Chapter 31

Chapter 31

Parker

When I had walked out that morning to get to the Helix Building, I hadn’t thought the sinking feelings would get worse. But there we were, walking home, the sinking feelings worse.

Cass and I barely spoke that whole trip back. It felt like pulling teeth. Pulling teeth slowly. And then drinking lemon juice.

“I don’t want you to have to work for Gary,” I said, finally, as I was finagling the keys to open our apartment door. Unsaid was I don’t want to live apart from you. Even more unsaid was I love you.

“I know,” she said, quietly, and that was that. Why wasn’t she saying anything? This decision was hers. I could try to make it for her, but that would be taking away her agency the same way Gary did. And I was at her mercy anyway—if she left, there would be nothing left for me but to sign away the Express rights to Gary. If she stayed, we’d be in it together.

Ugh. Under normal, more selfish circumstances, I’d have been tripping over myself to do it. I’d probably do it with a poison pill too, to screw over Gary by handing him a useless company, because fuck him, but sending Unicorn back to the unicorn-killer?

I ached for a world without the damn debt, the number on that Excel spreadsheet that was always getting smaller, but so damn slowly—and so damn expensively.

But I ached for a world with Cass in it, too.

The apartment smelled like a new hotel room, the air fresh and unfamiliar, as if we’d been out for years instead of hours. I flung my bag down and kicked my shoes off, sinking into the sofa and falling backwards on it, and I laughed, once, breathless, just to myself.

“Never did call Sharp’s and tell them,” I said. “Far as they know, we’re still a functioning business with goods and services on offer.”

Cass sat down on the sofa, but on the side opposite me, far as could be, sitting ramrod straight. She stared out the window, away from me, her loose ponytail hiding her face. “I can do it,” she said, just a whisper. “If… you need to do this. I can take over Express.”

“You’d be working for Gary Founders,” I said, turning on her, hunching forwards over my legs. My back ached. It felt like I was a hundred years old—about the age I’d finish repaying this debt, if I kept going like this. “You know, the shit-eating douchebag who abused you when he’d gotten you to date him at twenty years old.”

“I know. But…” She shifted, still not looking at me. “I can set up boundaries. I can work with—um—Tatiana, or others, instead.”

“Setting up boundaries with the person who pays you—and manages your living situation—is a lot easier in theory than it is in practice, Unicorn.”

“I know,” she said, whirling on me, and I flinched at the desperate look in her eyes. “But what else do we do, Parker? I can’t just be the source of more problems for you. If you go on… still paying your parents as if you owe them, knowing you could have gotten out of it years ago if it weren’t for me… you’ll hate me for it. I’ll hate me for it.” She shook her head, her voice getting higher and more frantic with every word. “And even if we do try to keep going like this, then Gary is going to keep going. Going to keep doing this. He’s going to keep haunting us like this until I finally leave.”

“That’s just—business competition. That’s normal—”

“It isn’t. You heard him. He paid so much for that exclusivity. He was willing to pay so much to buy Express on top of that, too. Willing to pay so much for a luxury Southport apartment to bribe me out of it. He’s not just acting with normal competition. He’s willing to spend any amount if it means getting rid of this—our—” She flushed, straining for words. “Us working together. It’s because of me. As long as I’m with you, he’s going to keep doing this, and I…”

Her voice cracked, tears welling up in her eyes, and she hung her head.

“I could never forgive myself for letting all this happen to you,” she choked, words slipped in between tears.

My chest strained until it felt like I was going to tear in two, right down the middle. Did falling in love with a girl always hurt like this? I wanted a refund. I wanted to go back in time, see Cass gazing at me from down the bar, and turn and go the other way.

Hell, that look in her eyes wasn’t just admiring a potential roommate. She’d always been extra receptive to me at Hummingbird, for months before I even met her at Strawberry. How long had she had feelings for me? Who did that? I had specifically designed myself to not stand out, to not really draw anyone’s attention, to always decenter myself in every little situation. Why, of all the people, did it have to be Sparkle Unicorn who looked right at me and thought that’s my person? Why did I have to feel the same way?

I sighed, hard, falling back in the sofa. “This is why I don’t do the whole… people liking me thing,” I groaned. “Because then they try to sacrifice for me.”

“Tell me,” she shot, turning on me with tears streaking her cheeks, “that you wouldn’t do the same thing with literally zero hesitation for somebody else.”

I looked away. “That’s… different. I don’t have any shitty exes I have that past with.”

“Your parents. Tell me you wouldn’t go work under them to give somebody else as much as you’re getting from this.”

“That’s different. They’re not abusive—”

“They’re charging you for eating when you were a baby, Parker.” She strained every word. “And they were intending to from the moment you were eating. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have been tracking expenses. They’re charging an infant rent. What do you define as abusive?”

I rubbed my forehead. “How do we even know Gary’s going to give me a thing? How do we know he’s not going to cheat me out of the money?”

“Because he doesn’t care about the money, Parker. If he did, he wouldn’t have bothered with spending so much on the contracts. He isn’t here to make money. He was making plenty of money in Canderson. He’s here for his ego, he’s here for me, and he’s willing to spend any amount to get what he wants.”

“And how much of that is reality, and how much is you just trying to self-sacrifice?”

She squeezed her hands. “How much of this is you trying to self-sacrifice? What’s going to happen to you if we don’t?”

It felt like the foundation gave from under me. I collapsed into myself, burying my face in my hands. “I don’t know, Cass. I don’t know. I wasn’t ready for any of this. I wasn’t ready to care for anyone as much as I care for you, that’s for damn sure.”

