Empire of Desire(Empire #1)(17)

“Let me think about it.”

She narrows her eyes and taps her foot on the floor. “Is there something I don’t know about?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Such as your jacket covering her or your hand reaching out for her, maybe. You don’t do that, not even with the women you sleep with.”

Of course Aspen saw that and stored it in her eidetic memory. She doesn’t forget anything, so I have no clue why I thought she would let that slide.

“Gwyneth isn’t a woman I fuck, Aspen. She’s King’s daughter and she just learned that her father might not wake up.”

“That’s all?”

I nod, but I don’t voice the fucking lie. The words burn in my throat and it’s impossible to let them out, so I swallow them down with their blood.

Aspen still watches me peculiarly, but she says, “In that case, think fast. We don’t have time to waste.”

I’m more aware of that than anyone. Time is never on our side in these types of situations. Which is why I need to act fast.

I don’t want to entertain the idea forming loud and clear in my head, but even I know that it’s the most logical thing to do.

Despite the fact that it doesn’t make sense on so many levels.





6





Gwyneth





When I was a kid, I had a problem learning words. I don’t know why. I have a high IQ, and I can figure out my way around things, but memorizing words was a bit difficult.

The professionals my dad took me to thought I had some form of dyslexia, but it’s not like I couldn’t read or recognize words. It’s not that they all appeared the same. They just appeared alive.

You know that feeling when you’re reading something and it nearly jumps off the page at you? For me, it was literal, and that’s exactly how it felt. As if the words were coming after me.

Turns out, I didn’t have a problem with all the words. Just the negative ones. The words that make my skin itchy and my vision turn hazy. The words that I felt instead of only reading them.

Anxiety made my skin crawl and my nose tingle.

Cruel turned my cheeks hot and my body tight with the need to defend the one who was subjugated to it.

Fear made my teeth clench and my heart shrink in anticipation for what was to come.

Sad erased my smile and had me on the verge of crying.

It’s one of the reasons why I don’t watch tragic movies—or any movies that display emotions that can trigger me. I relate to that stuff so much.

Someone might be wondering why this crazy person would choose to pursue law when she’s dangerously empathetic. Good question. I mean, I shouldn’t have, logically. I probably should’ve been a social worker, someone who takes care of children and young adults.

But here’s the thing, I don’t think all lawyers need to be detached to do their job. I don’t think they need to kill their humanity to climb up the corporate ladder. Those who do that aren’t real lawyers according to yours truly.

Lawyers can be empathetic, because that enables us to understand our clients and help them in the best way possible. Empathetic lawyers are people’s favorites according to a study performed by yours truly again. They like it when we understand them, listen to them, and aren’t impersonal.

Anyway, back to my empath problem. It’s especially hard with words. I guess that’s because that’s what started it for me. Simple negative words.

They trigger me. As in, they really put me in a funk and I have to step away and hide and wish for whatever those words did to end.

So I had to come up with a coping mechanism. You know, something that doesn’t make me want to lose my mind the moment I read murder or insane.

I had this genius idea that practice makes perfect. I mean, if I’m exposed to those words a lot, surely I’ll be desensitized. There will be a day when I’ll see them and be like, “Meh,” then ride my white unicorn toward the rainbows.

So I made a list of them, in alphabetical order. The notebook is called “The No Words.”

Each letter has negative words underneath it, sorted by color. The yellow ones are easier, the orange words are a bit harder, and the red ones? Jeez, the red ones took me on a trip to hell when even writing them.

It didn’t work at first. I would look at the closed notebook with all the negative words in it, shudder, then jam it back into my drawer.

Which defied the whole purpose of making myself desensitized.

So, during my teenage years, I’d get that list out and read it aloud, throw up a little, feel more nauseous, hide in my closet for an hour, and then take a cold shower and eat vanilla ice cream.

It was a process. A long one that nearly drove me to want to kill myself and ask Dad for help.

But I didn’t. I needed to do that shit myself because it was around that time I decided to be a lawyer like my dad, and there’s no way in hell it’s normal for a lawyer to flinch at the words crime scene, stab, or killer. That would be embarrassing to my study of empathetic lawyers.

So, anyway, after a battle against words, I came out as a winner.

Well, almost. I started reading my notebook without feeling the immediate need to hide, throw up, or drive my car into a tree.

Almost, because even to this day, I still have problems with one letter of the alphabet. D. Fun fact: that damn letter has most of the negative words underneath it, and many of them are in red.