13. Ryan #3
“He never really said it outright.” My eyes burn, and I blink back tears.
“He’d slip in comments about missing my old voice, complaining my legs were too hairy and that he liked them better smooth.
Saying my face looked ‘harder’ now. He started buying me tops that were just a little too girly.
Later, that shifted into lingerie every once in a while. ”
Camille’s expression stills, as if braced against something unpleasant.
“And every time I pushed back, he made me feel crazy for thinking it meant anything. Clothes are just clothes, he’d say.
He thought I looked sexy. I was making everything about gender when he was just trying to do something nice for me.
” My chest tightens so sharply I can hardly breathe. “And I believed him.”
That’s the humiliating part—not that Paul lied, but that I translated each lie into something softer, something I could live with. “I believed him because the alternative was admitting the man I planned to marry wanted someone who didn’t exist anymore.”
His wine still untouched, Camille doesn’t move. I press on before doubt steals my courage.
“It got worse when surgery stopped being a distant idea. Once I booked consultations, he found reasons I shouldn’t go through with it.” My voice twists. “Economy—recovery—scars—what if I regretted it? What if I lost sensation? What if I waited another year… or five?”
“Anything that postponed it,” he says so quietly I almost miss it.
“Exactly.” I lean forward, hands clasped tight. “I ended up not moving forward with it because of my own reasons, but if I actually did have it, I’m not sure what he would’ve done.”
Camille’s eyes sharpen, his posture stiffening.
“I think that was when I started to understand.” My voice drops until it’s almost a whisper. “He didn’t see my transition as something I was doing for myself. He saw it as something I was doing to him.”
Camille sets his glass down with such care that the soft click of crystal on wood sounds like a shout.
“And after that, I started to notice other things.” I fold one leg beneath me and turn toward him.
“How he hounded me for my whereabouts, how fast I answered texts, who I spent time with, how much money I spent. He demanded access to shared accounts because we were ‘building a life together,’ and when I refused, suddenly I wasn’t committed enough.
” My throat closes. “He’d get angry if I stayed out later than promised.
Make me feel guilty for wanting space. Sometimes he’d show up unannounced because he ‘missed me,’ which I—stupidly—thought was romantic. ”
“That is how controlling people survive,” Camille murmurs, voice so soft it feels like a hand on my chest. “They make control resemble devotion until you can’t tell one from the other.” His words strike me in the center of my ribcage.
I swallow, the lump so big it almost stops me. “Yeah.”
We sit in a suffocating silence before I realize I’ve edged closer—our knees now touch, where before there was a whole cushion’s width of space. I could scoot back. I don’t.
“He hurt me too.” My confession feels ragged in my own ears. Camille doesn’t react outwardly, and somehow that makes it easier.
“Physically?” he asks.
“Sometimes. Mainly sexually,” I murmur, because if I’m going to tear this open, I might as well finish the job. “Not always violently, but with pressure—wounded insistence until I gave in. And… at the end, he—he raped me.”
Camille’s nostrils flare. He clenches a fist on his knee.
“That’s the first time I’ve admitted it out loud.
It’s weird.” Between us, the air seems to shiver, and I look back at the terrarium before I can choke on the next words.
“I ended up hitting him in the head with a lamp to get him off of me, then I ran. I just started driving. I lived in a motel for a while until I left for here.”
My throat burns with shame. “So, um, yeah. That’s what happened.” I pause for a moment before I add, “But the physical stuff, the… the rape, that isn’t what fucked me up the most.”
Camille’s brow draws together.
“The lies were worse.”
He stares at me.
“Because once I saw what he wanted, I had to go back over every memory and question it. When he drove me to my first testosterone appointment—was he secretly hoping I’d change my mind on the way?
Every wedding plan—was he picturing me at the altar in a tux, or still that bride in white?
” My voice quavers. My eyes sting, and I blink.
“What about when he said he loved my body? Which body did he mean?” That one almost breaks me.
I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth. “I realized he’d been waiting…”
“For what?” Camille’s voice is patient.
“For me to go back.”
Camille’s face goes astonishingly blank—an anger so cold it could freeze the humid air. I recognize that expression from earlier.
“I think Paul loved a woman he’d invented,” I whisper. “And I was close enough that he believed he could sculpt me into her.”
Camille looks down, jaw clenched. “I am sorry,” he says.
