Chapter 15
15
I know I’m not dreaming. In the year that Peter and I were separated, I never let myself think of him. The few times that he appeared in my dreams, I shoved him away. Forced him to disappear back into the ether at the recesses of my brain where I felt he belonged. Back into the little mental box where he was living his best life with a bunch of money, secure in the accomplishment of besting all the other men in our PhD cohort.
In my dreams, I never wake up with the weight and warmth of his arms around me. I don’t hear the soft hum of his deep voice as he shifts in his sleep. He doesn’t use his leg over my hip to pull me tighter against him. I definitely have not dreamed of his unmistakable erection digging into the crack of my butt.
Though I’m awake, everything feels sluggish and slow. I wriggle my butt a bit against him, testing both my reaction and his. He sighs deeply, his limbs still heavy with sleep around me. A steady pulse thrums between my thighs. The rest of me doesn’t care that my lady bits have been deprived for too long. The rest of me is still really, really sick.
Which probably explains why I dismiss the rumbling sound in my ears for longer than I would usually ignore a noise. It’s not until I feel the distinctive bite of claws against my ankle that I glance toward the foot of the bed.
“Peter,” I hiss, tapping his forearm that’s beneath my chin. “Peter. Wake up.”
“Hmm?” He responds. Barely.
My cat is a genius. Far smarter than I am. No wonder he treats me like a lesser being, unworthy of his affection. I always thought it was because I sometimes forget to feed him. Clearly, my assumption was incorrect.
“Sir Isaac Newton has unlocked the secrets of teleportation,” I tell Peter, staring at my cat who’s curled up at the foot of the bed, not seeming to mind the disaster of wrinkled blankets and germs surrounding him.
“What?” Peter rasps.
“Isaac. Is. Here.” I stare at the orange tabby, vaguely considering that I’m so sick that this is all a vivid hallucination. Perhaps I’ve let Peter into my dreams after all.
He hums again. “I brought him over from your place. Didn’t want him to starve to death.”
Oh. That’s a much more rational explanation.
“When did you go to my apartment?”
I can’t fathom getting behind the wheel anytime soon. I can barely navigate the bedroom doorway, hallway, then the bathroom doorway. A fuzzy memory of missing the toilet seat pops into my brain. Peter came barreling through the door, scooped me off the floor, sat me down, then left without a word.
I really hope that was a vivid hallucination.
“Earlier this afternoon.” He yawns. “I still feel like shit, but I think I’m over the worst of it. Figured it’ll take you a couple more days since you got sick after I did. I brought some other stuff from your apartment, too. Clean clothes, toothbrush, hairbrush. ”
My heart offers a few plaintive thumps in my chest at his thoughtfulness. After everything we’ve put each other through, it seems strange that he would be so completely accommodating of my and my pet’s needs.
“Did I…” I whisper, afraid to leak the contents of my warped brain. “Did I fall in the bathroom at some point?”
“You did. Scared the hell out of me.” Peter coughs then murmurs, “I wonder what weird shit I did before you got here?”
“Do you remember anything?”
My mind shifts to the remote possibility that Peter could still be Chester’s mole. I would also very much like to know if I’ve revealed my deepest, darkest secrets while in the throes of fever.
“Uh.” He blows out another breath that sounds like he’s anything but over the worst of it. “Not really, no. Why? Did I say or do anything weird that you’re going to tell everyone about the second we get back to the office?”
A very real reason why any second chance between us might be doomed before it begins slaps me in the face with his words.
“Peter,” I croak then lick my lips. It’s an ineffective action. My voice sounds worse than ever as I say, “No one at the office can know about this.”
He stills so completely around me that I can feel his heart beating inside his chest against my back. “I hadn’t thought about those implications, but you’re right. I’m your direct report. Ethically, it could be construed as an abuse of power.”
I breathe a sigh of relief that he so easily agrees with me. Why does it feel so awful at the same time?
“I don’t want to endanger this job that you work so hard to be good at.”
That’s not the whole truth though. My coworkers are leery of my friendship with Chet. I’m the only woman on an engineering team with ten other men. I don’t want to walk into the breakroom to overhear jokes about me blowing Peter .
He squeezes his arms around me in several quick bursts to get my attention. “Whatever anxiety spiral you’re falling into in that brain of yours, stop it. Erase those thoughts. We don’t need to have all the answers today. How about a bath instead?”
I sigh again. This time with longing. “I would love that, but I shouldn’t. I’m afraid I’ll drown. If I’ve ever felt this weak, then I don’t remember it.”
“Hey,” he murmurs, pressing a kiss to the back of my head. “You swooped in here and took care of me when I needed it. Let me return the favor. You only have to make it a few minutes while I change the bedding, then I’ll come in and help you wash your hair. Do you think you can manage that?”
That sounds like heaven. I whimper as a last effort of maintaining some semblance of independence rather than immediately giving in.
“Do you feel absolutely disgusting?” he leads. “Are you desperate for warm, soothing water and the sensation of sweet-smelling, slippery soap against your skin?”
“Yes,” I moan. Damn him. Now I can’t stop thinking about all kinds of lovely sensations against my skin.
“Then let me take care of you,” he begs as he slides his nose along the side of my neck after gently pulling my hair out of the way. “Just consider this my way of showing gratitude for how you helped me.”
