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“Gentle?” Lace echoes, a tilt to her voice that I don’t appreciate.
Swallowing hard, I draw my free hand up to my throat. My bruises healed while I was gone, and I’ve at least managed to keep from getting new ones, so Lace can, respectfully, shut up. “He knows how to be gentle. That’s more credit than I can give a lot of men.”
“Because you have so much experience with men?” Lace queries.
My nose scrunches as I lean against a pillar, cross one arm under my elbow, and put my back toward Rowan’s mansion. “I have experience skinning them alive.”
Chip’s tone soothes. “Bossette, listen. You’re allowed to like him.”
“I know I’m allowed to like him. I do like him. I’m just not in love with him.”
“We all know that isn’t true, even if one of us is still working through her denial.”
“Chip. I am not in love with him. He is in love with me. The only thing I need to do is let him down easy enough that he doesn’t shatter when he hits the ground. That’s it.”
Lace drones, “Uh-huh. Because the big guy is terribly fragile.”
“I wish I’d never started this…” My chest squeezes, and I grimace. “All because I’ve been selfish, he… We never should have met. I, at the very least, never should have taken this angle. Fake fiances, right? What was I thinking?”
“Maybe that the illusion of gentle affection might help heal something in his battered brain and prove to him that being loved without scarring is possible?”
My arm drops to my hip, fingers plastering over the low-cut short-shorts I opted for this morning. After so many days in soft frills, I am desperate to get my walls back up. “Are you relaying my briefing for this project verbatim?”
“I absolutely am doing that,” Chip says.
“Listen,” Lace cuts in again, “we’ll be back from Pittsburgh soon, then we can all get ice cream and sort through your feelings, all right?”
“All I need is for him to understand that we’re ending our ‘relationship’ after the Maxim Project is settled.”
“Dearheart, you don’t have to run from everything that you care about,” Chip murmurs. “I promise you will be okay.”
I flinch. “You know what happened last time you said that, Christopher Davis Walker.”
“Briar Janice Rosanera.” His tone solidifies. It takes one, drawn-out second for me to realize I’m on the verge of tears. A light breeze could tip me off the edge. “Things may not turn out the way you want them to, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be okay in the end. If they aren’t okay, it’s not the end.”
Great. Fantastic. Another motivational quote for Rowan’s poster collection.
“Are you hearing me, Briar?” Chip asks.
My jaw locks. “Sure.”
“Whether it’s today or tomorrow, or next year, everything will be okay. You are not alone.”
“I don’t need a pep talk, Christopher.”
“And I don’t need to be full-named. We’ll talk more when you’re ready to talk more, lovely. Right now, we have a caterer to check in with, so take this time to recognize that it’s not the end of the world.”
The connection cuts, and the second I realize I’m alone, it certainly feels like I’ll always be.
Leaning my head against the pillar behind me, I locate a wasp nest on the ceiling and stare at it until it blurs. “I am not in love with Rowan,” I whisper to myself.
Falling in love would be unproductive. Dangerous. I’ve always believed that people choose who they love. It’s not an involuntary act. Loving someone is intentional. Just like most things. Emotions are based on chemicals, and understanding those chemical smoothies makes dealing with them that much easier.
Love is just norepinephrine, dopamine, oxytocin. A dozen others. And so many of those little pieces don’t even cause the depth of care that should come with loving someone. They incite lust. Desire. More unproductive, dangerous things.
I’m trained to exploit the brain’s natural, chemical reactions to kindness and meaningless touch.
It’s just exceedingly rare that my marks respond with equal manipulation.
