Page 68 of My Irresistible Enemy

I had to close my eyes before I could ask the next question. “Did we—I mean, I didn’t try to—that is, we didn’t…do anything, did we?”

“Jesus, no! What the hell, do you really think I would do that? No.”

I opened my eyes to see Aiden staring at me, looking like I’d mortally offended him. Maybe I had. But I’d needed to ask.

Any other time, any other day, if you’d asked me if I thought Aiden would take advantage of a situation like that, I would have laughed. If Aiden had wanted to hook up, he’d just tell me. He wouldn’t try to trick me into it.

But this wasn’t a normal day or time, and I was way too freaked out to be thinking rationally right now.

“Anyway,” he said after a minute, “the point is that you didn’t die, and you don’t seem like you need to go to the hospital now, so we can concentrate on figuring out what the hell happened instead. Someone must have found a way to give you something, and if we can—”

“No,” I said, surprised by the force of my own voice. I shifted on the bed, scooting away from him. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Aiden, but I really couldn’t bear him trying to touch my shoulder or calm me down right now. “No. I don’t want to do that.”

“What?” He looked baffled. “Why wouldn’t you want to do that?”

“It just—it doesn’t matter, okay?”

“I’m pretty sure that if someone at the festival roofied you, it actually matters a fucking lot. It could be anyone. You don’t want to know who it was, or what the hell they were thinking?”

“No. I don’t care.”

I shuddered. The thought of Aiden going out and playing Nancy Drew, trying to track down the culprit, made me feel even sicker. I didn’t want anyone to know about this. Didn’t even wanthimto know, though it was too late for that now.

Aiden asking questions would only transform this into anevent. Make it linger. Turn it into something else I had to deal with, another fuck-up in a life full of them. I just wanted it to disappear.

“Two seconds ago you were freaking out because you couldn’t remember how you ended up in bed with me, and now you don’t even want to know?” Aiden said.

“That’s not—”

“Or is it justmeyou take issue with? You can excuse being drugged, but you draw the line at having anything to do with me unless it’s—”

“Jesus, can younot?” I was shaking, and I hated that he could see it. “Can you just not, for one second, make everything about you?”

I tried to hold still, tried to clamp down on my body, but I couldn’t stop shivering. Eventually, I just slumped forward, holding my face in my hands. Why couldn’t I get it together?”

“I’m sorry,” Aiden said after a minute. “Really, I am. I didn’t mean to upset you, and I’m not trying to make it about me. I just—”

“It’s fine,” I said. “It’s not your fault, okay? You’re not the one who should be apologizing. I should.”

“What do you have to apologize for?”

“This,” I growled, waving one hand around in a circle. “Me. Everything. Christ, I know this isn’t normal.”

“Dude, who cares about normal?” Aiden said.

“I do.” I looked up at him, begging him to understand what I couldn’t put into words. “Do you have any idea how hard I work at that? At being normal?”

“Why?” His eyebrows rose. “Normal’s boring.”

“Normal is safe!” I exploded. “Normal means you can go about your day without having a fucking nervous breakdown. Normal means you don’t get targeted for—fuck. Never mind. You wouldn’t get it.”

“You think I haven’t been targeted?”

I gave him a long look. “I think there are some experiences that you have missed out on, yes.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“Not really.” I glared at him. He glared back. I sighed. “Look. Thank you for last night. For taking care of me.” It was like swallowing a knife, saying those words, but I did mean them. “I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

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