“Yeah.” I swipe at my cheek and realize I’m crying. Of course. Crying in front of my fuck buddy slash snake neighbor slash whatever the hell Camille is now. Great. I rub harder. “So when you say you didn’t technically lie because you simply didn’t tell me everything…”
Camille closes his eyes for a moment.
“…I know it isn’t the same as Paul. I’m not saying you are. But when someone I trust decides which parts of reality I get to have because they think it’s best for me, I—” My voice breaks again. “I can’t do that anymore.”
His eyes open—soft, attentive. “I understand.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Because it feels really fucking familiar, Camille.”
The words hurt him; I see it. For once, he doesn’t hide quickly enough.
A flash of something naked crosses his face—guilt, maybe, or shame—and it makes the anger inside me soften even though I don’t want it to.
I turn toward him fully and meet his gaze. “If we’re going to keep doing this—whatever this is—I need you to tell me the truth. No more deciding I don’t need to know something because you think it’ll scare me.”
His lips tighten.
“No more half-answers.”
He nods.
“And no more lying by omission.”
That hangs between us. I watch him flinch as if struck.
“Ryan…”
“No, just let me finish.”
He does.
I pull my knees up slightly, wrapping one arm around them because apparently I need to physically hold myself together to say any of this. “We said sex. No relationship. No promises. No weird expectations or getting possessive or whatever.”
“Yes.”
“And I meant it when I said it.”
Camille goes very still.
I hate how terrifying the next sentence feels.
“I don’t know if I mean it exactly the same way anymore.”
There.
Fuck.
I stare at my hands. I can feel his attention like sunlight against bare skin.
“I’m not saying I want to be your boyfriend,” I add quickly.
“I am not asking you to,” he replies.
“I know. I’m just clarifying.”
“Of course.”
“And this does not mean you get to start being weird.”
“I suspect your definition of weird makes that promise impossible.”
A laugh escapes me before I can stop it—small, wet, and embarrassing. “Shut up.”
His eyes soften.
“I just mean… whatever this is.”
Camille’s expression becomes unreadable. Not closed. Almost the opposite. Too open in places I don’t know how to interpret.
“This isn’t just fucking anymore, is it?” The question falls out before I can reconsider.
Camille says nothing for several seconds. Then, very quietly, “No.”
My heart kicks, and I look away immediately. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yes. Don’t make it a thing.”
“I believe you just made it a thing.”
“Camille.”
“I will stop.”
“Thank you.”
Another silence stretches between us, but it’s different now, heavy rather than awkward, dense with all the words neither one of us is prepared to use.
“I am sorry,” he murmurs again.
“For what?”
“For deciding which truths you’re permitted to have. For withholding what I knew about Alberte and Henri.” His openness—an unfamiliar vulnerability—makes my chest ache.
“I don’t need you to protect me from information. And you definitely don’t need to lie.”
His thumb hovers over my knuckles. “I will not lie to you.”
I hold his gaze. “No more omissions meant to deceive.”
Camille looks genuinely miserable now, which should make me feel vindicated; it doesn’t. “Ryan… I…”
My voice stays quiet. “I’m not asking you to tell me every secret you’ve ever had.
You’re allowed to have privacy. I have things I’m not ready to talk about too.
But if something involves me—my house, my grandfather, whatever the fuck is going on with Henri—then I need to know.
And if something changes between us, I need you to tell me that too. ”
“What do you mean? Changes between us?”
“If you decide this is getting too complicated. If you don’t want me anymore. If you meet somebody else. If I’m annoying the shit out of you and you want me to stop showing up at your door.”
“Ryan.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.” His answer comes with enough force to stop me. His voice is lower when he says, “There is no one else.”
“That wasn’t really—”
“And you do not annoy me.”
I give him a look. “You definitely find me annoying.”
“Maybe a bit.”
“Camille.”
His mouth curves, but the humor lasts only a second before he says, “You annoy me frequently. I find that I have become distressingly fond of it.”
My heart does an acrobatic maneuver I would like to formally object to. “Okay.”
“And I do not want you to stop coming here.”
“Okay.”
“I would prefer that you come more often.”
My face heats. “That’s dangerously close to feelings.”
“I am aware.”
The admission catches me completely off guard, and neither of us seems to know what to do with it.
But then Camille reaches for my hand, slowly. His fingers slide beneath mine, turning my palm upward before folding around it.
My eyes sting again.
Fantastic.