“She was too strong. Her hold on you was too deep. The best we could do was trap her unconscious inside you.”
I probed deep inside but I could feel no trace of her. That wasn’t a win. I’d rather have had a handle on her. Nothing. I had a ticking time bomb living in me with no idea what might trigger its explosion. It was terrifying, but it wasn’t the reason for my icy fingers and stuttery breath.
“When?” I mumbled, staring at my feet.
“What?”
I cleared my throat and met his gaze. “When did you knock her out?”
He crossed his arms, his eyes blazing, and his body rigid. “You want to know if I’d already fucked her? If last night I believed I was making love to my girlfriend and it had been like nothing I’d ever experienced? Will it ease your conscience if I enjoyed it?” He leered at me, lowering his face close to mine. “You were the best, baby.”
I slapped him.
The sound lingered over the gurgle of the dishwasher kicking in. Neither of us spoke, the air charged like the seconds before the eruption of a thunderstorm.
He rubbed his cheek. “How could you make that deal?”
Would the frozen peas work on my heart? “How could I not? You’d lost your magic.”
A muscle jumped in his jaw. “I told you before that I didn’t need saving.”
“Really?” I adjusted the bag on my swollen ankle. “I saw you outside after you’d learned the bad news. You were devastated.”
“I’d have dealt.”
“Like you did with Asha?”
“You have no idea–”
“Drio told me.”
“Then how the hell could you betray me?” he said. “Basic concept, right from wrong. Even you understand that.”
Even me. I dug my nails into my palms. “I tried to keep things from playing out. I tried to spell it out with the fridge magnets and break up with you and–”
“And at the end of the day, you made that deal with whatever the fuck Lilith is, involving me, without my consent.” A literal brick wall springing up between us would have been easier to breech than his unyielding stance.
I reached for him, desperate for him to understand, but he stepped back.
Was it me or this thing inside me? I was too scared of his answer to ask.
“After Drio told me about Asha, and you were out there broken,” I said, “I understood wanting to do whatever it took to protect someone I cared about. I’d have done anything to help you. ‘If I have to be an asshole to save you, I’ll do it.’ Your words.”
“‘Then you’ll lose me.’” He jabbed a finger at me. “Your words.”
“Have I lost you?” I could barely croak out the words through the thickness in my throat.
At least with his anger, he’d still felt something toward me. Rohan standing here, hands hanging limply at his sides, his eyes closed, not answering? That was him giving up.
My skin tingled from the strain of holding in my sharp sorrow. It weighed me down in pieces: knotted behind my breastbone, pulsing in my temples, and pooling in my feet. Lilith didn’t rouse to gloat, though.
I pressed my fists to the side of my head. “Where do we go from here?”
“On which part?” He slumped over the counter, his back to me, his head braced in his hands.
“All of it. Is it…” I took a deep breath. “Are we over?”
His phone rang. Rohan glanced at the screen and answered it. “Hey Mom, this isn’t a good–” He straightened up. “What? When? Is he–?”
Concerned, I stood up, hissing when I put my weight on my foot. Ro’s expression softened in sympathy for a second before hardening once more. His gaze flicked away.
“Yeah,” he said on the phone, “I’ll get a flight today. Okay. Bye.”
I placed my hand on his arm and he flinched. My eyes watered. “What happened?”
“Dad had a heart attack.”
I opened my arms without thinking, immediately correcting to wrap them around my chest. If he’d flinched at my touch, I couldn’t take seeing what he’d do at the full body contact of a hug. I dug my fingers deeper into my ribcage, moving to the opposite side of the island to give him space, but no matter how hard I tried to keep myself upright and dignified, my body leaned toward his. “Is he all right?”
“He’s alive, but he’s in the hospital.” He clutched his phone, staring blankly at it. Then he shook himself off and headed for the door. “I need to go home.”
When Rohan had sung me “Slay” he’d proclaimed that I was his home. The loss of status was numbing.
But I had my answer about us.
I pressed my hand against my mouth, but there was nothing I could do about the tears streaming down my cheeks.
He stopped in the doorway, his back still to me. “Nothing happened. With Lilith. I would never…”
“Okay.” I dragged in a shaky breath.
In three strides he was back at my side, kissing my wet lashes. With my eyes closed, I could pretend that his lips on my tears were in comfort, and that the nausea swirling in my stomach was giddy anticipation.
But I couldn’t keep my eyes shut forever, and when I opened them, I was hit full force with the cold vertigo of my splintered heart, his touch and warmth lost to me and the broken look on his face more devastating than all our words.
“This isn’t the end of us,” he said. “Just…”
I sniffled. “A break?”
A coffee break? A bone break? A heartbreak?
He rested his forehead on mine. “A slowing down. We kept saying we wanted each other desperate,” he said. “And as much as it had been a joke, it wasn’t. We can’t do that anymore. Can’t crave each other so much that it’s this all-consuming mess of fucked-up power dynamics and who gets to keep who safe and happy.”
“I know. And the harder we tried, the harder we trampled each other.” The problem hadn’t been making ourselves vulnerable, it had been accepting the times when the other person’s vulnerability was on the line.
I lay my hand on his cheek, wondering when he turned into it, his stubble scratching my palm and his eyes damp, if this would be my last memory of him.
Of us.
Rohan was right. We needed to slow down. I understood that intellectually. Emotionally, I was howling, laying bleeding and gutted on the floor, the ruins of what we’d had strewn around me in shattered disarray.
He stepped back and I mourned the loss of contact. “I’ll call you when I get there.”
I struggled for breath to form the correct, careful platitudes, gripping the counter behind my back to keep myself from going with him. No longer having any right to be his source of comfort. “I hope your dad gets better quickly.”
“Me too.” We held a look that wasn’t so much mutual recrimination as tragic acknowledgment.
Ro half-raised his hand in a wave and I nodded. All this time, I’d been so worried about Rohan and his bad behaviors, but it turned out that the real danger to our relationship had been me all along.
I didn’t watch him walk out the door.