Chapter 18
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Born to self-regulate; forced to do it manually.
Crisis
“Well, it’s about time,” Crimson says, nearly stopping my heart as I take a turn way too fast. Thankfully, the roads out here are empty.
Still, I slow down.
So the car will be quieter when I yell, “ What do you mean it’s about time !”
“Viktor’s been in love with you for forever and a day.”
What? What? I’m so sorry. WHAT?
“And you didn’t tell me?” I blurt.
She hums, probably getting her pretty nails done or something else very calm and chill, because she’s acting very calm and chill . Like an ice cube. “It wasn’t my secret to tell, Cris. That would be like telling him about the email.”
She’s not wrong, of course. She’s never been wrong. Not even once in her whole life. She’s perfect. Everyone around me is perfect .
And I have no idea why they bother putting up with imperfect me.
“My boss sexually assaults me, and all you can say is it’s about time ?” I blink back tears. “Aren’t you supposed to be out for blood? I’m your wife. This horrible, horrible man is coming into our marriage!”
“Oh please, Crisis. He pecked your lips, then panicked and ran away. If I know anything about Viktor, we’re lucky he doesn’t have easy access to a bathtub and a toaster at that writer’s retreat.”
I do not like that Crimson knows anything about Viktor in the same way I do not like that Viktor knows anything about Crimson. They are separate worlds in my mind, and the idea that they overlap with histories that I wasn’t a part of makes me insecure. “It’s still harassment,” I say. “Even if it was brief. Or he regrets it.”
And of course he’d regret it. I was crying. I was a mess . I doubt he left in a panic because he cared how I felt. He probably had to throw up.
“Was he being aggressive?” she asks.
Aggressive…? Aggressive is a bit more angry , I think. He was calm the entire time, even when he stood his ground. “No.”
“And this was a first offense?”
“Yes.”
“Harassment, according to the definitions I’m looking up, appears marked by repeated and persistent behaviors. Do you think Viktor would force himself on you if you told him not to touch you?”
“He cupped my face, and I told him to stop touching me, but he wouldn’t.” Until I said he was making me uncomfortable. But then that didn’t stop him from kissing me. So, I believe the point is moot. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me if you knew that he was—for who knows what reasons— attracted to me. Is he demented? Am I the poster child for some twisted kink I don’t know about?”
Silence.
It’s so profound I believe we’ve lost connection until Crimson’s cautious voice comes through the speaker. “Dearness…remember how much I love you?”
I don’t see how her loving me is relevant, but I say, “Um, yes?”
“I’m not special. You’re very, very easy to love.”
“Don’t be stupid. You’re holding onto my last functioning brain cell. If you infect it, I won’t survive.”
Her soothing voice coaxes. “It’s a very adorable brain cell. Don’t worry. I’m taking good care of it, feeding it all the love and appreciation all of you deserves.”
“Do not give propaganda to my brain cell.”
“Too late. I’ve already printed all the fliers. It’s reviewing them. At length. Oohing and aahing at how wonderful it is.” Persistent, and therefore harassing , Crimson says, “You’re easy to love. I didn’t even have to think about loving you before it happened. I’m certain the emotion took Viktor by similar surprise. He’s careful, with his own set of trust issues, so I’m almost positive when he realized he wanted you, he gave himself a set of rules to follow before he could act on his feelings.”
Wanted me.
The very idea makes my skin crawl and my stomach curdle.
Anyone wanting me feels like the precursor to a joke. I’m not interested in being the punchline again. I can’t go back there.
“I don’t want to be loved,” I blurt. “I really don’t.”
“My heart, it breaks. Has my love disappointed you, dearness? Does it no longer appease your requirements? It fails to suit the lofty heights of your expectations?”
“I don’t know why you love me, Crim. I’m just… me , you know?” Useless, worthless, unlovable me. Monstrous, terrible, hateful me . Ugly, frumpy, disgusting me. “There’s nothing good about me. ”
“There’s nothing good about anyone, Cris,” she murmurs. “There doesn’t need to be. I love that all of our bad meets at a thousand different crossroads and chooses to walk forward from them together. I love you for being you, and for the pieces of myself I see in you. People are self-centric. They love and hate the people that remind them the most of themselves. You remind me of the things I love about who I am, like my patience and my work ethic, so I overlook and forgive the parts that are less lovely, like our tempers when we reach a breaking point. Loving you isn’t just easy. Loving you lets me be kinder with myself. I am eternally grateful for you.”
I just stopped crying, and I don’t want to start again, not while I’m driving, so I swallow the emotions down, where they make my words break and crackle when I talk. “I love you so much, Crim. I don’t want anyone else. Everyone else is scary.”