“Was it ever like this at MIT?” I think out loud instead of responding to his words about my lack of trust. “Did we ever witness the absolute worst of each other at any time during those years together?”
Peter hums as he considers my question. “Does threatening to quit the PhD program multiple times count?”
“No.” That was a daily occurrence.
“How about outlining a very detailed plan to commit homicide against my advisor? ”
I snicker, but it ends on a ragged-sounding cough. “Every single one of us exchanged those detailed plans and swore each other not only to secrecy, but also to serve as alibis.”
“That’s true,” he murmurs, a smile in his voice over a memory that’s only fond in hindsight.
Just as quickly as pleasant nostalgia warms from the inside out, numbing cold takes its place. “You were all very good at keeping secrets.”
He sighs against the back of my head.
One last chance. I have one last chance to save myself.
“Did you honestly never plan to tell me? How were you going to explain suddenly having enough money to take us on a cruise with your winnings? We ate Ramen for breakfast, lunch, and dinner because we were so broke. Why didn’t you just tell me what was going on?”
“Why don’t you just tell him what’s going on now?” my traitorous brain asks.
“How would that have looked to you?” His voice is soft as he gently strokes my cheek. “When I took you on our first date to that cheap diner in town that had two-dollar pitchers and all-you-can eat fries with purchase, so we shared a burger? What did you expect me to say to you after you gazed at me like I’d come up with the theory of relativity in a place that was so loud, we had to shout at each other? If I’d said, ‘Hey, so this is going great, but I want to give you a heads up. All the other guys in our cohort are obsessed with your tits, and they’re pretty sure you’re a virgin. Everyone pitched in money we can’t afford to see who can pop your cherry first, and I think you should pick me. I’ll split the winnings with you.’”
“Yes!” I shout then cough. Damn flu. “Yes. You could have told me. You should have told me. If you’d pitched the plan to split the winnings, then I would have— ”
Oh my God. All the years of anger and frustration rush out of me on a jagged exhale.
“You would have what?” Peter presses. “Go on. Say it.”
I swallow then croak, “I would have agreed to pretend you’d won.”
“Exactly,” he says before pressing another kiss to the side of my neck. “Yes. I participated in the bet. But I couldn’t risk losing you by telling you the truth. Keeping you was far more important to me than any amount of money.”
I close my eyes. Understanding someone else’s perspective has never come easily to me. I don’t think the way most people think. Maybe because no one has ever taken the time to explain themselves to me before. Maybe because I never asked.
“If our relationship was built on a lie, then we never truly knew each other. How can you fall in love with someone you don’t really know?”
“We did. We knew each other,” he swears, burying his face into the crook of my neck. “Maybe not every story from our entire lives, but we were aware of the important things. We recognized how we made each other feel. That was enough.”
Is it enough?
I’m not convinced. He claims that he knew me, that he fell in love with me. I can’t say the same. Clearly, I knew nothing about him. Apparently, I didn’t try all that hard. What’s the point of trying now? There are still secrets between us.
He sighs then presses a kiss against my temple, jerking me out of my morose thoughts. “I’m going to run you a bath and change the sheets. I understand that you don’t trust me now. At least give me the chance to prove I’m worthy enough to help you when you can’t help yourself.”
I wrinkle my nose as I haul myself out of his arms to sit on the side of the mattress. “You’re basing this premise on a continued imbalance of power. Not only am I still in a lower position to you, but I feel like I never knew you. Not really. I had no idea you were so jealous of me. So unsure of yourself.”
He rounds the bed to crouch in front of me, a disgustingly familiar frown on his face. “Will you at least try for me, Elise? I swear, I will work as hard as it takes to prove myself worthy of you. Of your love.”
I slap a hand over his mouth. My words are entirely serious. “Don’t. Don’t do that. It will be exceedingly difficult for me to unlearn the lesson you taught me. My brain doesn’t work that way.”
He nods even as he kisses my palm.
“I’m still hurt,” I confess, abandoning the last of the lies to myself. I’ve felt the pain all along. Ignoring it isn’t the same as healing from it. “And I hurt you, too. We don’t have teleportation or time-travel powers. We can’t go back and start fresh and pretend nothing bad ever happened between us. Just because we’ve engaged in the social rite of meeting each other’s parents doesn’t mean we knew everything about each other in the past. We were busy then. That hasn’t changed. It would be foolish to pretend we’ll cut back on our hours at work to explore this thing between us.”
He gently removes my hand from his face. “Are you finished listing all the reasons this will never work?”
No. There’s a very big reason at the forefront of my mind.
I nod anyway.
“Okay,” he murmurs, lacing our fingers together. “Here is my counterproposal. We will take it one second, one minute, one hour, one day at a time. We will relearn who we are now, and we will continue to learn about the past that made us who we are today. I will work to rebuild your trust in me, and you will promise not to run without a conversation first. Does that sound agreeable to you? ”
“It sounds very logical,” I admit with a faint smile. A hint of excitement thrums in my chest, but it’s as dull as it is hopeful.
He stands and pulls me up with him, wrapping his arms around me to give me the support my weak body lacks. He smiles as he presses a kiss to my nose. “I already know how much you love logic.”