“I know you’re not g*y.” His voice carries a bit as he punches that sentence out with a tongue made of steel, his face so tight you could turn it into a drum.
“I guessed as much. It shouldn’t have been hard to figure out.”
He makes a sour face and glances at an imaginary watch he isn’t wearing. Either he really does have another meeting or he’s in a hurry to be done with me, and the latter feels like ice picks in my gut.
“Shannon, I don’t know what your game is. Maybe the other night was all acting—”
“No! I swear! No game!” An ominous layer of straight-up terror begins to cover me like a blanket that brings no comfort.
“You’re paid to act,” he says viciously. “Act. You’re paid to pretend, right? To go into a business setting and pretend to be something you aren’t, all while observing every nuance, every detail. You’re a chameleon who changes to meet the expectations of the people in that setting, with the ruthless efficiency of an international spy.” His breath is heavy and full of anger. “You’re quite proud of it.”
“But not with you,” I plead. “Never with you.”
“How am I supposed to know? You’re a bit like the boy who cried wolf, honey.”
My head ricochets back. Honey. That’s what he called me in the hospital.
“You told that blowhard’s mother you’re just dating me to close a deal. Well, you did.” He motions toward the closed door. “My dad just gave you a plum new assignment. Your company makes more money, we get a crack corporate spy, and everyone goes home happy and satisfied.”
He’s baring his teeth now in a smile that is so ferociously barren of compassion or caring that it mesmerizes me. I can’t turn away, but at the same time I want to curl up into a ball and cry.
“You really think that about me?” I whisper quietly. Mercifully, the tears are behind a wall of summoned self-righteousness. I need it right now. I know every word he says is dead on in its own twisted way, but I can’t let it be true, because there’s a larger Truth with a capital T right next to his smaller truth.
“What else am I supposed to think? You told me yourself in the lighthouse that you’re ‘shopping for a billionaire.’ You told your ex-boyfriend’s mother that you’re dating me to close a business deal, and some screwed-up game of grown-up telephone ends on Twitter with a high-society wannabe trying to embarrass me on a social media platform so silly it uses bird metaphors.”
I snort nervously.
Pity fills his eyes. Oh, no. This is end game. I know this look, because it’s the same expression Steve had when he dumped me. No. No. No.
“I can’t do this, Shannon.”
No. Please.
“You’re just too…much.”
Great. So he lied to me about loving my abundant body.
“Too many layers to tease through, too many what-ifs, too many half-truths and un-truths—”
Wait! He’s not slamming my curves. He’s slamming my integrity! Hold on there, buddy. You can make fun of my fat (which he didn’t), but—
“That is bull,” I thunder back. A receptionist at a desk at the end of the hall cranes her neck forward, peering at us. Like a turtle, she snaps it back, hidden.
When Steve dumped me I just sniffled and took it, curled into myself on a park bench near my apartment, sitting on the lawn of a local college. No way am I cowering now. If this is over, it’ll be over on my terms. Or, at least, I won’t go down without a defense. A fight.
Words.
“There’s bull here, all right.” He’s breathing hard, and if this were a sitcom or a Nora Ephron movie this is the part where we’d shout at each other and then he’d grab my face, hard, and kiss me like I’ve never been kissed before, until my muffled protests are drained out of me by the sudden clarity that only hot lips can provide.
“You spend your life trying to get everyone else to believe you’re something you’re not, Shannon. And when you’re not play-acting, you’re begging for validation. You change yourself to become whatever it is you think everyone wants you to be.” He runs an angry hand through his thick hair, the dark waves spreading across his forehead as pained eyes finally show me a tiny bit of the tempest inside him.
A mail clerk trundles by with a squeaky cart. We’re blocking the hall. He stops and waits, staring dumbly at us, one finger in the air like he’s about to interrupt in the geekiest way possible. He reminds me of Mark J., and that? THAT fact is the one that makes the tears almost pour out, because it reminds me of the day I met Declan, of how Mr. Sex in a Suit looked that morning, so crisp and unknown, and how in the short expanse of one month I could go from hot, liquid lust for a guy I don’t know to this.
Arguing in a hallway at work about whether I’m sincere or not.
“You don’t know me.” It’s the only sentence I can form right now.
“You didn’t give me a chance! I took a chance on you, and you just—” Some primal emotion without name blinds me. “Which Shannon am I supposed to date—the one lying in the men’s room, the one lying at the credit union, the one lying about her allergy?” His voice breaks.
Screech. The mail dude nudges the cart, then jumps, like he’s scared himself.
I scooch out of the way and the squeaky cart rolls on by.
“I didn’t lie about my allergy! And what the hell do you mean you ‘took a chance’ on me?” I can think of plenty of ways to interpret that remark, and not a single one is good.
His voice feels like a sharp blade being dragged just gently enough across my throat to leave a scrape. “You lied by omission.”
Declan’s lips are tight and his eyes are anywhere but on me. There’s nothing I can say, is there? He’s decided in his own rat brain that he’s done with me. All this “which Shannon are you?” crap is just that—crap. He’s hiding something, and it’s pretty damn obvious. To me.
I was good for a screw in the limo and the lighthouse and…well, for that, but I’m not good enough to date in front of Daddy. He’s just like Steve, only the stakes, and dollar signs, are bigger.
Did I mess up? Sure. But his reaction is so utterly out of proportion with the facts.
Plus—I’m done. Done explaining myself to irrational people who seem to care only about proving they’re right. If who I really am doesn’t fit into his image of who I am, then he can go suck it.