Kiera lifts an eyebrow.
“Fine. You threw yourself in the way to save me. Which is why I love you and hate her.”
She looks down, trying not to smile.
“What? You’re surprised that I love you? Go fuck yourself, Kiera.”
She laughs now and I laugh too. “Go fuck yourself right back, Con.”
“God,” I say, smiling, but not feeling happy. “What the hell is happening?”
“I don’t know. All I know is that we’re stuck in a blizzard for a night with no phone, and no TV, and no way anyone or anything can get to us, even if they wanted to. So why do we have to think about this shit right now?”
I don’t know if that’s an invitation or just rational thinking. But I choose the former. Because I reach over, take her hand, and pull her warm body up next to me. She folds herself into my embrace. Molds her body into the shape of mine like a missing puzzle piece.
I feel it. That love I have for her. Was probably always there even before I knew she existed. Because that’s the kind of love it is. Has always been.
She says, “I just want you all to myself for a little bit. Is that so wrong?”
I get lost in the past again. Because that’s what she said near the end. She wrote it in her book, I know it. She had to have. Because the next week she got her wish.
And I got mine too.
“Pretty soon, maybe even tomorrow,” she goes on, “Sofia will be here, or we’ll be there, and you’ll be with her again. Not me. So that book can wait, Connor.”
I smile again. And this time it’s different. “You’re forgetting something,” I say. “I was always with you, not her. Because you were always there with us.”
“It wasn’t the same,” she says.
“No, it wasn’t. It was definitely different.”
“And there was a time when you had her and not me. So don’t lie about it.”
CHAPTER SIX – KIERA
The tower was empty that night. I showed up on the usual day, at the normal time, and there was no one home. The door was locked, no candlelight was seeping through the always-shut shutters, and I knew what was happening without being told.
They were together without me.
I was still, and always would be, just the impartial observer. The outsider looking in.
Or maybe it was the insider looking out? I wonder if that perspective change matters?
But the book was there. Sitting on the flat stone that announced the entrance to the tower. Propped up against the door like a headstone. I remember thinking that. It looked like a headstone.
And when I opened it our pages were already filled out. In my handwriting, describing in full detail what Sofia and Connor were doing without me.
Except… it couldn’t have happened yet. It was just a few minutes past eight. But there they were. Five handwritten pages that I never wrote.
Later I’d learn that the details were wrong, but it didn’t matter. Whatever really happened with Sofia and Connor didn’t matter either. Because the book was the law.
“I didn’t write that chapter, you know,” I say, feeling the urge to clarify this one more time. Because it happened a lot after that. Someone dictated our story. Made shit up and wrote it down. Like we were on the wrong path or something. And they, whoever they were, were trying to guide us back in the right direction. Those false words became real, even though the story was fake.
And it makes sense, I guess. Because the stories I write aren’t real in my head, but the second I put the words on paper, they are. They become truth. And when people read them, that’s how they see it too. Doesn’t matter if it’s fiction. The story is the story and if I say it happened that way, then it happened that way.
I am God when I write. Little Kiera Bonnaire, puppetmaster of the masses.
“I know you didn’t write it,” Con says.
“I was jealous,” I say. “But I’d never write that stuff.” It was some pretty kinky shit. That’s for sure. Dark too. Which is the part we were getting wrong, I think. We became friends. We started to enjoy it. Camille and Bennett dancing, Hayes drinking and smoking. Connor reading to Sofia and me.
We had… fun. And fun was never the point of that year. Like, I don’t really know what the point was because the whole fucking thing was irrational from start to finish, I just know it had nothing to do with fun.
He nods his head at my declaration of innocence, but it doesn’t feel like agreement. “But you’ve written some of that stuff since then, haven’t you?”
It’s an accusation but for some reason I don’t take offense. “Yup,” I admit. “Lots of it.”
“Why?”
“Because the dark side of love intrigues people, Connor. Love makes you do weird things and sometimes you want to deny that. When things are going good, and all your expectations are being met, and there is nothing but bliss—people want to deny that dark side exists. But how many of us have a love life filled with bliss?”