Chapter 26
?
Insanity does not discourage him…
Crisis
Privilege. Honor. Blessing.
I don’t know what to do with all this positive affirmation . Viktor’s existence beside me in the theater haunted me throughout the entirety of Stranger than Fiction , which is one of my most favorite ever movies. He wasn’t necessarily obnoxious—even though we were sharing a popcorn bucket full of ice cream. He was just… there .
Extremely present.
Squinting at my reflection in my bathroom mirror this morning, I look in my coffee and chocolate -brown eyes, feeling Viktor’s phantom fingers run through my silky soft brown hair.
I’ve driven us to and from the ranch for the past few days, given that it’s not exactly safe for him to drive with a balloon hand, but he’s insisted that bedtime stories continue, and he’s managed to rest his phone against his thigh while he reads, all for the express purpose of running his good fingers through my hair.
My boring brown hair, which does not defy gravity at all .
Our evenings are filled with quality time on top of physical, non-sexual, touch.
He’s been bombarding me for three days with all five classic love languages on rotation, feeding me a smorgasbord that will leave me shaken and starving once he’s had enough of this game he’s playing.
Three days together, constantly.
I don’t know how much more my soul can take.
“You,” I say, “are useless.” I search my eyes. My brown, brown eyes. “You don’t deserve anything nice, or good.” I push my hair back, wonder why I don’t think it’s quite as limp as it’s always been. Right now, it’s almost got a wave to it, something reminiscent of volume. “You aren’t worth the time, or the effort, that he’s putting in. You know that, don’t you?” He swatted a wasp for me. He got stung so I wouldn’t have to be. After everything I’ve done. “I hate you,” I say, gritting my teeth. “ I hate you . Everything about you makes me sick .”
“Hey there…”
Viktor’s voice makes me jerk. Gripping the sink, I whirl to find him at my bathroom door. In my bedroom.
Horror-stricken with concern, he murmurs, “You…better be practicing your endearments toward me with words like that.”
A swallow sticks in my throat. “What are you doing in my room?”
“Your door was open, and I overheard something disturbing. What are you doing in your room?”
Venom accentuates my words. “My affirmations, which are none of your business .”
“Your…” His brows knit. “Aren’t affirmations supposed to affirm ? Be…positive?”
“Maybe if you’re not a lame loser, they are.” I march past him to check on the box apple bread I popped in the oven for breakfast earlier. It’s the reason my door was open. This is what I get for trying to be nice and make us breakfast. I’m a failure at everything I do.
Viktor’s adamant footsteps follow me. “You deserve everything. Everything . You are worth every minute of every day. You deserve every effort, always. I love you.” He catches my shoulder, stopping me in place, twisting me to face him. “Everything about you makes me love you more.”
“You can’t undo my affirmations, Viktor.”
“I can try. I adore you. Thoroughly. The more of you that I get to see without any guise, the more I want you. You’re hilarious. Endearing. Sweet.”
I flinch. I step out of his reach. “Stop it.”
“You deserve to know the truth. Do…” He fills his chest with air. “Do you do… that every morning?”
I fold my arms, look sidelong toward my kitchen tile. “I try to, yes. I at least do when I’m not sharing a community bathroom with women cheerily discussing their extravagant plans to list on New York Times.”
Viktor’s expression…blackens. “For how long, Crisis?”
“What?”
“How long have you been teaching yourself lies?”
All the strength goes out of my limbs. “I…” My arms fall to my sides. “I don’t know. Middle school? Maybe elementary?”
“Most of your life?” he whispers.
I can’t meet his eyes. I stare at the flowers on my bar counter. “Owning the insults took control away from the people who bullied me. They couldn’t hurt me if I was so much worse to myself than they could dream of being.”
“Instead of teaching yourself to believe you were better than their words, you adopted them.”
I smile. “Yup. I adopted them, when no one adopted me. And, see, if you tell me that’s wrong , I won’t care, because I already know I’m a screw up who does everything wrong. Checkmate.”
He does not tell me it’s wrong. He merely proceeds with the propaganda. “You are a vision. You are capable. You are responsible. You are intelligent.” He swears, threading his fingers into his hair. “You are so smart. I don’t know how you do all that you do. You manage an entire town, with hundreds of businesses and thousands of residents. You coordinate everything, delegating perfectly so I can breathe, and go to writing retreats, and—” He swallows. “—and fall in love with you .”
My eyes roll, and I head to the oven, to check on my bread. It is, notably, not on fire. This is great news. “If I’m so smart, how come I couldn’t trick you? You saw right through my most dastardly scheme easily.”
“Yes. Because, Crisis, I grew up in an environment a thousand times worse. I had four younger brothers to protect, so I learned the signs, scoured the internet for information on narcissism and abuse. I sat with my little brothers when they felt broken so I could make sure they knew how whole they were. I’ve tended wounds and kept concealer in every shade of their skin so I could cover the purples and the reds and not incur further wrath from our parents by letting the public know about their dark secrets. I’ve heard it all. I can see the calculation and recognize the attacks and unravel the lies. Understanding an abuser’s intent was once a matter of survival for me. The only control I had for years was knowing when I was being manipulated. Even when I couldn’t say no , it made me feel less helpless to be aware. Compared to what I’ve been through, Crisis, your hatred is refreshing.”
