Page 41 of Never Say Yes To A Stranger

A wrenched breath gets expelled into the hall, and the old farmhouse magnifies it back at me through the wooden door. “Not that. I mean about me. Truly, it’s not that I can’t give you that or that…the contract…I mean, it is, but it’s…I just have nothing left in me but hardness and ice. My heart was shattered when I was pretty much still a kid, at least where my innocence was concerned. I was an adult in body, but my spirit? It took a beating. I’m just—just done with that. I have nothing left to give, even if I wanted to. I know that’s no way to live, but I’ve made a life for myself, and it’s good enough. I’m happy enough. I keep busy, and I bring value to the world through my work.”

“I’ve made a ton of money but because I have zero desire to get married and have children and pass it on. The world doesn’tneed more fucked up people, and I will just mess up as a parent. I know we’re not talking about marriage or children, but even tenderness? I can’t. I’m not one of thoseyou deserve morepeople, but youdodeserve more. You deserve to be free, and you deserve to do what you will with that freedom, which I hope is to find someone worthy of you. Someone completely unlike Aiden and also completely unlike me. I’m not a project worth fixing. I can’t be glued back together. Love is an impossibility, but even anything resembling what that looks like isn’t—”

I have to stop him. It hurts too much to listen to him gasping for breath out there as he pours out the exact thing he thinks he’s not capable of. It’s so awkward, and he’s drowning and hurting.

I rip open the door, and he has enough time and training that he doesn’t fall through, but I think he was standing exactly the way I pictured. My heart pounds. I won’t reach out to him now. I won’t touch him now. But just a few seconds ago, I felt like we were connected. Wood is a vital element. It’s powerful. It’s a living organism even years after it’s turned into something like a door and a frame and a house. Maybe my body heat somehow soaked into it and reached him on the other side. Maybe it was just the slightest comfort.

There were zero masks now. He caught himself before he could fall through the air the open door created, but he couldn’t hide theagonyfrom me. My hand came up like I was going to caress his face. Like my touch alone could make up for years of what the world did to this man and how he has built up thick and icy and cold walls to shut it out. I imagine him curled up in there, in the middle of his ice castle, shivering and plaintive and just trying to make it through another hopeless day, another long night.

“You know that the good guys are always the ones who win in the end?”

“That’s just in books and movies,” he responds. He’s working on getting his face back in order. His eyes. His soul.

I stare back at him, willing him not to retreat back into the stony, impenetrable castle. “Ahh, the language of the masses. Such a terrible thing.”

All that earns me is a grunt. “It’s the truth, though. In real life, the bad guys prosper. There is so much hate and hardness and anger and pain in the world. You know that firsthand.”

I don’t have to say that Aiden made me weary but not defeated. Because we’re not the same person. We didn’t have the same life experiences, and I would never compare myself to another person. We’re all made differently, and it doesn’t mean he’s wrong or that I’m right.

“I think it actually takes far more work to be pissed off and bitter at whatever happened in the past than to remain hopeful,” I say.

He laughs tonelessly. “You’re right. But still, I can’t, and I won’t. I’m not bitter, and I’m not angry. I’ve let that go. I just believe in self-preservation. And I suppose I still hate my birth parents a little, but I can’t wipe that out, no matter how much therapy and money I have.”

He’s done the time and talked to professionals. He’s tried to fix himself. He has, to the point where he can function. This man isn’t like other people. He’s not entirely over the past, but I think he’s made a sort of peace with it. It’s the future, and all the things that haven’t happened yet, that’s the problem. I would say it’s fear, but I know it’s not that simple.

And yet…maybe it is.

“I think fear does nothing but lie to us. I’ve listened to plenty of that over the past ten months, but I just can’t let it be the only thing that’s keeping me together, or I’ll shatter. I can’t let it consume all my energy. I want to absorb goodness from the world and put goodness back in the energy cycle. If you reapwhat you sow, I’d rather be eating tasty vegetables and growing beautiful flowers than eating dung and festering in stinkweed.” I have to stop him before he can say anything, so I quickly add, “Yes, I know, I know. My obsession with dung and butts is showing again.”

He very nearly messes up and cracks a smile. “Is stinkweed real?”

“It is. I think it’s a member of the cabbage family. I have plenty growing around here, though the smell isn’t all that bad. I can’t say it’s ever been a problem for me. Then again, I’m not cooking and eating it, so maybe it only really reeks during that phase.”

“I see,” he says.

Jesus, there it is. Just the lift of one corner of his mouth is so damn sensual that it nearly knocks me backward.

“It’s not just the contract,” he repeats, losing the lip twitch and all the boyish charm that came with it. “It’s ingrained in me. This is my life. This is how Iwantmy life to be. I’ve worked hard to get it to this point.”

“Where nothing can hurt you.”

“Yes.”

That word is a knife so sad and sharply honed that it tears at my insides. I’ve had my whole life stolen from me, yet I’ve never been in such emotional anguish that I had to completely shut down and remain that way for fear that I would be broken otherwise.

I wish only one thing for him, and I need to tell him in a way he understands. There is zero room for error right now. I’m no poet or wordsmith, so there’s about a hundred percent chance I’ll mess this up and throw in a butt analogy.

I want to touch him because what I think he needs most at this moment is human connection, but I don’t, even though my fingertips ache for contact with his skin.

“Beau?” I start, and he stares me down, waiting for me to go on. “I think some hurts are worth it. I think they have to be or the world would just be all horror and sadness. There is goodness, too, for all the bad. I think if you want to be truly happy, you need to be able to be open to the pain and realize that sometimes, no matter how much it hurts, it’s worth it.”

The storm has passed, and he’s already far, far away. I’ve said the wrong thing. I’ve butchered it even without butts or stinkweed or dung. This wasn’t about letting me down; it was about trying to lighten his load, and I failed at that. My insides twist with my own emotionalshitstorm.

Whatever. At least I kept it in my head. He won’t know I thought it. I hope.

“That’s just the problem,” he mutters, sounding far away, even though he’s standing right in front of me and just through the doorway.

Maybe there’s a portal between us I can’t see, and we’re actually in different worlds, different times, different places. Perhaps that’s where we’ll always be, no matter how close to each other we get. It’s impossibly silly that I’m even thinking about distance and wishing it away with two contracts and just a few weeks between us.

---