Alex ground his teeth together in frustration. “Why did you panic?”
Sophie grimaced in the manner of someone desperately trying to find the right words, and failing in the endeavor.
“Is the prospect of my love so disagreeable?” Alex asked.
“No!” she burst out. Suddenly all the words she was searching for seem to come to her at once, only she found it immensely difficult to get them out in the right order. “It isn’t your love or my love I fear, it’s the combination that scares me. If you just loved me, or I just loved you, everything would be fine. Well, not fine exactly, one of us would be fairly miserable,” she conceded. “But now, one or both of us will be so much worse than miserable. I’m not sure what that might be, but dead might be a reasonable assumption, or at least grievously wounded—”
“Sophie, stop. You’re not making any sense.”
She threw her hands up in defeat. “Well, I told you I couldn’t explain it, didn’t I?”
Alex walked over to stand in front of her. He searched her face with his eyes, then crushed her to his chest. “So, you do love me?”
She could hear the smile in his voice, and knew he wasn’t asking a question. Groaning, she leaned into his embrace, and spoke into his shirt. “Caught that part, did you?”
“It did seem the most pertinent.”
She immediately pulled back from him. “Well, it’s not,” she informed him. “That we love each other is what matters.”
“You are right of course,” he conceded happily.
“You’re missing the point!” she cried, pushing herself away from him entirely. “This is disastrous!”
Alex considered snatching her back into his arms, but thought it might be best to wait until they worked through what ever was bothering her. He didn’t want her to think he would ever take her concerns lightly.
Of course, she wouldn’t be able to see the loopy grin on his face if he held her, and that should be taken into consideration. She loved him.
He was hard-pressed to find anything but the greatest of joy in the moment.
“Sophie, come here.”
“No,” she stated resolutely, taking another step back. “Not until you listen to what I have to say.”
Alex gave a sigh of resignation. “Very well, explain to me why our having fallen in love spells certain doom.”
She scowled at him. “If you’re not going to take this seriously—”
He held his hands up in a conciliatory gesture. “I am sorry, you are right, and I am listening.” He schooled his face into a reasonably sincere expression. It was damned hard work.
She eyed him warily.
“Please, Sophie, talk to me.”
She searched his face for a moment longer, then nodded. “Have you not stopped to consider,” she began, “how very odd a great many of my experiences have been….”
As she spoke, Alex found he no longer had to concentrate to keep from smiling. He could scarcely believe what he was hearing. Sophie had gone her whole life in what Alex could only imagine would be a state of constant anxiety. Never being able to enjoy a bit of good fortune without wondering what calamity must follow. Always waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Alex didn’t believe in fate. He firmly believed that, outside of birth and death, life was what you made of it. But Sophie clearly held to a system of checks and balances he found baffling and cruel.
“How can you live like this?” he asked in sad wonder. “Believing that every good thing that happens to you comes with a price?”
“I’ve never concerned myself with the little things,” Sophie explained. “Everyone has good days and bad days. I’m not unique in that. It’s the really monstrous events that require my attention.”
“You aren’t allowed something wonderful for free, is that it?”
“Yes, but you needn’t sound so appalled. It works both ways. More often than not, the terrible occurs first, and then I know I have the wonderful to look forward to.”
Well, that was something, he supposed. A very little something.
“Except for death,” she amended with a grimace. “Death plays by a set of rules I am not privy to.”
Rules, costs, balances. It was mind boggling.
“Who put this notion into your head?” he demanded. He rather thought it might have been that Mr. Wang. Any man foolish enough to let a rash and headstrong child (and he just knew Sophie had been rash and headstrong as a child) play with knives was likely stupid enough to fill her ears with the sort of tripe an imaginative girl (and she was still imaginative) would sop up like a sponge. Besides, Mr. Wang was the only suspect Alex had besides Mrs. Summers, and he was rather inclined to think well of Sophie’s matchmaking chaperone.
“I don’t suppose it occurred to you that I might have figured it out on my own,” she replied.
It had, actually, but he hoped it was otherwise. He was looking forward to taking up the issue with the thoughtless bastard responsible.
“Well, I did,” Sophie continued without waiting for his response. “But it’s universally accepted as fact.”