I took a scalding gulp of coffee.
“Perhaps,” Tamsin said, sketching crosses in the snow, “it’s time we tell them everything.”
“Everything about what?”
“Adam, Ingrid, the flowers—”
“No.” The cup trembled in my hand. “Don’t you see? It’s him. This is his doing.”
“You think Adam is behind this? Convincing girls to shag you, then accuse you?”
“That’s exactly what I think. He’s flipping the table on me.”
Tamsin frowned. “What do you mean, flipping it?”
Shit.
“Just trust me on this, Tam. It fits too well. Adam and Jay are behind all of this. They have to be.” I shook my head, dazed. “This is surreal, being on the other side. The accused. I can’t believe him. It’s almost brilliant. The perfect irony.”
“Renard.” She laid a hand over mine. “Listen to yourself.”
“Why?”
“You sound very paranoid.”
“Yeah, well. A girl just fucking accused me of forcing her to—”
My voice fractured, crumbled. I looked away. Tried to pull free, but Tam held on.
“You didn’t force Norah,” she said. “But . . . someone hurt you, didn’t they?”
“No.”
“Ren.”
“Not me. A girl I knew.”
Her thumb ran across my knuckles. “What’s her name?”
“Don’t do this right now. Please.”
Years ago, I’d put that belt around my neck and stepped off the chair for two reasons.
The first was the girl who broke my heart.
The second was the boy who broke my body.
Mom said you were gone, Sofie. Mina was shaking as I hugged her on the school playground. A teacher watched, phone to ear. Soon there’d be sirens and flashing lights, because Mom had convinced a judge that her self-destructive daughter was a harmful influence and must stay fifty feet away at all times. To my mother, transition was “self-destructive” because I was tearing down my female identity. But to me, it was self-constructive. Not that it mattered—all my princesses knew was that I’d vanished. They wouldn’t let me see you in the hospital, Mina said. I thought you died. Kari, fearless, said excitedly, Are you a ghost?
Now Tamsin searched my face. But she didn’t push further. Instead she drew my hand into her coat, against her heart. That fist-sized ember where anger and love burned brightest.
“I’m so fucked-up, Tam,” I whispered.
“Not yet you’re not.” She squeezed my hand. “Let me get you wasted.”
———
It snowed all the way to her hotel, covering the city in pearl dust, here and there a glittering fragment of gem. The ruby brooch of a stoplight, the diamond studs of a passing car’s xenons. Evening fell, but without true darkness I lost sense of time. Before we went inside—before what I knew would happen tonight—I held her hand and walked along the river. No footprints but ours. Just us alone in this timeless, colorless limbo. Ice hung from a bench, a silver bracelet frozen midfall. Light shattered on the water in topaz shards. As if unbearably beautiful things had been hurled from a great height, smashed into the world to scatter their beauty.
Our breath steamed against the sky, white on white, lost. Our hands tightened.
The hotel bar was cozily dim, strewn with handsome calfskin couches, candles in hurricane lamps. The bartender gave a friendly nod. Tamsin sprawled on a sectional, hooked an arm over the back. Legs crossed, boots cocked. I imagined her in a classic Porsche the color of a shark, with a cigarette between her lips.
I sat a body’s width away. I could count every inch.
The bartender brought rum, and Tam raised her lowball. Melted amber dripped down the inside of the glass.
“What shall we toast to?”
Candlelight flickered over her face, kindling the gold fibers in her irises like tiny wicks. I raised my glass.
To you, bad girl. To the things I want to do with you.
But I said, “To vengeance.”
“To vengeance.”
Clink.
Fire rolled down my throat, a slow burn crawling through my veins. I watched her hand fall to the leather seat. Unconsciously, her fingertips rubbed a circle.
Look away, Ren.
“Tell me your story,” I said.
“Which?”
“The one where you kill a man.”
We sipped in sync. Without touching we held the same rhythm, instinctively aware of each other’s bodies. I could dance with her with my eyes closed.
“It’s an ugly story.”
“I need to hear about someone getting what they deserve.”
“He hurt me, Ren. Do you want to hear about that?”
Softly, I said, “Yes.”
“You’re fucked-up. Just like me.” She smiled. “You want to get angry. To get off on it.”
“I want to get you off.”
I touched her hand. Ran my fingers through hers one by one. Traced an oval in the pale heart of her palm. Her lips parted, eyelids lowering.
All these months and I still hadn’t kissed her. Not once.
Because I knew how this played out.
Same as it always did.