Page 86 of Hushed
“I don’t know. Maybe you were going to pester me into reading it myself. Which would have been the ethical thing to do.”
“Secondly, you are my teammate. This current action threatens you. I must understand it completely in order to act as your advisor.”
“How?” he demands. “Are you a lawyer? Are you a man with a very good sense for the psychology field?”
“I’m not stupid,” I tell him. I can’t keep the anger out of my voice.
“I didn’t say that.” He puts his arm out to placate me. “But you’re wading into something complicated and I don’t know what help you can really offer, no matter how well-meaning.”
“Maybe I can’t. So what? Would you rather be alone in this again, or would you rather have someone you can lean on? That’s all I’ve ever wanted to be for you, Bastien.”
He closes his eyes. “But I can’t do the same for you.”
“So what? This is not a balance sheet. I want to help you, and if I can’t do that, at least I can understand. Weren’t you lonely carrying this on your own?”
The question makes him deflate a little.
“Yes.” He studies me. “Please, Levi. Please don’t act unilaterally. I am not an extension of you, even if you love me. My consent matters. My boundaries matter.”
I sigh. He’s right. Again. “Okay. But, Bastien. Please. Please give me this. When you go back to that classroom—and you are going back—I don’t touch any of it. I don’t look at your laptop. I don’t look at a test, or a grade, or a roster, or an email from a student, and I don’t ask you about any of it, ever. Not once. If you leave your bag open on that chair I’ll walk around it.”
“Levi—”
“I’m not finished. That’s your work and it’s not mine and I’ll never have any part of it.” I tap the folder twice. “But this isn’t classroom stuff. This is a hundred and forty pages about whether you get to keep living in this country. This is your life. This is our life. I’m not going to sit upstairs and be protected from it while you’re terrified and trying to muscle through it alone.”
He looks at the pages under my hand for a long time.
“You would really do that,” he says. “The classroom.”
“I’d do it today.”
“And this?”
“This I’ll give up if you ask me to. I’ll hate it, but I will. But, please let me keep it.”
He laughs, once, with no humor in it at all. “Do you know that is the first time anyone in this entire process has ever actually sought my consent?” He reaches over and turns the folder toward himself, and looks at the top page, and turns it back. “All right,” he says. “Those are the terms. The classroom is mine. Stay out of it. This—” he taps the transcript twice with one finger, “—we do together. And you tell me what you find. All of it. Even the parts you think will hurt me.”
“I will. But not today. Today, right now, I’m going to get out of this chair and take you to the sofa, and we’re going to make popcorn and watch bad movies.”
He looks dubious. “Really? That’s your plan? To be the most aggressively normal couple in the world?”
“Well, if we wound up going upstairs for a little bit before that, I wouldn’t say no to that.”
“Upstairs for what?” Bastien says. “Oh, you’re right. All those boxes in the guest bedroom. It’s a bit much. We should do something about that.”
“Totally.” I take his hand and put it on my stomach. He lets it linger for a bit before he moves it downward. He kisses me and bites my bottom lip.
I pull back. “You cheeky little devil!”
“What are you going to do about it?”
I take his hand and pull him after me. “I’ll show you.”
Chapter twenty-nine
Bastien
Levi pulls me up the stairs, only turning back to me when we’re in the bedroom. I kiss him on the cheek and plaster myself against the wall. I lay my French accent on thick as frosting on a wedding cake. “Oh, thank goodness you’ve come to free me. I am an innocent tourist. I have been held captive for months!”
