Today Tonight Tomorrow(76)

It is all of a sudden so obvious: when he acted fidgety after I saved him, how he didn’t pursue Carolyn Gao. He did this just so he could best me one last time. He played me, letting me into his house and his room, telling me his secrets and listening to mine. Just to rub it in when he kills me, even after we allied ourselves.

I can’t believe I was about to tell him that I had feelings for him.

I close my fist around the slip of paper. Slowly, I turn to face him, unclenching my hand, revealing my name.

We hover in that space for a few seconds, frozen.

The color drains from his face. “Oh. Shit,” he mutters. “I can explain that.”

“I’d really love to hear it.”

He rubs at his eyes, jostling his glasses. “I’m so sorry. I—I didn’t mean for you to find out.”

“Obviously,” I choke out. “Have you had me the whole time?”

With a miserable nod, he says, “Since Cinerama. Yeah. I should have told you. I just thought—I thought you wouldn’t trust me if you knew.”

Irony of ironies.

“So what was your plan? Keep it secret until the end, then surprise me because I already trusted you? Soften me up, get me to let my guard down?” I shake my head. More than anything, it’s about the loss of trust, not the grand prize. “You know it’s not about the money for me anymore. Why wouldn’t you just tell me?”

He doesn’t say anything.

“Well, congratufuckinglations. You got me. So go ahead. Kill me.”

I hold out my arm for him, indicating he should swipe the blue armband.

“That’s not what I—”

“Just do it, okay?” I grit out. We both stare at it. Lightly, I nudge his shoulder, but he doesn’t budge, like he is made of metal instead of skin and bones. “Stop talking to your shoes! At least look me in the eye.”

When he finally wrenches his eyes up to mine, my stomach drops. He looks more pained than he has all night.

“Rowan,” he says, voice quaking, clearly trying so hard to sound gentle. He swallows hard. “Okay. You’re right. I wasn’t going to wait until the end at first. When we were in the record store, I had a moment where I thought, ‘This is it. I’m going to do it.’ But I couldn’t. I don’t know. We were getting along, and it was—forgive me—nice. It was nice. I liked spending time with you.”

“You say that like it’s such a shock,” I say, though I can’t deny how good it feels to hear it. “Like it’s so impossible to have enjoyed my company.”

He crosses his arms. “We both know your self-esteem isn’t that low. I’m sorry I wanted to spend more time with you. I’m sorry I wanted to keep you in the game—which, I might point out, was exactly what you did for me at Pike Place—so we could go up against each other at the end and so you could ultimately beat me, since that’s apparently the only thing that matters to you.”

“It isn’t.” It hasn’t been for hours.

Beneath his freckles, his face is a mess of angry red splotches. It isn’t cute. It’s fucking infuriating. This close to him, I can see all his freckles, plus a scar on his chin I’ve never noticed before. And I’ve never seen him with facial hair, but now that he’s been out all night, a dusting of auburn is beginning to grow in, and it doesn’t look terrible. Except that it’s Neil, and I despise him—don’t I?—and therefore it does.

“Up until today,” he says, “we only sort of knew each other. I knew you hate it when you don’t get enough votes for a measure in student council and that you like romance novels. But I didn’t know why. I didn’t know about your family or your writing. I didn’t know how much you like sad songs or why you love reading the books you do. And”—he sucks in a breath—“you didn’t know about me either. You didn’t know about my family. Do you know how many people I’ve voluntarily told about my dad?” He shakes his head. “Maybe five? And I trusted you with that. I haven’t trusted anyone with that, not for a long time.”

He’s apologizing. He clearly feels bad about it. Maybe it isn’t so awful that he kept this from me. Maybe we can move past it, keep playing.

The moonlight catches his face, and I can’t deny how lovely it looks.

“We shared some really personal shit,” he says. “Does that not matter at all?”

I’m blushing too. I can feel it. I’m thinking about what we talked about in the library. How it felt safe to have those conversations around him. How I liked playing with him, but more than that…

I wanted to kiss him, and I wanted him to kiss me back. That’s what I wanted.

What I want.

“It does matter,” I say, stepping closer. I don’t want to be at odds with him. The day flashes through my mind: the assembly, my Pike Place Market rescue, arguing over pizza. The record store and Sean Yee’s lab and Neil’s house, the place no one ever goes. My house, then, and the zoo and the library. The library. That dance. Then Two Birds, and singing while scrubbing dishes, and the open mic and how incredible I felt afterward.

The bench.

How much of it was real? What happened at his house, yes, and what happened at mine. But everything else? Before I forgive him, I have to know for sure.