She softened, moving closer to me on the sofa. “Parker…”

“What am I supposed to do, Cass? You go, and I’m the asshole who forced you to go work with Gary. You stay, and I’m the failure who couldn’t keep our company sustainable.”

“It’s my fault, anyway,” she said, putting her hand on my thigh, squeezing reassuringly.

“You say that about literally everything.”

“Oh, now you’re the one using literally to mean figuratively.”

I rubbed my forehead. “I think I might mean literally literally.”

“I think you might literally be using it figuratively.”

I turned and buried my face in her side. I don’t want you to go, I didn’t say. I want to stay here on this couch together and keep watching our campy Andrean show where Valentina Jacobs yells at awful men, but I don’t even think she’s that hot anymore because I’m just thinking about you. Didn’t say that one either. I’m in love with you and I don’t know how to cope with that. Surprise, surprise, I didn’t say it. “Should have stopped Tat,” I said, instead. “Didn’t know she’d be such a little rat. Maybe the fact that it rhymes should have clued me in. Tat the rat.” I laughed.

“Um… Parker, I think you’re getting delirious.”

“Fucking hell. I’d have to find a new roommate. What are the odds of finding three roommates at the lesbian bar?”

She pulled me into a tight embrace, burying her face in my hair. “I wouldn’t have to stay with him, you know? I could do it just long enough that you get your money, and I could get out.”

“They’ll bully you into staying, and you know it.”

“I really, really want to stay with you, Parker,” she said, her voice trembling. “But I’d never forgive myself.”

“What, because I’m that bad to live with?”

“Parker.” She squeezed me. “Getting flippant won’t make the problems go away.”

“Ugh. It usually works so well.” I buried my face in her chest. “I don’t want you to go, Cass. I’ve never… felt like this for anyone before. And I’d never forgive myself if you got stuck with Gary for it. It’d be blood money.”

“It’s not blood money if I’m doing it of my own free will.” She stroked my back, that one specific way that always calmed me down. I didn’t even know until her that I had a specific way to stroke my back that calmed me down. Being with Cass, I’d almost learned more about myself than I had about her. Was that a crappy cliché?

After a minute, I murmured, “You’ve already made up your mind, haven’t you?”

She swallowed, hard. “Parker, I don’t know what else to do.”

“You know it’d be the end for us, right?” I said, voice small, wavering. It felt ridiculous saying it. The end for us what? We weren’t girlfriends. I wanted to be her girlfriend, but I’d been too scared something awful would happen if I did. Turned out I didn’t need to be her girlfriend to have something awful happen. The end for us having casual sex and me falling in love and scaring myself the whole way through.

“We could still—”

“Gary’s buying you an apartment away from me.” I paused. “Clearly, he’s got something specific against… this. Us. If you think there’s not going to be clauses in your contracts about… this, well, I’ve got a pink sparkly bridge to sell you.”

“But… why?” she said, her voice small, crackling. Cass didn’t cry a lot. She just got small, pulled into herself, tried to hide. Like the world was out to hurt her, and her only option was to not let it see her. I couldn’t blame her. So much of her life had been the world trying to hurt her. And I was useless to keep her safe.

“Dammit, Cass, I don’t know. I can’t tell how his head works. Maybe it’s because he knows I…” I waved a hand vaguely in the air behind her. “That I care for you, and that you care for me, and he doesn’t want you to be happy. Probably doesn’t want me to be happy, either. Maybe all the times I called him ugly, told him to fuck off and die, and dashed a drink on him?”

“But he can’t just… keep us from…”

Dammit. I couldn’t keep doing this. I couldn’t sit here and argue for the woman I loved to stay with me while she begged and pleaded and came up with reason after reason to leave me. Turned out keeping my heart locked up tight all this time had done nothing but make it soft and fragile, and now that it was exposed, this hurt. It hurt more than I knew things could.

Was this just me giving up? Yeah, fucking probably. But I didn’t know what else I could do.

“Cass, I can’t make this decision for you,” I said, feeling like I was hearing somebody else say it. “I want you to stay, but I can’t offer anything. So if you want to go, I get it. Just… just…” I pushed away from her, standing up, my back to her. “Just don’t let him hurt you again. That’s all I really want. Tell Tat if you can. She’s a rat, but she’s always been good to her girlfriend. She understands abuse. She’s probably your only shot at staying safe in that kind of shitty place.”

“Parker…” She stood up with me. “Please, Parker, I don’t want you to think it’s that I’m going because you can’t give me anything—”

“I know. I know. You’re going because you don’t have any choice.” Because I can’t give you anything to offset all the costs. What would have been the point of saying that? It would change nothing except make Cass feel bad. I loved her. The feeling was new, but it made things crystal clear. One was that I wanted her to be happy. Another was that I didn’t want to fall in love ever again after this.

Even without looking, I could feel her stare on me. “You’re… mad at me, aren’t you?”

I snorted. “I don’t do mad. Too much work.” Guilty. Hating myself. Hungry. Probably going to eat ten pounds of ice cream after this. But never mad. How could I be mad at Cass? She really had kept the population of three nations—sorry, two nations and a territory—from ever finding our address or harassing us.

“I’m sorry,” she said, quietly.

I couldn’t do this any longer. I headed down the hall to my room. “I’ll see you for dinner later, I guess,” I said, distantly. “Sorry I couldn’t… right. I’m sorry.”

We didn’t say another word—couldn’t. What the hell was there to say? I just stepped into my room, closed the door behind me, and I fell onto my back and stared at the ceiling.

God, I loved that woman.

It sucked.