Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 88119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
“They are my emotions. I can handle them.”
Alec shook his head in despair. “Tess,” he whispered. “I’m really sorry.”
Sorry that I found out? I wondered, but I didn’t say it. How could I ever be sure about anything around him?
“You don’t trust me,” he said.
“Did you just gather that from my feelings?” I asked sarcastically.
He sagged against the wall of the dojo. His eyes looked tired. “I know you’re upset, but even if I couldn’t read your emotions, I’d know it from the look on your face.”
I wrapped my arms around my chest, as if that could stop him from looking into my heart, from seeing everything I didn’t want him or anyone else to know. I thought of all the times I’d lusted after him and all the nights I’d imagined kissing him. Even now, thinking about how he must have felt my desire for him every time we were close made me want to run and hide from the shame. But what if he had been responsible for my feelings?
“So you never made me feel something I didn’t?” I whispered.
He frowned, then his eyes widened. “You mean your feelings for me?”
I couldn’t bear looking at him, so I stared at the floor-to-ceiling mirrors lining the other end of the dojo. One of them had a crack in it that had been there for months.
He touched my shoulders, bringing our bodies so close together that I could feel his warmth. “I’d have never done that, Tess. What kind of person do you think I am?”
“I don’t know what to think anymore. I thought I knew you and suddenly it turns out you’ve been keeping a huge secret from me. I have to think about it. I-I just feel so unprotected.” Even that admission made me feel even more vulnerable. But what did it matter around Alec? All of my feelings were fair game.
Alec’s hands slid off my shoulders. “I always hated that part of me. It was why my parents hated me, why they couldn’t stand being in a room with me, much less looking at me. It’s why they wanted me gone. I always knew that this Variation more than my strength would scare people.”
I took a deep breath. “I think we need a few days away from each other. I still—” Love you. I didn’t say it. I couldn’t, not when a part of me hated him at the same time for what he was capable of, for knowing me better than I probably knew myself.
He touched my cheek and for the briefest moment I leaned into the touch but then turned away. I needed to get away before he broke through my resolve. He probably didn’t even need his Variation for that.
“I love you, Tess,” he said quietly when I was halfway through the door.
The words felt like someone had thrust a knife into my heart. I’d wanted to hear those words from Alec, had long imagined and dreamed of the moment when he’d finally say them, had pictured the happy glow on my face when I’d hear them and how I’d pull his face down to mine to kiss him and whisper the words back to him over and over again. Today wasn’t that day. And now that day would never come. Without looking at him, I strode away from the dojo, toward the elevator. Alec didn’t try to stop me.
“This is so messed up,” Holly said.
I scratched my pencil over the paper, doodling black twirls around the list of names I’d written down with Holly’s help earlier. A dull fury burned under my skin. It covered up the underlying sense of betrayal and loss. But nothing was lost yet. Alec and I hadn’t broken up. He still wanted to be with me, and I wanted to be with him. And yet it felt like something had been broken in a way that couldn’t be fixed.
“Do you really think Tanner could be a Dual Variant? He doesn’t seem like the type to keep a secret.”
“Neither did Alec,” I said. Though that wasn’t exactly true. Alec was the more secretive, brooding type. “He’s Alec’s best friend. Even if he isn’t a Dual Variant himself, that doesn’t mean he didn’t know about Alec’s Variation.”
“I don’t think Alec would have told him, if he didn’t even reveal it to you,” Holly said thoughtfully.
I wanted to believe that Alec was the only one who was hiding something, but I couldn’t trust any of them. Not yet. Not after finding out that the person I’d trusted most besides Holly had lied to me from the start.
“I have to talk to Major,” I said finally. Maybe he’d tell me the entire truth, now that I knew about Alec.
Holly’s eyes grew wide. “Whoa. Have you lost your mind? Major will go ballistic if he finds out that you know about Alec. He won’t tell you anything.”