“Refreshing?” I ask, turning on my heel, marching toward him. “ Refreshing? Mr. Viktor Bachelor, I have despised you for ten years . I’m sorry you grew up in a world that was so physically and mentally cruel to you, but don’t for a moment count my hatred off as something mundane or miniscule. I plotted how to get close enough to make your life miserable for eight years . I took the classes on how to be a PA, gained the credibility, worked my way up the ladder, applied to live in Sunset, monitored your field, weaseled my way into your inner circle, and made it here . All because I hated you.”
He cusses, cheeks blazing inexplicably.
“I’m no different from your parents. I am not a good person either, Viktor,” I say, softer. “Just because you’ve felt worse doesn’t mean you deserve abuse from anyone, even if it’s something you can handle. Does that make sense?”
His eyes close as he contains himself, probably coming to terms with the fact I’m a lunatic, and he’s in my house, and I’m closer to my kitchen knives. But when he speaks, his voice shakes. “Okay.” He clears his throat. “So.” He clears his throat again, seemingly unable to remove the quake. “You did not at all help your argument against being the smartest person I have ever met.” His eyes open as he forgets about his sting and brings his right hand toward his mouth to cover it.
I grab his wrist, stopping him before he can press the swollen area against himself.
The shudder that pours through him at my touch might haunt me forever.
“Crisis,” he whispers, “you’ve dedicated almost half your life…to me? What did I… How could I have…” He wets his lips as he lowers his injured hand back to his side. It shakes when I let go. “Did you just really, really hate my books?”
I don’t know why, but I tell the truth. “No. I loved them. I loved your books, Viktor. They were all that kept me going. I found them when you first started, fifteen years ago. I was twelve. And I did nothing but reread that first book of yours until the next one came out. Then I rotated, and repeated, and rotated some more.”
“What happened?” he asks.
My chest constricts, and I can feel myself being so close to telling him everything. Except, that’s when my oven beeps, so I turn to get my apple bread out before it catches on fire.
The risk is higher than you might expect.
Nonchalant, I say, “You missed an Oxford comma in your sixth book release. As a proprietor of the arts, I simply could not forgive you.”
“Please. I want to know. I want to apologize.”
Yeah. Because of course he does. He never deserved any of my insanity to begin with. I don’t understand how he’s so calm now that I’ve told him exactly how deeply unstable I am. “It’s stupid. As stupid as missing an Oxford comma. So just believe that.”
“Clearly, it mattered to you. So it matters to me.”
“Can you even hear yourself?” I dump my bread loaf pan on my stove and triple check that I’ve turned my oven off before I stare at the knobs. “You’re the poster child for a good, healthy relationship, and I hold decade-long grudges that I act upon, in detail, with pictures .”
“Yeah. I know. I may have seen your Canva murderboard once or twice. I’ve wanted to ask you how progress with training Ender has been going…but…”
My eyes close. “Does everyone in your household know that I was trying to train the stupid cat?”
“Zakery told the family at dinner one day. All my brothers adore you, Crisis. Even Kyran smiled. Almost got half a laugh out of him. ”
I’m walking into traffic at the next available juncture. “I’m a joke.”
“You aren’t. I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant.”
“So, what then? I’m unique ? Amusing?”
“Yes, and yes, but you’re so much more. We like having you around. Kaleb smiles when you see him in the garden and wave. Zakery said he’d kill for your Canva Whiteboard talents when I showed him the first year wrap-up you made. Kyran once, when I asked him what he thought of you, said you weren’t annoying.”
My eyes widen. That is huge coming from Kyran.
Viktor nods. “Exactly. You’re not a joke. You’re family.”
My flesh prickles. “Don’t say that.”
“It’s the truth. And family tells family when something happens that could fester, because holding on to stuff like that tears a family apart.”
I am growing increasingly uncomfortable. “It’s not important anymore, Viktor. I’m over it. You don’t need to know how very stupid I am. Just know how very bad I am, and run while you still can.”
He closes the distance between us, takes my face in his good hand, and forces me to meet his eyes. “Crisis. I need you to understand what I’m about to say. I need you to internalize it. Okay?”
Tall request. Didn’t he hear me explain how I’ve spent most of my life internalizing everything in order to ignore it when it hits me in the wild?
“I’d still love you if you hated me over a missed Oxford comma. I am not going anywhere unless you tell me, explicitly, that I am making life worse for you. I am not the poster child for anything healthy, I promise you that. I like that you’re trouble. I like the opportunities it creates for me to take care of you. I like that you’ve obsessed over me for a decade. I like you. I don’t just love you. I, genuinely, like you.” He latches a lock of my hair behind my ear before curling his finger beneath my chin. “Something that was important to you is important to me. You are important to me.”
He has said so before.
I don’t know what to make of the consistency.
I don’t know what to make of the fact I push his hand off me, then drop my forehead against his chest.
His arms close around me, and I say, “Be careful. Your hand.”
Voice rough, he murmurs, “Sweet pea.”
“We’re going to miss our motivational thoughts. Again. And you know how bad I am at doing them myself. You got nowhere close to writing thirty pages last time.”
He laughs, squeezing me as tight as he can. “That’s okay… I find this very, very motivational.”
“So you’ll be able to write thirty pages today?”
“Can your healthy fingers handle thirty pages of narration?”
Noncommittal, I shrug. “I guess we’ll find out.” On my very best days off…I’ve managed forty.
He kisses the top of my head. “I guess we will…”