He smirks. “Sure can.”
“You’re such a sociopath.”
“Hmm. Are sociopaths born or made, sweetheart?”
I crane my head against his shoulder. “Why are you asking me?”
“You’re smart and you psychoanalyse me a lot in that head of yours.”
“I do not.”
“Sure do, or you wouldn’t have been able to thwart my plans.”
I thwarted his plans? When the hell did I do that? I need to commemorate the moment on my wall.
“Sociopaths are made,” I say. “It’s the circumstances and the upbringing that makes them what they are.”
“So a good upbringing can kill their sociopathic tendencies?”
“Sometimes, yes.”
“Only sometimes?”
“Well, yeah. Some people remain sociopaths no matter what type of upbringing they have.”
“Hmm. Interesting.”
“What are your thoughts about it?” I ask.
He lifts his hand, strokes my hair back and swipes his thumb along my lower lip.
“Monsters are born.” He leans over to bite my lower lip then whispers in dark words. “As they grow up, they either deny it or fully embrace it, but it doesn’t change what they are.”
29
Elsa
Despite the bubble bath, I’m still walking a little funny at school.
Aiden has me glued to his side with his arm wrapped around my shoulder.
It appears casual, but there’s nothing casual about Aiden. He just uses casualty to appear normal.
We both know he isn’t.
My gaze strays to his bandaged hand dangling off my shoulder. I asked him about it when he was bandaging it earlier, but he just deflected his way o
ut of it.
Aiden isn’t an open book, but he’s not completely closed off either. He has multiple layers that he carefully chooses which to hide and which to show.
His methodical thinking is maddening sometimes.
Okay, most of the time.
That doesn’t mean I’ll stop probing him.
We’re walking through the long hallway when I ask. “Were you a quiet kid?”