Love on the Brain(55)

“Bee.” Levi’s looking at me in a way that I cannot comprehend. Because no one has ever looked at me like that.

“So, there were all these other girls. Women. I never blamed them—it wasn’t their job to look after my relationship. I only ever blamed Tim.” My lips taste like salt and too much water. “We’d been engaged for three years when I found out. I confronted him and took off my engagement ring and told him that we were done, that he’d betrayed me, that I hoped he got gonorrhea and his dick fell off—I don’t even know what I told him. I was so mad I wasn’t even crying. But he said that it didn’t mean anything. That he didn’t think I’d be so upset about it, and that he’d stop. That if I’d been . . .” I can’t even bring myself to repeat it, the way he twisted everything to make it my fault. If you fucked me a little more frequently, he’d said. If you were better. If you knew how to enjoy it and make it enjoyable. You could at least put in some effort. “We’d been together for seven years. No one else had been in my life that long before, so I took him back. And I tried harder. I put more effort in . . . in our relationship. In making him happy. I’m not a victim—I made an informed choice. Figured that if getting married, if stability was what I wanted, then I shouldn’t give up on Tim too quickly. You reap what you sow.” I let out a shuddering sigh. “And then he and Annie—” My voice breaks, but Levi can imagine the rest. He knows enough already, probably more than he ever cared to. He doesn’t need it spelled out, that I was such a needy, pitiful doormat that not only did I take back my cheater of a fiancé, but I also never realized that he kept cheating on me. With my closest friend. In the lab where I was working every day. I don’t think about Annie too often, because the pain of losing her, I never quite learned how to manage. “I don’t know why she did it. But I couldn’t go with them to Vanderbilt. It was career suicide, but I just couldn’t.”

“You . . .” Levi’s hand tightens on my nape. “You didn’t marry him. You never married him.”

I smile, rueful. “The worst thing is, I tried to forgive him for a long time. But then I couldn’t, and . . .” I shake my head.

Levi is blinking, a dumbfounded expression on his face. “You’re not married,” he repeats, and I sit up as his shock finally penetrates my brain.

“You—you thought I was?” He nods, and I let out a wet laugh. “I was sure you knew, since you and Tim collaborate. And I let Guy believe it, because I thought you were trying to give me an out, but”—I lift my left hand—“this is my grandmother’s ring. I’m not married. Tim and I haven’t spoken in years.”

Levi mouths something I cannot make out and pulls his hand back, as though all of a sudden my skin is scorching him. He stands and walks to the window, staring outside as he runs a hand through his hair. Is he angry?

“Levi?”

No reply. He rubs his mouth with his fingers, as if deep in thought, as if coming to terms with some seismic event.

“Levi, I know you and Tim collaborate. If this puts you in a weird position, you can—”

“We don’t.” He finally turns around. Whatever just happened, he seems to have collected himself. The green of his eyes, though, is brighter than before. Brighter than ever. “Collaborate, that is.”

I sit up, legs dangling over the mattress. “You and Tim don’t collaborate anymore?”

“Nope.”

“Since when?”

“Now.”

“What? But—”

“I don’t feel like going to the conference,” he interrupts. “Do you need to rest?”

“Rest?”

“Because of the”—he gestures vaguely at me and the bed— “fainting.”

“Oh, I’m fine. If I needed rest every time I fainted, I’d need . . . a lot of rest.”

“In that case, there’s something I’d like to do.”

“What is it?”

He doesn’t answer. “Want to join me?”

I have no idea what he’s referring to, but it’s not as though I have a busy schedule. “Sure?”

He smiles, a little smug, and a terrible thought occurs to me: I’m going to regret whatever’s about to happen.



* * *



? ? ?

“I HATE THIS.”

“I know.”

“What gave it away?” I push a sweaty purple strand from my forehead. My hands are shaking. My legs are twigs, but made of slime. There’s a distinctive taste of iron in my throat. A sign that I’m dying? Possibly. I want to stop but I can’t, because the treadmill is still going. If I collapse, the walking belt is going to swallow me in a vortex of clammy darkness. “Is it the wheezing? The near-puking?”

“Mostly the way you’ve said it eight times since starting to run—which, by the way, was exactly sixty seconds ago.” He leans forward from his own treadmill and hits the speed button, slowing it. “You did great. Now walk a bit.” He straightens and keeps on running at a pace I wouldn’t achieve even hunted by a swarm of maggots. “In three minutes, you’re going to run sixty more seconds.” He’s not even short of breath. Does he have bionic lungs? “Then you’ll walk three more minutes, and then you’ll cool down.”