“As I said, I’ve seen something like this before in the lab.”
“ ‘Something like this’?” he quoted back at her. “I imagine you saw many things in your lab, but I’m also sure that I’m still the best qualified to know when I’m experiencing romantic interest.” He sounded angry, but he was smiling and he was moving closer while he spoke. “So if your only argument is anecdotal…”
“That’s not my only argument,” she began slowly, unwillingly. These weren’t the easiest words to say. “I may have been… absorbed by my work, but I wasn’t totally oblivious. I know what men see when they look at me, the ones who know what I am… like you do. And I understand that reaction. I don’t disagree with it. Your brother’s animosity—that is a normal, rational response. I’ve seen it many times before—fear, loathing, an eagerness to assert physical dominance. I am the bogeyman in a very dark and scary world. I frighten people who aren’t afraid of anything else, not even death. I can take everything they pride themselves on away from them; I can make them betray everything they hold sacred. I am the monster they see in their nightmares.” It was a version of herself she’d come to accept, but not without some pain.
She wasn’t unaware that outsiders, people who didn’t know her, saw her as a woman rather than a demon. When she needed to, she could make use of her ability to appear delicate and feminine, as she had with the walrus-y hotel manager. It was no different from her ability to look like a boy. Both were deceptions. But even those outsiders who saw her as a female didn’t look at her with… desire. She wasn’t that girl, and that was okay. She’d been born with her own gifts, and you didn’t get everything.
He waited patiently while she spoke, his expression neutral. She didn’t think he was reacting to her words strongly enough.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” she asked. “I am intrinsically incompatible with being an object of romantic interest.”
“I understand you. I just don’t agree.”
“I don’t understand how you of all people can disagree.”
“First, but not entirely to the point, I’m not afraid of you.”
She exhaled impatiently. “Why not?”
“Because, now that you know who I am, I am in no danger from you, and I never will be unless I change into the kind of person who should be.”
Her lips screwed into a half-pursed frown. He was right… but that wasn’t really the issue.
“Second, still tangential, I think you’ve been spending all your time with the wrong kind of man. A hazard of your particular work, I’d imagine.”
“Maybe. But what is the main point you’re dancing around?”
He got into her personal space again. “How I feel. How you feel.”
She held her ground. “And how can you be sure what you’re feeling? You’re in the middle of the most traumatic experience of your life. You’ve just lost your whole world. All that’s left is a brother you don’t completely trust, your kidnapper-slash-torturer, and Arnie. So it was probably fifty-fifty on whether you’d attach yourself to me or to Arnie. This is pretty basic Stockholm syndrome stuff, Daniel. I’m the only human female in your life—there aren’t any other options. Think about it rationally; think about how inappropriate the timing is. You can’t trust feelings born in the midst of severe physical and mental anguish.”
“I might consider that, except for one thing.”
“And what’s that?”
“I wanted you before you were the only human female in my life.”
This threw her, and he took advantage, placing both his hands lightly on her shoulders. The warmth from his palms made her realize that she’d been cold without recognizing it. She shivered.
“Remember when I told you that I’d never asked a woman out on a train before? That was kind of an understatement. On average, it takes me about three weeks of fairly regular interaction—along with an embarrassing amount of encouragement from the girl—before I work up the nerve to ask someone to go for a casual coffee. But from the second I saw your face, I was willing to leap miles outside my comfort zone to make sure I saw it again.”
She shook her head. “Daniel, I roofied you. You were high on a chemical compound with manifestations similar to Ecstasy.”
“Not then, I wasn’t. I remember. I felt the difference before and after you ‘shocked’ me. That was when things got confusing. And before the drug, I was already in neck-deep. I was trying to figure out how I was going to get off at your stop without looking like a stalker.”