“What can I say but… of course, Mr. Bennett.”
And because he was holding my hand, I felt the shiver that sent through him. “I was trying to tell you, I’m not going to try to push you to do anything any more because that’s not how you treat someone you’re interested in. If there’s anything my research has taught me, it’s that you’re not going to respond well to being told what to do.”
“Whoa… we’ve got to step this back a bit. Your research?”
“Nothing you don’t already know I’m up to,” said Axel. I guess research was what we were calling all his creepy stalker antics now.
“And does anyone really respond well to being told what to do?”
“You roll with it just a little too readily,” said Axel. “You want another quick business tip? Don’t deal with someone who is really happy to go along with your game. It’s pure trouble. You’re pure trouble.”
“And yet here you are stroking trouble.”
Axel raised an eyebrow at me. I jerked my head in the direction of his fingers sliding across my hand in a massaging motion. He smirked and didn’t stop.
I tried to shut up and put it together in my head before he told me, but either it was really difficult or my head didn’t want to do that particular puzzle. Axel watched me for a while like he was getting a lot of entertainment out of the situation, and then he put me out of my misery—in one sense, at least.
“I’m trying to tell you I’m listening to you. I’m trying to make sense of what you really need, so I can give that to you.”
“To what end?”
His smile took on a hint of smarm. “I want to have the chance to get to know you better. To find out ‘to what end’.”
I took my hand away a little reluctantly, because I needed it to start counting. “You targeted me because you didn’t want to accept that I had a right to refuse to deal with you. You made me face the stress of having my academic self seem to disappear when I already had exams to worry about. You turned everyone against me when I did not need that stress—”
Axel grabbed both my hands so I couldn’t count any more. “I am not going to accept that. All those other pricks turned against you on their own. They didn’t have to react that way.”
“But you knew there’d be a reaction, or you would never have made that photo in the first place. I can’t imagine you ever would have done a photo like that of Matt with some porn star’s dick pasted on him, would you?”
Axel grimaced. “Why did you have to put that in my head?”
“You wouldn’t do it, because you know as well as I do that it’s a strategy for destroying a woman in particular. It was a very personal violation, and maybe I thought at the time the way to handle it was to act like I didn’t take it that personally, but it felt very personal. When you’re female, you have to work really hard to get anyone to forget, you have to pretend it doesn’t make the slightest difference even when it would be really nice to admit you just had terrible cramps interfering with your work performance and could do with sympathy. But you know if you try that you’ll be judged as if you said you drink the blood of orphans, and at the end of the day, someone will take advantage of your sex to wreck you even though you’re not allowed to use it to protect yourself.”
Axel looked like he wanted to get away, but he didn’t seem to want to let go of my hands e
ither. “This is a bit much, Aileen. I just—”
“No, you need to hear this. You want to ‘get to know me better’, then the first thing you need to know is why all those things you did to me were so awful. Why they make it so hard for me to think about ever trusting you.”
He bobbed his head rapidly, a notebook and a cute cap away from looking like he was restarting his studying career instead of already ending it. “Okay. And if I do a good job of understanding that, then…?”
“Then, an apology would be nice. But I won’t expect one. I’ll be happy if we can just part on reasonably good terms and not have to worry about one another ever again. I know you’ve got my dad tangled up in your stuff, but if he doesn’t do what you want it’s on you to get him off your ‘bankroll’. I’m going to be busy with my own job, so I won’t care for the money.”
“Your…” He shook his head. “That’s not fair. You need to give me a chance to make this up to you.”
“I believe we’ve been over this. I don’t need to engage with you at all.”
His smile made me feel the same way inside I had when he kissed me, bubbles rising… but then I remembered how that had turned out, all the degrading details, and I was hardened again when he said, “I’m going to make you want to engage with me by the end of this night.”
“I’m not going to give you any of my attention after we’re done talking here.”
At the poetically perfect moment, Mrs. Hitchens’s voice echoed across the space. She was standing on a small stage, gesturing everyone towards the tables.
“Well,” I cut off something Axel was about to say, “I haven’t found my table yet, so I’ll be off.” The one disappointment about my repurposed dress was that it didn’t have the stiff billowing A-line some of my peers had opted for, so my flouncing capabilities were greatly reduced. But the little flash of Axel’s face I got as I departed suggested that my attitude was doing the necessary job well enough.
Chapter Nineteen: Axel
She was starting a new job? How had I missed that?