With Love, from Cold World(80)

“I don’t like to talk about it,” she said. “Not because my experiences were all that bad . . . I mean, I know a lot of kids have it so much worse. I was never abused in foster care, or anything like that.”

He folded the pillow under his head, propping himself up so he could face her. “Your experiences are your own,” he said. “They don’t have to be better or worse relative to anyone else’s.”

“I know,” she said. “But somehow . . . never mind. It’ll sound really stupid if I say it out loud.”

“Try me.”

He could practically feel her gathering her courage in the silence that followed. Finally, she took a deep breath and started talking.

“I always thought that people would reject me, if they knew. Like my own mother abandoned me, you know? I don’t know much about my dad—not a name or a job or anything real. So if people knew about that part of my past, they would see how easy it was to abandon me. And then they’d do it, too.”

He reached between them for her hand, giving it a squeeze. “You’re not easy to abandon,” he said. “What happened to you . . . it says more about the adults in your life than it does about you.”

“I know that,” she said. “On some level. Most days, I don’t even blame my mom. She didn’t leave me on purpose. She had a drug problem, and she never got help. I know she loved me, but she couldn’t take care of me. And at the end of the day, I think losing me made her give up. She died of an overdose less than a year later.”

“How old were you?”

“Ten.”

His heart ached for the kid she must’ve been then. He felt like he could see her with her glasses and her books, a quiet kid who tried to pretend that everything was going along fine.

“I do know what you mean,” he said, “about worrying about rejection. I never thought about it that way, but it’s probably one reason I don’t tell just anyone about my parents kicking me out, either.”

She made a face that he couldn’t read in the dark. “I’m sorry if the random number generator game made you tell me anything before you were ready.”

“No,” he said. “I trust you.”

“I trust you, too,” she said, her voice a whisper.

Why did those words hit him in the gut so hard? Maybe it was because he knew how difficult it was to earn Lauren’s trust, what an honor it was to have it.

She made a little snort of laughter, and it was so far from his own contemplative mood that he couldn’t help but smile. “What?”

“This is what I meant, about plans,” she said. “Tonight I was going to show you how fun I could be. I put on my glittery eye makeup and drank that awful punch and danced and it was all supposed to be for you, but instead . . . here we are talking about childhood traumas. The wet blanket strikes again.”

Asa couldn’t deny the possessive surge that went through him, at her confession that she’d made all that effort for him—not for Daniel, not because of any stupid contest or date, but for him. “Lauren,” he said, “I don’t know where you got the idea that you need to be someone different for me, or at all. I happen to like you exactly as you are.”

She wouldn’t know how close he’d come to saying something else, a bigger word than like. But he realized it was true. Somewhere along the way, he’d fallen in love with Lauren Fox. He couldn’t pinpoint exactly when—it was more like a series of moments, going all the way back to the first time she’d ever spoken to him at the holiday party about wanting to cancel Secret Santa. It was hard to remember how he would’ve even described Lauren to himself then. But it was impossible not to imagine each interaction making some deposit, no matter how minuscule, another entry on the ledger of all the reasons he loved her now.

He would have to remember that language, for whenever he got up the courage to tell her how he felt. Something told him she’d like any comparison to spreadsheets.

But not tonight. He gave her hand another squeeze, leaning forward to kiss her forehead.

“I promise you’re the most fun,” he said.

“For a robot.”

“Nah,” he said. “You’re clicking your way through all those traffic lights, baby.”

He’d meant it to come out breezy, a lighthearted callback to the speech she’d made during karaoke that had made her so self-conscious. But the endearment came out sounding tender instead, and when she rolled to her other side, she snuggled into him. He wrapped his arm around her, pulling her closer, and it didn’t take long before they both fell off to sleep.





Chapter


Twenty-One

When Lauren woke up, it took a moment for the night before to come flooding back. It all hit her in a highlight reel of bad decisions, from the karaoke to crying under fake snow to trying to kiss Asa and then asking him to help her take her bra off.

She curled into herself, as if making herself smaller would protect her against the worst of the mortification. But behind her, Asa shifted, his body warm and hard pressed against her.

So the night hadn’t been all bad. She remembered the way Asa had gently cleaned her makeup off for her, the story he’d told about believing in Santa until he was twelve. She remembered the slight rasp in his voice when he’d said I happen to like you exactly as you are. And then she’d fallen asleep with him holding her, and woken up the same way. It was nice. She could get used to the feeling.