do you care?

CHARLOTTTE

The question was loaded as it hung in the air between us.

I didn’t let myself breathe because suddenly, I felt suspended mid-air, trying desperately to find my footing.

He could brush me off, give me an answer that proved just how way over my head I had gotten. He could do it, and we could put this entire thing behind us.

But I was looking at a version of Taide I had never seen before.

One I couldn’t predict.

One who could respond to the question I had just voiced with the words I had just heard fall from his lips, as he breathed out, “You know why.”

“But I don’t,” I found myself saying. “I don’t know what’s going on inside your head when you do the things you do. I don’t know why you built me this bookshelf,” I gestured to my left wall, “I don’t know why you’re here, why you feel you need to be here after… after…”

“After I had sex with someone else?”

I swallowed down the rest of my sentence, hearing him complete the words I couldn’t speak myself. A wave of unease ro