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“You are.”
“I’m not.”
“Come on,” I snap back, gesturing at the space between him and me. “Look at this. Look at us. Look at what we’re doing to each other right now. This is the result of your obsession.”
“You used me,” he snarls. “You took the deepest fear I had, and you spat it back at me. In my face.”
“It was so long ago.”
Please don’t talk about this. Please.
“That’s not an excuse.”
“It wasn’t what you think. You just... you... you don’t understand...”
He shakes his head.
“That’s the second time you’ve said I don’t understand,” Fabien mutters. “You’re hiding something from me, but it doesn’t matter anymore. You really think I don’t understand? Bullshit. I do understand, Jolie. I understand everything.”
If I told him, then he would react, and my silence for all these years would have been for nothing.
Clement will find out. Their brotherhood will collapse. He won’t be admitted into the Order.
And it will be because of me.
Can’t he see?
“No, you don’t.”
“What is there to understand? You wrote that email. You were heartless. You destroyed me. And even now you don’t own up to it. Even now, you want to brush it all away. You act as if it’s nothing. I’m trying to help and you’re analyzing me. This is pathetic.”
“Say it, Fabien,” I say, voice wavering. “Just say it again. Just say you hate me.”
He goes completely still. All the smug, controlling wit has vanished. In his eyes, I see the whole history of us.
He looks at me for one long, unbroken second, and then...
“I do hate you.”
His hand trembles.
I suck in a sharp breath.
“Why do you hate me, Fabien?”
“Do you need it spelled out?”
“I don’t think you hate me,” I mumble.
“You’re deceiving yourself.”
“You say you hate me, but then you’ve done all these things for me,” I say. “It’s fucking with my head, Fabien. You’re telling me you’ve got a plan to fix my work fuck-up, and you’ve been so tender, and you’ve held me as I cried. And then, with your next breath, you say you hate me...”
My voice cracks. I’m begging him to cut me open and make his hatred real. I deserve all the rage coming my way, and I’m inviting it in because of some sick masochism. Because the scarier thing is that he actually, genuinely still...
I can’t even dare think the word.
Fabien frowns. And then a snarl forms on his lips.
