The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (The Devils #2)(23)

His smile is soft. “Fine, you choose the thing.” And then he looks at me in a way that makes it impossible to lie and evade, difficult to breathe. I reflexively reach toward my pocket to make sure my inhaler is still there. It’s as if, in this moment, he’s capable of peering beyond my skin, past corneas and what everyone else sees, and finding my soul.

“I hate Naked,” I tell him. He raises a brow, forcing me to remember that Josh is a robot and probably only listens to classical music, and only then because he’s heard it’s associated with improved limbic activity or similar boring bullshit. “It’s my best known song. I—”

He laughs. A real laugh. “I’ve heard your song. You don’t need to explain it to me. Sometimes it’s like you think I live in a cave.”

“Morgue,” I correct. “Or robot storage facility. So anyway, there’s my thing no one else knows, my deep dark secret. I fucking hate that song. I didn’t want it on the first album, but I let it go because I didn’t want to piss off the label, and it turns out they were right and I was wrong. So maybe I don’t know anything. I have to sing it at the encore and every time it’s a little harder.”

And occasionally I have to sing it and I have a panic attack instead.

“If it’s any consolation,” he offers, “I hate that song too.”

I laugh. “God, you’re such a dick. Now you tell me something. Something no one else knows.”

His mouth quirks up. “I’m a robot, remember? It’s all on the surface.”

I suspect that none of it, not a single thing, is on the surface. I’d like to pry his brain open and look at the contents if it wasn’t going to be one hundred percent fatal. “Fine, see if I tell you anything from now on.”

He’s silent for a moment. He takes a sip of his cappuccino, swallows, and turns to me. “I didn’t want to come on this trip. In fact, a part of me didn’t want to come home at all.”

“Why?”

He tugs his lush lower lip between his teeth. “It’s hard for me to be around my father…he doesn’t treat my mother the way he should.”

I glance at him, waiting for more, but it doesn’t come. I assume Jim is cheating, and it’s easy enough to believe, probably because there’s something restless in him that reminds me a bit of his son—not Josh but the one I’m ostensibly here to reunite with.

“Just being home is hard too,” he says instead. “It’s hard seeing how much better life is for everyone. All the stuff…” He waves his hands.

“The American excess?” I ask, mocking Sloane’s disdainful tone.

He laughs. “Jesus, you can hold a grudge. But yes, the excess. Not just America, but everywhere. All the food and the services and the stores and the money everywhere you look, and how oblivious people are to it. But then it stops being so shocking after a few days. And I get used to the food and good internet and having five hundred channels and a soft bed. I get used to life being so easy. And that’s right around the time I have to go back and get used to not having it.”

I sigh. “I’m sorry. Why haven’t you told your mom?”

His head turns, resting against the back of the chaise lounge to face me. His lips curve into a wistful smile. “Because she’s my mom. She wants to make me happy. She wants to baby me. I can’t take that away from her.”

Then don’t go back, I think. Let someone else go. But I don’t say it aloud, because it would sound like the plea of someone who cares and I really don’t. I’ll have forgotten all about Josh in a week.

Our cappuccinos are gone, the warmth has seeped out of the towels, the sun is full in the sky, and the first guests have started to filter downstairs toward the buffet, but neither of us move to go anywhere. My eyes close and I don’t realize I’m humming until Josh asks what it is.

I shrug. “I don’t know. Just a song I’m working out in my head.”

“I didn’t realize you wrote your own stuff.”

“I don’t,” I reply. “Well, I don’t record it. I started off wanting to go in a different direction, but then I discovered that it’s more fun to be able to eat and pay rent.”

“I like it,” he says. “Better than Naked, even, symphonic masterpiece that it is.”

I laugh, unwillingly. Maybe I won’t have forgotten him in a week, after all.

We turn to walk back to the elevators. My eyes drift to the displays, to the white dress, and Josh elbows me.

“You stare at that every morning,” he says softly. There’s a sweetness to his voice. “Why don’t you get it?”

I didn’t entirely realize I’d been staring at the dress, which is long and loose and has delicate little ties at the shoulders to hold it up, and I guess I do like it, but I shake my head. It’s way too innocent for me. Too virginal, too girlish. I’d feel like I was playing a part. Here I am dressed as a girl Josh would date. I have a medical degree but I’m not a shrew like Sloane. I’ll probably quit my practice to give birth to all his children sometime soon. I would never call my sister-in-law a raging cunt.

I guess I’ve thought about this dress more than I realized.

“It’s just not me,” I tell him. “I’d feel silly.”