‘Barely anything. A savage animal stripped to the waist.’
‘I think you’re just telling me things you think I want to hear, now.’
It’s not the first time I’ve wanted to say it. It’s just the first time I’ve been brave enough to – and not just because of how intimidating he is. I wanted to hold onto the illusion a little longer. I wanted him to be real, to honestly find me interesting, to wonder what lies beneath my cloak of invisibility.
But now it’s OK if he doesn’t.
Because I’m pretty sure he does.
‘I’m disappointed in you, Alissa. Do you really think I’d be so dishonest?’
‘I think you’d do a lot of dishonest things to get what you want.’
‘It’s true. I have. I do. And yet not with you.’
‘Why not with me?’
‘Because you are already sure everything is a lie. My only defence is the absolute truth. My only power over you is the truth. And if I keep telling it, eventually you’ll believe.’
My breath is caught again. Actually I think it’s been bound and gagged and sent before the firing squad. And when I finally speak, my voice is shaking slightly.
‘How do you know this stuff? Did Lucy tell you?’
‘Lucy?’ he asks, and my heart sinks before he’s even finished. ‘Who is Lucy?’
‘The woman you were supposed to meet that night.’
He laughs, low and startling.
‘So that’s why you were hiding in the wardrobe. It was not meant to be you.’
‘That’s right, it wasn’t. Which means everything you think about me is wrong.’
‘On the contrary. Everything fits a little better, now. I thought you’d merely changed your mind, but this is much more you. Slipping into the skin of someone else, just as I said.’
Damn him. Damn damn damn him.
‘It’s not like that. I wanted to find out what she’d been doing. That’s all.’
‘Are you sure?’
I close my eyes briefly.
‘Not even a little bit.’
‘Ah, that’s good. It’s good to hear your honesty.’
‘Then tell me yours. You said you would. How do you know me?’
He hesitates, then. His silence is almost as overwhelming as his words.
Almost.
‘Do you think you are so very hard to read? Perhaps no one has ever bothered before, and this has led you to believe you are inscrutable. But no, I think not. I think it is more likely that these other people are lazy. You take a lot of studying and so they let you pass them by, even though everything you do says so much. You hide when you don’t want to; you hang up when you want to complete the call. You deny the things you feel the most and admit what matters least. My little study in opposites, are you not? Heart on her sleeve, though she would say it was only the pattern of the piece of clothing she was wearing.’
He’s right again in many ways, but this time I only swallow thickly and try to change the subject. I try, even though it’s difficult. My heart is thudding through my body like an oncoming army, shuddering my foundations as it goes.
‘Maybe you should tell me something about yourself now,’ I say, despite knowing what path those words are putting me on. It’s the path that leads to him, not away. And worse: I think I like that this is the case.
I shiver strangely when he answers.
‘And what would you like to know?’
‘Anything.’
‘Will you tell me anything in return?’
‘You mean you don’t know it already?’
He laughs that low laugh. It’s almost a growl, but not a threatening one. More like the sort you’d hear as an animal sleeps, and dreams of defending his home.
‘I don’t.’
‘All right, I will.’
‘Very well, then. Ask me a question,’ he says, and in the silence that follows I pick and discard several options. Some seem too personal, others too flippant. And all of them lead me back to the real issue.
My every word apparently tells him a thousand things about me. A single slip and I’m suddenly wretched and shallow, to go with all the other things he’s uncovered so easily. My habit of doing the opposite of what I want to, my tendency to hide – he had it all.
So I have to be careful here, and completely innocuous.
‘How old are you?’
‘Worried that I am older than you’d like?’
Dammit, question, you were supposed to be innocuous.
‘I hadn’t thought about it.’
‘Really?’
‘Why would I? What would it matter to me if you were?’ I say, and try to laugh lightly somewhere in the middle. I largely fail. And even if I had succeeded I don’t suppose it would matter, because he soon blows all of that nonsense away.
‘It would matter because my intention is to do all of those things you spoke of to you, and far more than that besides. I intend to bring you pleasure and sweetness of the sort I’m sure you have not yet known, and so you can see: how old I am is of some importance. Many women don’t like to be with someone twice their age.’
‘I don’t think the idea would even enter most women’s heads, when it comes to someone like you,’ I say finally, and only because I’m afraid of something else escaping. My body pulsed once, hotly, over several of the things he’s just said, and if I give it too much leeway I know what it will make me do.
There are so many words it wants me to say, always hovering beneath the surface of our conversations. ‘Yes’ is one of them. ‘Please’ is another. Both broke through last time and embarrassed me, but I won’t let them out again.
‘Oh, really?’
‘Yes, really. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.’
‘Am I pretending?’
‘Of course you are.’
‘And why would I do such a thing?’
‘To get me to admit it.’
‘Admit what?’
‘How handsome you are! You want me to admit how handsome you are. You want me to say that you’re gorgeous, that you’re amazing looking, that I was mesmerised by your great granite face and your hooded eyes and your mouth like an imprint of a kiss, and I want to because you said all of those things about me and I can’t stop thinking about any of them even though none of them are real and God, God, you’re the most frustrating person in the world.’ I pause to take a breath. ‘Why do you even need to hear this? Everyone on the planet has probably told you how handsome they find you.’
‘Yes, of course,’ he says, so coolly, so clearly. I could almost believe there was nothing else coming, until it hits me around the head. ‘But it only matters to me that you do.’
I can’t be held responsible for the one word I croak out. I’m still stunned after the blow, and probably sprawled all over the floor of my own mind.
‘Why?’
‘Because I want your pulse to quicken when you think of seeing me.’
‘You do?’