got love letters?”
She turned, surprised. “Oh. I forgot I’d said that.”
I didn’t push. Instead I went back to examining the two small closets in this room. Waited. A second later, she joined me, sliding into the tight space, already anticipating I’d need the extra eye.
“I didn’t have a lot of friends in middle school or high school,” she began. She avoided eye contact, but her body never stopped brushing against mine—her hips, her shoulders, her fingers. “You know I was—still am—close to my mom. Extremely close. I was never, ever raised to think my nerdy interests or hobbies were weird or wrong. They weren’t mainstream at the time, but fourteen-year-old me didn’t give a shit.”
She had one bookcase shoved aside in the closet and was running her fingers along the wood paneling. I dropped to my knees to help her, putting us on eye-level.
“I cared about books and the characters in those books. I cared about my mom and our cats. And I cared about being smart. More than smart. Brilliant. When I first started being bullied my sophomore year, it seemed so juvenile I told myself it didn’t matter. Who cares if you’re smart? And why is that a reason to make fun of someone?”
“Teenagers think differently,” I said. “But why would anyone make fun of you?”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“You’re…” I shrugged, my fingers accidentally brushing against hers on the spine of a book. “You know.”
“I’m what?”
“Funny,” I said begrudgingly. “And happy. And nice. At Quantico, everyone always wanted to be around you and laugh at your jokes.”
Freya’s expression opened up dramatically. “I always thought they wanted to be around you.”
“I don’t think many people feel the need to be around me,” I said. “Which is fine, since I have no time to be around people.”
She bit her lip. I ignored the response that incited in my body. “You’re smart and thoughtful and believe in honor and duty. You’re basically a real-life Superman. Trust me. Our classmates wanted to be around you.”
I ran a hand through my hair, unsure of how to answer that.
“Did kids make fun of you for being too smart?” she asked.
“I thought you said there was no way I could have had a shitty high school experience?” I was teasing, but she winced.
“I’m sorry I assumed that,” she admitted, poking her head around from the bookshelf. She was barefoot, hair a mess, glasses askew.
Adorable.
“It’s okay. Truly, it is.”
“No, but I am, Byrne. I can’t imagine…” She shrugged. “I can’t imagine living with your father when you were a teenager was enjoyable.”
“Having a strict father meant that if kids at school were making fun of me, I never knew,” I said. “I was always head down, studying. Serious. Extracurriculars, like football, were only to improve my transcript.”
“When did you enjoy being a kid?”
“When my mom was alive.”
Stupid. It was stupid to say things like that, especially in front of Freya.
She stood quickly as if perceiving a threat.
“Did you hear something?” I asked, looking up at her from the ground.
“That’s fucking sad.”
I couldn’t look at her emerald eyes, shimmering with empathy.
“Not really,” I mumbled.
“I’m so sorry you experienced that,” she said.
“It’s nothing,” I said firmly. “Tell me about why you didn’t get love letters.”
Freya shook her head. She was standing over me, and this position of powerful submission was destroying the remaining shreds of my self-control. Her hand moved across my forehead, brushing a strand of hair back into order. When she did it a second time, I grabbed her wrist. Put my lips there. Her throat worked as we stared at each other.
“Tell me about the love letters,” I said, voice thick. She nodded but left the closet to examine the room at large. She grabbed one side of the giant red rug in the middle of the floor. I got up, left the closet, grabbed the other side. We lifted, rolling it away.
“Anything?” she asked.
I was on my hands and knees, searching for hidden latches or trap doors. “Goddammit. No.”
Frustration mounted the more we searched and the less we found.
“Let’s move on to the next place,” she said. We did, pulling apart the bathroom and another room of books. I waited until we’d gotten to another natural conversational point to push her again—but she’d already started speaking.
“My senior year, I suddenly had these two friends. Courtney and Jessica. And they were popular friends. The instances of bullying I had been experiencing stopped because of them. No more mean whispers or weird rumors.” She