“That’s fair. But you have to be the one to tell Viktor that. Break his heart. He’s handed it to you, so squeeze. Squeeze until your hatred is satisfied, then let it go so it’ll stop hurting you and come away to my loving arms. We’ll have a girls’ night and day forever and face eternity together.”
Dread mixed with guilt rises to crush the air from my lungs. I forgot. I was so shocked and repulsed by the kiss, I forgot entirely that I also learned today that the very foundation of my hatred all these years has been unfounded.
I wish, deeply, that I could place the same amount of ire on him kissing me that I placed on his critique. Shifting my hatred back to a place where I feel justified and right in it would be fabulous.
But.
I can’t .
I’m disgusted, repulsed, and sick because he kissed me . Not because he kissed me.
I’m the element making me ill.
He kissed a gross, sobbing mess of a human being.
It makes me nauseous to think about, but it has nothing to do with his action and everything to do with my existence. There’s no justification to be found here.
So my body is shutting down.
There’s no way he genuinely likes me for who I am after all I’ve done, so what is it about me that compelled him to press his mouth against mine while I was more disgusting than average?
Not knowing that is terrifying.
Is there such a thing as being attracted to ugly girls?
Is he a perverted weirdo?
Have I been sharing a bed with a perverted weirdo?
What sorts of thoughts has he subjected the idea of me to?
You are beautiful. Always.
Or is this a prank twisted up in blatant lies? A specific, intentional retaliation against everything I’ve done.
Swallowing acid, I turn into town, intending to head home—where I’m safe, where I have my fish—but I find myself heading toward the Bachelor mansion instead.
“I’m average, aren’t I?” I ask Crimson, voice thin and reedy.
“Average?”
“My appearance, I mean. Everyone growing up said I was ugly, and fat, and gross. I’ve tried to outgrow those statements and come to believe that I’m normal. A normal, boring person. Bland. Regular. Average .”
“You’re beautiful, Cris,” she says, plainly. And I know she wouldn’t lie to me. “It wouldn’t surprise me if those insults came from people who were jealous of you. ”
“But…I don’t have a great figure. I know I don’t.” I close my eyes at a red light, take a breath, and continue moving with the traffic in the busiest part of town, on my way toward the outskirts where the Bachelor palace rises from the rolling gardens. “I know fat doesn’t mean what the kids who used to bully me meant, but my weight does sit low. I know that means I’m not conventionally attractive.”
Crimson murmurs, “Maybe not conventionally, but you’re still pretty, and I’m almost positive where your weight sits is not a deterrent to any man who likes hips. The children you could bear. My, my.”
I laugh, because it’s such an insane thing to say, even as it heals something. Crimson heals something inside me that’s been broken for a long time. Everything she says, everything she does, it screams that I’m enough for her, when I have never ever been enough for anyone before in my life.
I’m scared.
At the root of everything I have ever felt…is fear.
I don’t know what to do or where to go, because change is inevitable no matter what path I choose. There is no going back to a world where I’m comfortable that the hatred I harbor leaves me like toxic broccoli peanut butter sludge.
Viktor has upset my peace over being an inconsequential, unworthy disgrace, because—if he really does like me—he has come to that conclusion without pretense. If he really does like me, it can’t be because I’ve tricked him.
It would be like when I met Crimson.
Coffee-covered. Raw. Me, at my worst.
Chosen all the same.
“I don’t know what to do.” I park in front of the staircase and double doors leading into the Bachelor manor that sprawls before me, three stories high, crawling with ivy and flowers. The peaks of the towers circling the fountain centering the cul-de-sac provide formidable airs, like appearing in the presence of royalty.
In so many ways, that’s what the Bachelors are.
Formidable, impenetrable royalty.
I’m the help .
The inconsequential help.
“What are the options that you’re struggling with?” Crimson asks.
“Yes, or no.”
A slight tilt of surprise edges her voice. “You’re considering yes ?”
“I’m considering that yes would be to not say an immediate no . It would be to trust, even for a moment, that this isn’t a prank. But…” I squeeze my eyes shut, block out the elegance surrounding me. “I don’t know how I’d get past the guilt or even begin to explain myself. If he’s managed to like me after everything I’ve done, Crim… I…I’m scared now to lose that if I reveal exactly how much more terrible I am. It feels like…no one else could possibly ever, ever, ever, ever think about me in such a way. Then, also, he doesn’t deserve anything I’ve been doing to him. None of it. We had a workshop today.” It hurts to swallow. “He critiqued everyone exactly the way he critiqued me ten years ago. Not a single word of encouragement. Just a list of things to correct. Cruelly and bluntly delivered. Without disgust or emotion. I wasn’t singled out. He wasn’t being mean. He’s a good, kind, consistent, genuine person, and I’m…I’m not good enough for him.” I don’t think I’m good enough for anyone.
“Isn’t that his decision to make?”
