Page 34 of Take You

Fox looked confused at my question. “Is it what? The tip of the iceberg? Going to get worse? You know what we have planned. You tell me.”

“No. I meant is it perfect? She was so scared and upset.”

“I’m sorry, is this some kind of trick question?” He folded his arms across his chest, and the anger flowing through his body was palpable. “She’s supposed to feel that way right now. She deserves everything that’s coming to her and more.”

He stepped into my personal space, thrusting his face into mine. “Whatever fear or confusion she’s feeling right now, do you think that’s anything compared to what I felt walking into that room that day and finding what I found? Do you think it’s even an infinitesimal fraction of what my parents felt when they received the call?” His veins popped in anger.

“You remember that my mom could barely function for years afterward, right? And that it cost my parents their marriage? Actually, it cost us our entire family? Not to mention our mental health and emotional wellbeing. Do you think what she’s feeling now, and what I’m going to make her feel, come anything close to what Jules felt in those final moments?”

“No. I just meant—”

“Fuck you. You know what she did and how the knock-on effect ruined my life, my whole family’s lives, and yet you still feel sorry for her, just because she has a pretty face and a tight pussy.”

“I don’t feel sorry for her.”

“Well then, what do you feel?”

“Nothing.” Total lie.

“Jesus Christ, what the fuck is wrong with you, K?”

“What do mean, what’s wrong with me? Nothing.”

“There’s clearly something enough to make you stand there and repeatedly lie to my face.”

“I’m not—”

He held his hand up, cutting me off. “This is me you’re talking to. Don’t even fucking bother. I can read you like a picture book. Everything you’ve said since the moment you denied feeling sorry for Rose was total fiction.”

“It wasn’t. Not really. I don’t feel sorry for her, or anything else out of line, but there was chemistry there; of course there was. There needed to be—this entire scheme hinged on her and me, and then the three of us, hitting it off, remember? Had there been no chemistry, the whole plan would have been dead in the water. I was just following the strategy.”

He never needed to know that we’d hit it off better than either of us could have imagined—way better. In any case, the fact that she and I had connected so well had surely oiled the wheels of the process, though I doubted very much that he would have seen it that way.

He narrowed his eyes as he stared me down, and I could almost hear the moving parts of his oversized brain putting the pieces together. “That’s it? You’re just following the plan?”

“Of course, but while we’re on the subject, don’t think I didn’t see how you looked at her. You might want to step out of that glass house before you start throwing accusatory stones at me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly what it sounds like it means. I have eyes. And I know you as well as you know me. Are you going to stand there and tell me you didn’t have a vibe for her as well?”

“I wouldn’t say ‘vibe’, but you have to remember that I crushed on her hard for years.”

“Until she ruined your life,” I reminded him.

“Yeah, but seeing her again, took me right back to being that sad kid with the perma-boner for a girl who didn’t think he was fit to breathe the same air she did.”

“Jesus.” What an epic clusterfuck.

“Exactly. So imagine how I felt. I was spinning the fuck out, the whole time.”

“No shit. Like I said multiple times that night, you seemed a ‘little off’, to me at least. Maybe she didn’t notice, but I couldn’t see past it.”

“Hmm… either that, or if she did pick up on it, she didn’t care. She was down for whatever we had to give, one way or the other.

Which, like you say, was the main thing. We just needed her to be into us for this to work. She was, and it did, so that’s all that matters—not all the psychobabble around it.”

“True.” It was true, yet something still didn’t sit right with me about the whole scenario, though I couldn’t quite pin down exactly what.

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