“Stop,” she said tightly. “Just stop, okay? I know I have positive qualities, Zafir, of course I do. Just like I know that I’m antisocial and abrasive and occasionally boring, and utterly inflexible, and—and not perfect. Not even close. I’m trying, here, but don’t get your hopes up. I’m not going to turn into someone else.” She hunched her shoulders, focused on the sheets in front of her—but she couldn’t stop sneaking desperate glances at Zaf from the corner of her eye. Watching his face fall at her words, even though it hurt her. Like picking a scab.
Some distant part of her brain pointed out the sudden changes in him, a clinical list: He’s stiff. He’s worried. He’s not smiling anymore. He’d been smiling all fucking morning, even when they talked about the hardest thing he’d ever gone through—but she’d just wiped the happiness clean off his face. She was fucking up already, acting like this, but she couldn’t make herself relax.
“I don’t want you to be someone else,” he said firmly, but she caught the barest edge of panic in his voice, too. “That’s what I’m saying, Danika. I—” He hesitated, then forged on. “I love you as you are. Exactly as you are.”
Her thoughts slammed to a stop. “What?” she said weakly. Or maybe her voice just sounded weak over the roar of her pulse in her ears.
He eyed her steadily. “I think you heard me, sweetheart.”
Her mind stuttered over various explanations and couldn’t find a single one that seemed reasonable. She opened her mouth with no idea what would come out, choking on a tide of anxious fear before croaking, “How?”
“I—what?” Beside her, Zaf looked painfully uncertain.
“How could you love me?” Because now she’d managed the question, she realized it was the right one to ask. The only one to ask. “When would you even get the chance to start? I mean, I know I’m a good time, don’t get me wrong.” Her attempt at a laugh came out disturbingly bitter. “But I’ve spent the last month pushing you away, using you for sex, and boring you to death with various work-based neuroses, so when, exactly—?”
“Stop it.” She could see he was trying to stay calm—but she also knew him well enough to see the tension in his jaw, hear the slight edge to his voice. “You’ve spent the last month making me happy, making me come more than I thought was humanly possible, and carrying out a ridiculous scheme just to help me and my business. And you really don’t see why I might love you? Sweetheart, loving you is the easiest thing I’ve ever done.”
Loving you is the easiest thing I’ve ever done. If only she was ridiculous enough to believe that, despite all evidence to the contrary. If only it sounded remotely like a fact instead of a fairy tale. But she wasn’t, and it didn’t, and her heart—her heart didn’t just fall. It collapsed.
“Oh God,” she breathed. Realization was finally dawning, slow and terrible, like a bloodred sun in some postapocalyptic nightmare. She scrambled to her feet, dragging the sheets with her.
“Danika, whatever you’re thinking right now, I can tell by your face that it’s absolutely wrong.”
Except she wasn’t wrong, because it all made sense. This was the only logical explanation. “I know what you’re doing, Zafir.”
He stared, apparently at a loss. Because of course he wasn’t doing this on purpose. He’d never do a thing like this on purpose. “What—?”
“We’ve been faking it, and sleeping together, and blurring all kinds of lines. So we both—we both got confused, and did this.” She gesticulated wildly, as wild as the panicked rush of her pulse. “And now you’re romanticizing everything, trying to turn us into some epic love story, trying to make me something I’ve never been—”
“Are you serious?” he demanded.
“Don’t act like I’m not making sense,” she snapped, searching the floor for her clothes. “Just—just ask yourself for a second if what you’re feeling is really about me or if it’s part of the . . . the story you want to weave for yourself.” And then tell me. Tell me the truth, and make it good, and make me believe it, and then I can calm down and get back into bed and stop—stop feeling like I’m dying—
Zaf stood with a curse, stabbing his legs into a pair of sweatpants. “Danika, the first night we slept together I left your place in fucking knots because I knew I had feelings for you and I couldn’t see how it would ever work out. I thought the best I could hope for was just getting over you. You think that’s the kind of thing I romanticize? It’s not like you’re the easiest option!”
She stopped in her tracks and turned to stare at him. “You’re right,” she whispered, because if she spoke any louder she might . . . she might cry. “I’m not the easiest option at all.”
He looked stricken. “I didn’t mean it was a bad thing! It’s the exact fucking opposite. I am not just stumbling into this.” He walked toward her slowly, the way you might approach a wounded animal. They’d woken up together, and he’d told her she was perfect, and that he loved her, and instead of it being the sweet, romantic moment he deserved, she’d turned it into this.
Jesus fucking Christ, couldn’t she have just said thank you and made him some coffee?
“I love you,” he repeated softly. “And it’s not in spite of this or that. It’s not because I don’t see you as you are. It’s not because I want you to be someone else. I just . . . love you.”
He didn’t, of course. He couldn’t. He was deluded. And she wanted to be deluded with him, she wanted that so fucking badly, but—but it wouldn’t last. It never did.
Would Zaf still think
