Page 21 of Never Broken

I just wished I knew what it was.

“Look, you have to admit, he gave you an incredible gift,” I remarked.

“Some gift. I probably dragged his drunk ass home from every bar in Heidelberg at least once. I practicallywrotehis last paper myself—and got it published—when he was too wasted to even get out of bed. Not to mention, he used to develop explosives for the military, and he’d take me to the testing range and make me light the fuse.”

I gasped. “You could have been killed!”

“Better me than him, was his logic.”

“Well, fuck him, then. But in the long run, it could only be a good thing, right? Somebody educated you. Educated slaves are worth?—”

“It could only increase my market value, right?” he finished, and my heart dropped.

Idiot girl.He was a person, not a fixer-upper house. And anyway, no matter what amount of money exchanged hands for him, it’s not as ifhewould be seeing any of it.

“You’re right, though. It’s the only reason my master did it. To increase his profit margin. He didn’t give a shit about me. Only what I could do for him.”

“But still,” I said, persisting against my better judgment. “He gave you?—”

“He gave me this,” he said, nodding with contempt at the scarred skin crawling over his forearms and almost up to his shoulders. “It’s the only thing I have to show for the thousands of hours he spent teaching me. I would have been better off in the fields where he found me.”

“Don’t say that.” He’d bedead, for one thing.

“It’s true. What, am I going to get a scholarship? Go to university? Win the Nobel Prize?”

“But—”

There was a storm cloud forming in his amber-gold eyes. “You’re going toarguewith me about this? I couldn’t even—” He turned away suddenly.

“What?”

“Nothing.” His eyes flashed again. I’d seen them flash before, but not like this. With pain, yes, but it was beyond pain. It was something I couldn’t ever begin to fathom. Something I wasn’tequippedto fathom because nobody had ever thought I’dneedto be equipped.

And in its face, there was nothing to say, so I stared intensely down at the page of the notebook in front of me as if written in it were the most fascinating story I’d ever read.

I’d done nothing but study for the past year, but I’d never felt more ignorant.

Ishouldask him, I knew. He wasn’t allowed to lie to me or dodge the truth. If I demanded to know his entire history, from the day he was born to this exact second, he would be required to tell me. And good God, did I want to know all of it. I was in.

“Youcantell me, you know,” I said into the pages. Then I looked back over at him, embarrassed, expecting him to have turned away for good, fed up with my ignorance and nosiness and just ready to move on. To my shock, he was staring back at me, those brilliant eyes a mix of confusion and wonder, like I’d just said the last thing in the world he’d expected to hear.

And all at once, it terrified me. The silence, our closeness, the unspokeneverything. Our hands, resting on the desk, nearly touching, and if he’d been anything other than what he was, I might havealreadyreached out to. To offer the comfort he so badly deserved and seemed, astonishingly, to have never been offered. It was just an inch between us, only an inch, and I couldknow exactly what those calloused fingers would feel like under my touch.

He followed my gaze, noticing exactly where I was looking—and very likely what I was thinking. Ah, fuck. I swiftly hid my hands under the desk, and he turned around, staring at the sunburst-shaped wall clock.

“It’s getting late,” he said, changing the subject, then turned back to me with a smirk. “Shouldn’t you be cleaning?”

I groaned, having forgotten about that part of the deal.

“Look, I’ll make it easy for you,” he said, rising from the chair. “I’ll vacuum, dust, empty the wastebaskets, and make the bed out here while you do the bathroom.”

“But I don’t?—”

“Slow learner, I said I’d show you.”

I sighed. Frankly, I’d rather keep doing o-chem, if it was all the same. But he wasn’t about to let me back out of the deal.

I didn’t do a half-bad job, if I did say so myself. Of course I accidentally spilled bleach all over the tile and had to mop that up before I could even get to the shower or the mirror. By the time the vacuum stopped in the other room, I was ready to drop, and I’d only been cleaning for fifteen minutes.

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