But she’s here and she’s mine.
All mine.
And even though I would prefer it if we could spend our days together, everyone knows that absence makes the heart grow fonder. So every night she will come home to me, excited about her day, wanting to know about mine, and we will take the nightly meal together, and sleep in our little cottage, and wake up in each other’s arms each morning.
Just like a real couple.
Yeah. My life is going pretty damn good.
I light up the rest of the candles, then walk to the door and turn around, taking in the scene.
It’s nice.
Pie’s going to love it.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN – PIE
I turn away from the lab door and look out the window again, trying not to cry. I’m happy for Pia. I am. She’s been living in the wrong world her entire life and it’s great that she now feels at home.
I love it.
I want this for her.
But. Am I not allowed to want things for me too?
There are good things in this new life. Pell, for one. Just thinking about him makes me relax a little. He feels like my home base now. And I miss him. I wish he could be here with me because, to be honest, I could get used to this place too. I could be happy here, I think. I fit in, at least. But without Pell I’m adrift again. And I know that it’s only been weeks since I first stumbled into Saint Mark’s, and a lot of that was really stressful, but Pell was there. He was grumpy in the beginning, but after I went on the date with Russ Roth and came home crying, I saw that other side to him. The protective side. The hidden side. There’s a lot more to him than meets the eye. And I barely know anything about his past. But I want to know. I want to know all of it. I think I love him. Like… for real love him.
And now stupid Tarq comes in and lays all this princess shit on me, telling me I’m his?
And ya know what the worst thing is? He’s really not a dick. He was pretty understanding today. He could’ve gotten aggressive and possessive about his side of the story, but he didn’t. He backed away. He gave me space. And maybe it’s an act. It could be. Maybe tomorrow he’ll change his mind about slowly unraveling my part in things and lay all kinds of disturbing new things on me.
But he didn’t do that today so it’s kinda hard to hate him even if he does own my debt and I am, technically speaking, his slave.
“Oooo!” I look over at the table. “The book!” I had forgotten about it. But Tarq said there were new debts in there and I should look it over before I leave.
That’s not ominous at all.
And just as I was beginning to find a bright side, the dark desperation is back. I slump, ready to monkey-walk. But thinking those words makes me smile and then I actually chuckle.
“Pie,” I tell myself. “You need to grow up now.”
And my internal monologue is right. I do. I’ve been a scatterbrained weirdo for far too long. It’s time to settle into whoever I am and deal with it.
So I walk over to the table, flip open the book, and find my debt.
I have a lot of it now, so I have to flip three pages to get to the new stuff.
“A truck?” I can’t help it, I laugh. It’s so absurd. Someone at home bought a truck. Then I see the hay and it makes sense.
I flip the book closed and then just kind of stand there in the middle of the lab, looking around, but not really seeing anything. I should go home. I think I was dismissed and I need to be back with my people.
But I can’t seem to muster up the energy to go into the hallways and find my way to the lobby where the door is. It all sounds so… exhausting.
“Excuse me.”
I turn around and find Luciano standing in the doorway. “Oh. Hey.”
“Tarq mentioned that you’d come looking for the door soon. And I waited, but you didn’t show up.”