“But I know I’m not good enough.” I rest my head against the steering wheel. “I know it. I’m terrible, and he’s kind. If nothing else, he is kind . What if I give him a chance, and what if his kindness covers me, but I’m too messed up to know how to love him? What if I can’t like him like that? What if I don’t know how to be kind enough to anyone in order to even pretend to love them? What if I string him along, and I just can’t ?”
“But what if you can?” Her soft words reach into my soul. “What if he forgives you for everything? What if he’s honored to learn how much he meant to you? What if the fact you loved the pieces of his work so much that his rejection sent you off the edge is proof that—right now—the only thing keeping you from loving someone else is your inability to accept that it’s okay to love yourself? Even when you are the kind of person who feels hate just as deeply as love.”
I just don’t know anything anymore.
When Crimson tells me she has to go because her father is calling, I pull myself out of my car, head to the front door of the mansion, and trail down the quiet halls toward Viktor’s bedroom.
Light from the windows that circle his bed pours sun across the tan furniture and dark wood. His desk sits against the far wall, with its two large monitors and the gaming chair Kyran said would be perfect for his lumbar support when I was researching better options than what he had before. My desk… My desk rests in the other corner. Familiar. Present. Far enough away from him that I’ve tolerated it for two years. Closer than it has ever needed to be.
“Vikt—oh.”
Startling, I turn to find Zakery with his hand on the door knob. The silver buttons of his high-neck black jacket wink in the sunlight as he smiles .
With grace, he glides his fingers through the longer strands of his wisping hair, pulling the ebony away from his right brow. “Sorry, Crisis. I thought you were Viktor again. I wanted to talk to him about some final budget details for Sunny Con. I can’t thank you enough for the template you made me for it.”
Feeling hollow, I echo, “Viktor… again ? He’s been home since the writer’s retreat started?”
“He stopped by two nights ago. I saw the car lights from my bedroom window, so I came down to make sure everything was okay.”
Viktor was here two nights ago?
“He said he had to print something, everything was fine, and he’d kill Kyran later.” A glimmer of knowing mischief settles into Zakery’s eyes as he adjusts a cuff. “Now, naturally, I told him I had no idea at all what he was talking about.” Those chilling grey irises of his fix on me. “Unrelated, how are things going with my big brother?”
I shiver. “Does everyone know?”
“Does everyone know what? That you hate him, or that he loves you? Because no. Of course not. You both are as discreet as a marching band.”
I flinch.
“I’ve found your antics very charming. Just for future notice, however, the next time you give a pep talk to a cat about leaving dead mice on someone’s pillow, do it in an unused hall, not the one with my bedroom.”
My face heats, and I bunch my hands against my thighs. Someone overheard that nonsense with Ender? Zakery overheard that nonsense with Ender? I bartered . I said I’d buy him wet food. I suggested—when he mewed pitifully, asking for me to put him down—that he drives a hard bargain , and I’d give him wet food every week if he’d just do this for me once .
My insanity in this household is well-known?
Somebody kill me.
“Also, obviously, unrelated…” Zakery braces his shoulder against the door jamb and tilts his head against it. “…but what led you to hate Viktor of all people? Lukas is the maniac among us. Kyran’s, well, you know. A peach . And then there’s me.” His teeth show. “I’m way easier to hate than sweet ol’ Viktor.”
Truth be told, I don’t think any of the Bachelor brothers are entirely easy to hate. Not anymore. Even Lukas is charmingly demented. I find a sort of solidarity in watching his flamboyant, rough insanity unfold.
“Don’t want to tell me?” Zakery prompts, coolly.
“I’d rather not,” I whisper, voice strained as I drop my attention to the floor.
Gentle, almost brotherly, he asks, “Did you run away from him? Did something happen that made you run?”
My eyes squeeze shut. “I hate the unexpected. I didn’t know what else to do. I just had to get away .”
“Strange. I pegged you as more of a fight not flight girl.” He approaches, lifts my chin in his cold fingers, and says, “Do me a favor…since you’re clearly undecided where Viktor’s concerned…give him a chance. All of us were raised to be very, very adaptable .” The word leaves him with the undertone of a growl, and I step out of his touch. He splays his fingers in defense before tucking his hand back in his pocket. “Sorry. I just mean that you won’t find someone better than Viktor, and when a Bachelor brother loves someone, we’ll snap our own bones for their sake. If you don’t like him now, he’ll change for you. You just have to tell him which parts to cleave away.”
Broken, I say, “I don’t want…to hurt him anymore.”
Humming, he turns on the heel of his slick black shoe. “How odd. In our line of work…wouldn’t you call that character development ?”
As he leaves, my own words haunt me.
I don’t want to hurt Viktor anymore.
But what I do want?
That still eludes me.