Page 60 of Beyond Reason

I felt bad that he’d been alone for so long while I’d been caught in some limbo, while I’d been… Marshall Lister.

And beneath that guilt, something ugly twisted in my chest.

What if he’d met Marshall? Would he still have recognized some echo of me in his smile, in the way he laughed?

Would he have fallen in love with Marshall if he’d had a chance?

As much as I’d kissed him to cut off his tragic poetry before, I pushed away from him now so I could search his face for answers to a question I hadn’t even asked aloud, that he couldn’t have known I was thinking.

“What’s wrong?” I didn’t have to say anything for him to see it written on my face, but now that he’d asked, I didn’t want to bring it up. I didn’t want to say a damn thing.

I didn’t want to know if he thought it was a possibility, even though it wasn’t fair for me to be upset at the prospect of him falling in love with a different version of myself—a softer version.

A safer version.

Except that version was destined to die, too, wasn’t he?

“Nothing.” I cut off my own thoughts. “Nothing’s wrong. I’m just… hungry.” I pushed off him before I had a chance to let myself get lost further in thought, but I softened the sudden abruptness by holding my hand out to him. “Make me breakfast?”

He could tell I was full of shit, obviously, but he was smart enough to let it go. He slipped his fingers into mine and pulled himself up with a soft smile.

“Sure. Whatever you want.”

I wanted to have another small bout of amnesia, because now that I’d thought of it, the image of Axel falling in love with a sweeter version of myself wouldn’t leave my head.

I was being unfair. At least I knew it, and I tried to compensate for it. There was something about being here, about the domestic sweetness of it all. There was something about the way that Axel seemed so content to exist in a world where there wasn’t a threat of violence, a threat of someone hurting either of us. It had felt good before, but now I’d spoiled it with my own thoughts.

That lingering question in the back of my mind that wouldn’t go away, that wouldn’t leave me alone.

It left me swallowing my words more than once when I wanted to snap, when I wanted to just ask him. When I wanted to tell him why I was having a fight with a literal ghost that he’d never met. It didn’t make sense.

And I couldn’t make it go away.

I managed to keep it locked in until we were having dinner, and Axel slid a plate across the table for me with a smile.

“I could get used to this, you know?”

I paused, looking up at him while silently telling myself not to ruin this.

“Being here with you. Being safe.” He paused, too, for just a second, like he was waiting to see if his words would spark anything.

Was this another memory that I didn’t have access to, another thing that he knew and I didn’t?

I wasn’t angry at him about that, but the way he was looking at me told me all of my fears weren’t completely unfounded, that if a man like Marshall Lister had been sitting across the table from him, he’d just smile and nod and thank him for his dinner.

He’d probably call him honey, and talk about adopting kids and a puppy and putting up a fucking white fence.

Shit.

“I mean, we’ve never really been safe, have we?” I tried to keep my voice charming, friendly, and I hated that I recognized my tone. It was the same voice I’d used a hundred times when I was pretending to be a person that I wasn’t.

When I was trying to fit in.

Fuck.

“There’s a first time for everything.” He shrugged with a half-smile, but I noticed that neither of us were touching our plates. Could he sense whatever was boiling just beneath my skin? Those emotions that were so twisted and tangled, so amplified by my sudden and newfound ability to feel them even deeper than I had before?

“I mean, for a while. I’m eventually going to have to get back out there, though.”

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