Page 116 of Betting on the Brainiac

I walk to the window and scratch the top of Tabitha’s head. The more I think about it, the angrier I begin to feel. He needed the money too much to tell me the truth. That’s what it always came down to. Money. Money and the way people who are supposed to care about me use it as a lever, button, or string depending on what they want me to do.

Oliver lets the silence stretch, but at last he says my name. “Mads? You okay?”

“I thought if I ever found out who the masked guy was that I would be ready to think about life past a third date. A relationship. Something. I’m not even sure what. And for a minute down there, when I realized it was you, I was . . .”

“Angry?”

I turn to stare at him. “Happy. For a split second, I washappy.” It almost physically hurts to spit the word out.

The stress lines around his mouth ease. “You were?”

“Past tense. Not now.”

The lines deepen again. “Is there anything I can do to take us back to that split second and keep us there? The split second when you were happy it was me? Because I’m so happy it’s you.”

I lean against the windowsill. “I had a meltdown this morning. Went to the club, danced it out like I was fighting an army by myself. Then I had an epiphany. I hate epiphanies.”

“Would it help if I told you mine?”

“I don’t know.”

He studies me and his body language shifts. He stands and slides his hands into his pockets. His shoulders are back, his feet braced slightly apart, chin up, his eyes not leaving mine. He is claiming all his space, and everything about his stance says he’s comfortable in it. “Here it is, Madison. I’m so into you, and I don’t want to hide it anymore. I was so into you before that night ever happened, and I fall harder every day. I didn’t want you to feel responsible for that, so I avoided you to keep from makingit your problem. But here’s what I know. I can’t hide from you anymore, and I don’t want to. I was coming over tonight to tell you. I don’t need you to do anything about it. I just wanted you to know.”

It’s so Oliver. So him to keep it from me because he’s trying to make my life easier. And as mad as I am about that, I can also see how he’s tried hard to make sure he never put me in the same position again.

That, as it turns out, was all me.

“Epiphanies always end up being so much work,” I say. “By the time I left the club, I’d put in my notice. Then I had to come home and have a long heart-to-heart with Ruby. I had to tell her that I had fallen for you.”

His gaze sharpens.

“You, Oliver. Not the guy in the mask. All without kissing you.”

“You almost did this morning,” he says. “And I almost died.”

I almost smile. “I felt pretty bad about that for a while. But in hindsight, you deserved it.”

“Sorry, no,” he says, his voice stripped of humor. “Having you wrapped around me, offering me everything I could ever want from you in a whiskey voice, knowing I had no right to take it? It’s a special kind of hell. Is that what any kitten rescuer deserves?”

I don’t answer. I have no words. Also, I suddenly have a strong need to climb him like a tree.

He senses the energy shift, and sweet, biddable Oliver gets a gleam in his eye that I have never seen before. He prowls a few steps forward.

“Stop,” I say. He does, but I sense his coiled energy. “We married each other for money, Oliver. We’ll never be able to tell if these feelings are real or circumstance. That’s the other thing I told Ruby. I will always have that doubt.”

Oliver stands there, quiet for several long moments. “The split second of happiness you had, is it because you got access to your trust when we exchanged our Slurpee keychains?”

“No.”

“Could anyone convince you otherwise?”

Could anyone convince me this sense of being home anytime I’m with him is about a legal contract? I meet his eyes. “No.”

“Then why can’t that be true for me too? Because it is. I’m pretty sure I fell the second you corrected me about that volcano.”

I smile in spite of myself, but then it fades. “I want to believe you.”

He pulls a hand from his pocket and holds it out, palm up, empty. “If you have a choice, and this hand is proof by kiss”—he holds out the other one—“and this one is actual evidence that I did not marry you for money, which do you take?”

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