did you risk everything for me?”
“Because I will always choose you,” he says, without hesitation. “You will always be the first thing on my mind when I wake up, and the last before I fall asleep. And I will always. Fucking. Choose. You.”
