“Things were so much easier when you were my boss,” I tell him. “I should never have let you think it could be more than a kinky work relationship.”
“You didn’t let me do anything. I found you, and my heart went rampant.”
I squeeze my bear so hard I’m practically choking him. “You can’t say things like that,” I whisper fiercely. “It’s not fair.”
Stian shifts a little closer. “I know how strong she is, that other part of you. I’m not going to pretend that I’m stronger than her. But I promise you that no matter what she tells you about me and how I feel about you, she’s wrong. She wants you for herself, and I’m not going to let her take you from me.”
The one person she’s most cruel to after me is Stian, and hearing her tell me that he thinks I’m disgusting, greedy, lazy and stupid is incredibly painful.
I shake my head. “If we face her, she might make me say and do the most horrible things to you.”
“Maybe she will, but I’m not afraid of her.”
My parents have to love me and forgive me, and even through the worst of times I know that they’ll always be there for me. I don’t want to hurt them, but I know I do. I wonder sometimes if they miss their other Lacey, the daughter I was before I got sick.
I sniffle and rub my nose. “I was a happy child. Can you believe that? I don’t know why everything changed.”
My other hand is in my lap, and Stian reaches out and tentatively touches his pinkie finger against mine. I look at his large hand laying alongside my small one.
“When was the last time you were totally and completely happy? What were you doing? It can be anything.”
I think for a long time. “I was thirteen or fourteen, and on holiday with mum and dad in Singapore. The awful thoughts about my weight had started, but because we were far from home, I’d somehow left them behind me. There was an enormous fish tank in the lobby filled with tropical fish. I would watch them for hours. They were so peaceful. I was happy then, doing nothing. Just watching them swim.”
Stian reaches down and picks up a stuffed animal that’s laying on the floor. He examines it carefully, turning it over in his big fingers. It’s a dolphin, its blue fur almost gray from age and washing. “Did you know there’s an aquarium in London? Along the river, not far from the Eye. Why don’t I take you there?”
“You’re a grown man. You don’t want to go to the aquarium.”
“Are you kidding? I love fish. Who doesn’t like fish?”
Maybe he does. We might even have an okay time, and I could get home before I needed to eat my next meal. But then what? There are a thousand things we couldn’t do together, and eventually he’d feel every single one of them. He’d become frustrated. He’d grow to hate me.
“I can’t go to normal places with you. Restaurants and bars and picnics. That’s impossible for me.”
“Do you think I care about that? You’re what I want, Lacey. If you do your homework at my house while I look after my plants, isn’t that wonderful? Isn’t that perfect?”
Tears spring into my eyes, because what he’s describing could be wonderful. “But why would you settle for that?”
He looks up from the stuffed dolphin, shaking his head and smiling as if he can’t believe why I’m asking that. “Because I love you. And don’t you fucking dare call that settling.”
“But you can’t,” I say in a cracked whisper. “Love me.”
He reaches out and caresses my face. This was just supposed to be a short, kinky office relationship. He was never meant to fall in love with me.
I was never meant to fall in love with him.
“Hey,” he whispers, pressing his forehead against mine. “You can’t tell me what to do. I’m the runemaster, remember?”
Despite everything, I give a gulpy sort of laugh. He puts the dolphin down and pulls me into his arms. “You’ve got to stop ruling things out for yourself, älskling. If you love me too, then we’ll find a way to make it work. Don’t you think I can do that?”
I look into his eyes. My control freak. I twist my fingers through his, feeling their warmth. I’ve tried for so long to force myself into the right shape for the world, so it accepts me. Stian’s used to bending everything out of shape to accommodate him. But not everything wants to bend, and if it doesn’t, he lets it go.
Except me.
“Sometimes I think you can do anything,” I whisper.
“Well, then,” he says, brushing his lips against mine, “you should just go ahead and let me love you.”
I want that, more than anything. I hold my breath, wondering if I dare. I can feel her circling in my mind like a witch on a broom, and she’s screaming at the top of her lungs that I belong to her. Stian and I might fail at this. The world might not ever be the right shape for us to fit into it together. We might bend so far that we break.