I was completely lost for words. It must have been the champagne that was making him talk like this, because he sounded like he was losing his mind.
This felt too close; too comfortable. The last time I felt like this, I got hurt.
My eyes darted over to Mason. His scowl was deepening.
“Well? Did I nail it?” Crim asked Oliver. “Oh wait, I’ve got to sum it up. You’re miserable because you stack layers of work in between you and every other person around you, so you don’t have to be vulnerable. But Charlie fucks with that. Charlie wormed his way in,” Crim said with a smile.
“Fine,” Oliver said, swallowing hard. “You got me, just stop talking you crazy son of a bitch.”
Oliver retreated to the corner of the tub, crouching down, his green eyes the exact color of the water. He nursed his champagne with an almost inaudible slurp.
“Who’s next?” Crim asked. “That’s one out of three, Mason.”
I was just about to open my mouth to volunteer, but Mason stepped up. “Do me next. I don’t know how you were able to say all that about Oliver, but there must be some trick I’m missing. Go ahead and try to pull the same shit with me. Just try it.”
“Okay Pretty Boy,” Crim said without missing a beat. “How about this. You don’t feel like you deserve to be loved.”
“That could go for any one of us. That much is obvious,” he said, letting Crim’s words roll off of him.
“Oh, but yours goes deeper than that. You’ve been rejecting love from a young age. I’m guessing eight or nine? Nine. At nine years old, your parents stopped loving each other, and they stopped loving you. There’s alcohol there — lots of it,” Crim said, watching Mason’s face carefully.
There was a tightness to Mason’s shoulders, and I watched as a bead of sweat rolled down from his temple to his jaw.
“Daddy drank. Daddy hit you,” Crim continued. “Your parents were together because of the media. Oh, how would it look if the Vayne family split up. The scandal would be too much to bear — so they stayed together. You were raised by your actor parents, acting as though they loved each other, and you, in public, but in private you were neglected. That was too much to bear for you— there’s a big crack in your history around fifteen. What was it, Mason? Suicide attempt? You came back,” Crim said.
I half-expected Mason to lunge at him, to wrap his hands around Crim’s throat in the water, but he was stunned in the same way Oliver was. It was like he’d turned into a statue as he waited for Crim to finish.
I wondered if he was trying hard not to give any subtle body language hints away.
“You died and then came back. You woke up in the hospital all alone — it felt like a piece of you was missing. For a while, you wondered if you were still human.”
Mason shifted uncomfortably. I watched his pulse flutter in his neck.
“Then you learned that the only way you felt human is if you felt like you were in control. And what better way to feel like you were in control than to go searching for everyone’s secrets? It was easy for you, since you’re such a looker. People just tell you things,” Crim shrugged.
Mason’s nostrils were flaring, and I could tell he was trying very hard to remain still.
“You won’t let anyone close to you because it makes you feel human again when you have sex. Your shields come down. And here’s the best part— you love feeling human. You just hate that you do. You want to fantasize and trick yourself into feeling like you’re something more. Something important; something worth loving. But deep down, you feel like you don’t deserve it.”
“Shut up,” Mason said, his voice flat.
“You agreed to these terms,” Crim reminded him. “I’m not finished yet. You have this tether to Charlie that I’m seeing — oh, you two fucked? Wow, that’s a really impressive bond…”
“I said shut up,” Mason hissed.
“Oh, did I touch a nerve, Pretty Boy? Is being vulnerable scary for you? Is that why you ran out on Charlie? Because he touched that human part of you?”
My heart was racing in my chest as my eyes snapped back and forth from Crim to Mason.
“You done?” Mason asked, his face contorted into an expression of pure loathing.
I could feel the heat of desire coming off of him, and I wondered if Mason felt it too — that irresistible feeling of being known, of being truly seen, that Crim gave off. It was impossible to miss, like trying to ignore the light of the sun.
“Okay, I’ll take that to mean I’ve gotten two out of three now,” Crim said with a smirk. Then he set his purple eyes on me. “Now it’s Charlie’s turn.”
I gulped and took a step forward, submitting myself to this… otherworldliness. Stepping up to him was like tipping off a diving board. I knew I would hit the water, I just didn’t know how far away the board was from the surface of the water.
“Charlie. Sweet Charlie,” Crim said with a smirk, draping his arms on the edge of the tub. His fingers were curled around the stem of the champagne flute. “Where do I even begin with you?”
I felt anxiety swirl in my gut along with a strange, butterfly-like sensation that was fluttering around in there. I wanted him to really see me, but I was also terrified of what he might find.
His purple eyes looked deeply into mine, and the image of Hazel suddenly came to mind.
“You, Charlie, went through some shit back in the day,” he started.
I hoped and prayed he didn’t say the details of everything out loud — the things those kids did to me. The humiliation they made me suffer, and that thing that I did for someone who promised they’d make it go all
