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The next day he told me straight to my face it was probably a good thing we weren’t pregnant just yet, despite our conversation about having kids, because maybe it’s better to not have the burden while we were still so young.
The very burden I took over in the last twelve hours.
One I didn’t share with him, and then… couldn’t.
He smiled, kissed me on the forehead and went to work, a week later the conversation came up again and again until finally I couldn’t stomach it, I couldn’t look at him because every time I did I felt desperate to open my mouth but I had no words, but I did have the tragic ability to panic and run away and in one instant did the worst thing I could have done to him, while he did the worst of what he could have done to me.
Chased.
“Hey,” I needed to shake out my legs before I locked up my knees and passed out. “Let’s just get this over with and try to win, okay?”
I tried to soften my tone, I even smiled a bit, he wasn’t having it, he always saw through me no matter how hard I tried to give him the best version of myself. It was exhausting and the worst part was that he never even asked that of me, I did it all on my own.
Again, therapy both sucked and delivered the hard truth I needed to hear.
“Did you even miss me?” He jumped to his feet and stalked toward me.
“Did you even know?” I snapped back, angry at myself, at him, at seeing him again without any sort of armor on, completely vulnerable. “A day later when I was gone and saw you at another work dinner with your female assistant while I bled out on the floor?”
His eyes widened. “What? What are you talking about? And Krista was engaged, you know that, madly in love with her boyfriend, and why were you bleeding?” He reached for me.
I wanted to lean into that touch. Instead, I jerked away. “Nevermind.” I ignored the way his face completely paled at the thought of me being hurt, because it hurt knowing that just that one small sentence changed his entire demeanor. “I still have my student loans and we have five minutes to maze our way through the games.”
“Um, no, you don’t get to pause after saying blood or my assistant and you sure as hell aren’t allowed to use maze as a verb within that same traumatic paragraph.”
“Oh please, I could maze my way through anything.” I gave him the middle finger and smiled at his irritation. “Now follow the rest of the teams and let’s grab a map.”
“They have maps?”
Laminated, most likely if I was a betting person.
“Um…” I started walking away from him, I needed air that wasn’t consumed with the way he smelled and the memories that came with it. “Genius, I’m pretty sure if there’s a maze they have a map.” Idiot. I kept that part to myself and by the time we met the rest of the group at the elevators, it was to hear Max shout.
“And there will be no maps.” He announced loudly.
Ace snorted behind me. I swear I heard I told you so in that short, one second snort.
I elbowed him in the ribs and earned a grunt, only to realize it wasn’t Ace. I quickly looked to my left, he waved and grinned.
“Oh my gosh,” I whispered and looked down at the guy’s nametag. “Deacon!” Didn’t need to yell his name, but apparently that’s what came out of my mouth, a pathetic yell right in his face. “I’m so sorry, I thought it was someone more evil standing behind me.”
Ace rolled his eyes from his spot a few feet away.
Deacon grinned down at me. His eyes were all wrong though, they were brown not green, not that I was comparing. I wasn’t crazy. “I mean, I guess I can be evil if that’s your—“
“—And we’re done.” Ace grabbed me by the elbow and pulled me next to him.
“Hey.” I jerked away from him. “Don’t be an ass. He was nice.”
Ace’s eyebrows shot up his forehead. He lowered his voice. “I’m sorry. Did you see his face? Serial killer written all over him, probably buys extra ice just in case he needs to keep a body cold so he can chop it up and put it into the freezer without it going bad.”
I craned my head to the side. “At the risk of sounding crazier than you, does freezing the body make the cutting easier?”
He narrowed his eyes like he’d seen things. “I mean, I don’t know. I just notice that in the documentaries they keep the bodies fresh.”
I nodded. Kind of made sense. “Like fish.”
“Exactly like fish.” He agreed quickly. “But I guess, not the same.”
