Lovegame(14)

Damn it.

“So the bear was a Christmas present?” he asks after a moment.

“It was.” It takes every ounce of talent I have to keep my voice steady and unconcerned.

“From your parents?”

“No. My father wasn’t big on stuffed animals. Called them dust catchers. He had severe asthma as a child and I think he was afraid that if any dust got near me, I’d develop a similar condition.”

I wait, praying that I’ve said enough—and not too much. Praying that this glimpse of my past—and this small chance to probe into something very few people know about—will be enough to tear him away from the portrait of my younger self and knock him off this line of questioning.

“So, if it wasn’t your parents, who did get you the bear?”

Or not. I shrug, act baffled. “Does it really matter?”

For the first time he seems to figure out that I’m watching him as closely as he’s been watching me. I don’t know how he didn’t notice sooner…

I wonder what that feels like—to lose yourself so completely in your own head that you forget that you’re being watched. Studied.

I never forget.

After several long, tense seconds, he shrugs, too, smiles. A direct mirror of my previous lack of concern. “Of course it doesn’t matter. You just look so happy that I wondered if it was a friend or relative who had given you the bear.”

“It was my first real stuffed animal. I was very happy.” I make a face, shake my head. “But that was over two decades and many, many Christmas presents ago. I can’t remember whose name was on the tag.”

It’s a lie—a miserably crafted, total, and absolute falsehood—and there’s a part of me that expects him to call me on it like he has everything else. He doesn’t though. Instead, he just glances back and forth between me and the painting over and over again. I don’t know what he’s looking for, don’t know what he sees, but just the threat of him finding out is enough to have me walking out of the room. If he doesn’t follow, well, then, that’s on him. It’s not like I’m worried that he’ll take something…and if does, well, it’s not like there’s anything in that room I care about anyway.

This time he does follow me though, trailing me through my parents’ suite of rooms and into my own.

When we get there, I throw open the main doors with the flourish it deserves. It’s a suite meant for a princess, after all, impeccably decorated in silks and velvets, laces and tulles. I’d be embarrassed at the ridiculously excessive femininity of it all, except this is so totally the image I want him to have of me that I almost can’t contain my glee. Especially at the look on his face, the war between amusement and alarm playing out so plainly on his features as he takes his first steps into Wonderland, where nothing is quite what it seems.

“Wow,” he says after several long seconds. “It’s…wow. I mean, it’s beautiful. But, wow.” He turns around, his face turned up to the ceiling, which is painted a deep, dark, midnight blue. I walk over to the panel of light switches and flip the middle one. The ceiling comes alive with a series of inlaid lights in the patterns of my favorite constellations.

“Wow,” he says again, but for the first time it sounds like a compliment.

“My father had that done for me years ago. It was my sixteenth birthday present. Or, one of them, anyway.”

“You like to stargaze?”

It seems innocuous enough, so I answer it. “I do. Though the lights and the smog make it hard to see them most nights.”

If that’s not a metaphor for my life, then I don’t know what is.

He doesn’t pick it up and run with it, though, and I can’t help being grateful…at least until I realize it’s not sensitivity holding him back. It’s lack of attention.

He’s gone from studying my ceiling to studying my bookshelves, which line two of the sitting room’s walls. I should be uneasy—Ian may think it’s the room that tells a person’s secrets but I tend to think it’s their entertainment choices that do that. What they read, what they watch, who they listen to…you can learn a lot about people by the art they surround themselves with.

But the books here are old, read for the most part, in another lifetime. There’s nothing on those shelves that will spill my secrets to Ian. I’d culled those books out a long, long time ago.

“Do you mind?” he asks as he reaches for one of the books. Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, it looks like.

“Not at all. Help yourself.”

“I will.” He shoots a grin over his shoulder. “I never have any control when I’m around someone’s personal library. I want to see and touch and hold every single book. It’s…”

He trails off and I’m more than happy to pick up where he left off. “Another one of your passions?” I ask, brow raised.

“Maybe. But it’s more intellectual curiosity than passion, I think. Side effect of being a writer.”

He picks out another book, his eyes going wide. “Is this what I think it is?”

“If you think it’s a first edition from the very first print run ever of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, then yes, it’s exactly what you think it is.”

“Amazing.” He shakes his head in awe as he flips through it. “So are you a big fan or just a collector?”