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“I know,” I said softly. A loamy scent was filling the air around us now. It was about to rain.

She turned her narrowed gaze back at me. “I don’t understand. You came here and played along with my father’s lies for over a month,” she said indignantly. “Like Buddy. You said you found his tank in the Wastelands rubble, but you just went and bought it, right? And you didn’t fish him out of the water. They just had him at some sort of store for pets, I presume?”

“Yeah.”

She threw her hands up. “So why? Why did you play along with all the lies? Why didn’t you just tell me the truth about everything from the start?”

“I tried. You wouldn’t listen. You thought I was sent by the Devil to test you, remember? I had to take it slow. Introduce a few new ideas here and there. Let you start to figure things out yourself.”

“Oh.” Her face softened slightly. Then her eyes hardened again. “But why did you come to live here, Mason? I don’t understand that. You obviously don’t believe any of the stuff my father says.”

“After my first visit here a few months ago, I was suspicious, but I had no proof. Nothing solid. So I decided to try and join. Gather everything I could. Then I could save you. The others, too.”

She sniffed and wiped her face again as a raindrop fell on her cheek. “So… this thing between us. Was it ever real? Or did you just need to get me on your side to help you get evidence so you could take down the men here and save us all?”

“I…”

She held up a hand again, refusing to let me get a word in edgewise until she’d spoken her piece. “You told me why you came back and joined. But you haven’t said why you came to visit in the first place. What was that about? Surely not because you wanted to save me or anyone else. You didn’t even know what was going on back then.”

I sighed. Without the vitamin pills blurring her mind, she was sharp as a tack. Nothing got by her anymore.

“I’ll admit I didn’t come here in the first place with the purest of intentions, Jolie,” I began. “If you must know the truth, it was a sort of bet.”

“A bet?” She shook her head. “What do you mean?”

“A friend of mine bet me I couldn’t sleep with one of the most unattainable women on the planet. I remembered you. I knew you were here, and I—”

Her hand cracked across my face, the slap as loud as a clap. My head reeled backward from the surprise, and I touched my hand to my stinging cheek. I could tell there would be a welt left behind from how hard she hit me. “I deserved that,” I muttered.

“So you just came here to seduce me,” she hissed. “All the things you said… they were all…”

Now she was crying again, her words trailing off as her shoulders shook with sobs. Tears slid down her cheeks, tracing the dried lines from her earlier weeping and mixing with the fat droplets falling from the sky. The rainfall had turned from a drizzle to a light shower now, and her white nightdress darkened with moisture as she shivered.

“Listen,” I said, wrapping my jacket around her shoulders. “I know I didn’t come here with the best intentions. But when I saw you and realized what was happening here, that all changed. Immediately.”

“I don’t believe you,” she muttered.

“Jolie, I came back for you. Getting into this commune was one of the hardest fucking things I’ve ever had to do, but I did it for you. I’d do it again. I’d do anything to have you in my life.”

“Why?” she said, eyes still narrowed with distrust.

I rubbed my jaw. “Because from the second I saw you, I felt something. All those things I’ve said to you about how I feel… it’s all true. I know it hasn’t been long, and I didn’t exactly come here with the intention of falling for someone, but that’s what happened. I’m falling for you, Jolie.”

That was the raw truth. Seeing Jolie for the first time in eleven years hit me like a thunderbolt all those months ago. Like getting shot through the heart by fucking Cupid or something. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her since.

“You’re falling for me,” Jolie said. “What does that mean?”

“It means I’m pretty fucking sure I love you, baby girl.”

“Pretty fucking sure,” she repeated slowly. “I don’t know if that’s—”

“I love you. I do,” I said, cutting her off. “Look, I’m not good at saying all this stuff. Never have been. I’m sorry.”

“You love me,” she whispered.

“Yes. I know what I did was fucked up, and I’ll do anything to make it up to you. But I never lied about how I felt. How I feel.”

Her eyes were wide as I spoke, luminous in the moonlight. She pushed back a strand of hair and stood up on her tiptoes. “Show me,” she whispered.

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