wanted to step back and say no, this is over that would be—that would be a thing you could do.”
“No.” Once again I had no clue what she was feeling. “No, I think this is … enough. I regret how this ended, but it’s part of who I am now.”
That made sense. And to be honest she probably had far bigger problems than whether a piece of paper based on fraudulent information said she was technically still legally tied to an estate agent in Maidenhead. “So”—I tried—“what are you going to do now?”
She didn’t make any reply. She sat there frozen in a way that made me really, really, really uncomfortable.
I scooched over and put an arm around her. Like Elise, she’d learned to fake breathing fairly unconsciously so people didn’t get totally weirded out but, like Elise, she’d stop when she was upset. She was warm, and soft—whatever magic animated her covered up that particular feature of the whole “carved of solid marble” thing—but totally unyielding. My hand came to rest on her arm and it was like putting it on the arm of a chair. “It’ll be okay,” I said. Not that it necessarily would. Not that I necessarily knew what okay meant. For either of us.
“I am not sure,” she said at last. “What my purpose is.”
“Join the club.”
“I was created to be loved.” Her head still hadn’t moved. Neither had any other part of her. “If I cannot be, then what am I?”
“Hey.” I cupped a hand under her chin and guided her face around so that she could see me. “We won’t have any of that. You’re…” Shit I sucked at pep talks. A strong independent woman was so insipid and cliché it was practically a parody of inspirational. Beautiful was exactly the wrong message to be sending her right now. Immortal and nearly indestructible was true but a long way from what she wanted to hear. “Look, I barely know you, kid. But you remind me a lot of somebody I knew, and she was—she was—I’m not sure I’ve even got words for it. She was kind and weird and sweet and sometimes shy and sometimes totally the opposite of shy and she had this surprisingly sardonic sense of humour where you couldn’t tell if she was half as naive as you thought she was.”
She was starting to fake being alive again, which I took as a good sign. “You say was. Is she…”
“I don’t know. It’s complicated. But she’s not with me anymore, and she might not ever be again.”
“It sounds as if you loved her very much.”
That wasn’t language I’d used before. Not consciously at least. “Yeah,” I said. “I guess I did.”
“Do you think”—Galatea blinked surprisingly naturally, as if she was considering something—“do you think you could love me?”
I was just trying to work out the most appropriate way to say that she shouldn’t judge herself by what other people thought of her when ... she kissed me. I hadn’t drunk that much while I was waiting for Edward. And I wasn’t feeling as lonely or as melancholy as I had been two weeks ago. And I’d more or less been fine to spend last night getting wound up by a hot coed and then doing nothing about it. But put it all together with the stress and the exhaustion and the not wanting to let Galatea down and her looking so much like somebody I missed so much and for a split second it seemed like a good idea to go with it.
So I went with it. She sank back onto the couch, letting me lean over her and into her and—and this was wrong. Seriously fucking wrong. I jumped up and pulled away from her like she’d been suddenly electrified. I could still taste her on my lips, though, a strange almost dusty taste like a temple to a dead goddess. “That was—I shouldn’t. Fuck, I’m sorry.”
She looked up at me from the sofa. She didn’t have a hair out of place. “Did I do something wrong?” Her eyes were wide and confused and imploring. “Am I insufficient?”
Jesus fucking Christ this was the last thing I needed. “Shit, no. You’re—you’re more than sufficient, you’re—honestly you’re out of my league and you’re out of your ex’s league as well, if you want my opinion. But that whole”—shit I was bad at this—“okay, sit down. I’ll explain.”
“I’m already sitting down.”
“Fair point.” I sat beside her and took her hand. “I think