Page 64 of Selling Innocence

I dropped my gaze, unwilling to look at her. Why did I say that?

Because she was challenging me.

It turned out I hadn’t grown past the stage where people could goad me into whatever they wanted. At least, I hadn’t when it came to this frustrating girl.

“You were married?” She asked me as though she couldn’t quite wrap her head around it.

Ending it now would have been pointless, so I nodded. “It’s not that hard to believe, is it? Yes. I was married for two years.”

“How did you meet?”

“Does that matter?” When she said nothing, I sighed and answered. “She worked at a coffee shop I went to. She was always nice to me, always smiled at me and remembered my order. That seemed as close to love as I understood.” I thought back to Isla, to how she’d worn that ugly brown apron but how it had fit her so well. She always looked so happy when she worked, sliding through the space as she made coffee like some dance.

Later, after we had gotten together, she always smelled of coffee. No matter how much she showered, that scent had clung to her hair, and it made me smile. At least it used to—now it made me a little sad.

“So if you know that, how can you say love isn’t real?”

“Because it wasn’t. She fell for the mask I wore, and I fell for the mask she wore. She saw the bits of myself I showed her, the ones I cultivated to make sure she liked them. I gave her the gifts I knew she’d want, said the words that would make her heart beat faster. Getting her to fall for me was nothing more than a game, than manipulating her feelings to get her to want me.”

“That’s not true.” Kenz spoke with the same stubborn streak a kid certain that Santa was real used, as though she couldn’t let go of the fantasy. “Love is complicated, but you can’t spend two years with someone and have them not ever see the real you.”

“Of course you can. I wore that mask so tightly, never letting it slip, never risking her seeing the real me. If she had, she would have run.”

“What happened?”

I closed her journal, then handed it back. A part of me wanted to burn the book, as though it was responsible for my frustrations, for the way it angered me that she could hold onto so much optimism. “She died. Five years ago, she died without ever having seen the real me. Maybe I should thank my stars for that, that she died before she had to suffer through finding out I wasn’t the man she thought I was. So before you lecture me about what I should do and how great love is, you should shut your mouth. You don’t know a damn thing about love, life or me.” I twisted, turning my back to her, unwilling to see her face.

She’d probably cry. She’d tell me how I was mean and heartless.

It’s all true.

Something about those tears would bother me, though, and I refused to turn into Hayden. I wouldn’t coddle or spoil her just because it made shit easier.

She sniffled. Yep, here come the ‘poor me’ tears.

Warmth surrounded me. I flinched before looking down to find Kenz’s arm wrapped tight around me, her forehead against my back.

“What the fuck?” I asked when nothing else to say came to mind.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her breath hot against my back, even through my shirt.

“Get off me.” I shrugged my shoulders, but it didn’t dissuade her. If anything, she clung to me tighter and shook her head. Wetness soaked into my shirt, telling me she no longer held her tears.

When she’d thought about her family, about her loneliness, she hadn’t let her tears fall, but she did now?

“Fine, I’m sorry I was mean,” I snapped when I had no idea how else to get her off me and end this.

“I don’t care about that,” she said. “I’m sorry about your wife.”

“I already told you that love isn’t real, so why are you sorry? I don’t need your pity.”

“It’s not pity. Losing people is hard—I know, I’ve been through it. And I don’t care what you say, I can tell you loved her very much. I can hear it in your voice, so just…let me hold you for a minute.” Her words were broken by her own tears, as though she cried the tears I should have.

Then again, Kenz had proven herself empathetic to a fault.

“I didn’t even cry when she died,” I admitted. “Even when she was buried, when people spoke at her funeral, and everyone else was crying around me, I didn’t shed a single tear. Can you really say I loved her if I didn’t even cry?”

She held me tighter, plastering her body against my back. “Then I’ll cry for you.”

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