He sat down on the bed next to me. My panic expanded in my chest when I felt his hand on my back. I cringed, and immediately tried to tamp down the instinctive response to avoid his touch. But Evan felt me flinch. He exhaled and dropped his hand onto his thigh.
“You’ve pulled away from me again. I’d hoped that after last night, well… I don’t know what I was thinking,” he said heavily. “That there might still be a chance between us, I guess. But there isn’t. Is there?”
I clamped my eyelids shut. How could I tell him that I felt like my heart was breaking every time I looked at his face? That his touch—once craved so much—now made panic claw at my insides. I got the same feeling every time I looked at the ugly bruise under my thumb.
How could I tell him why I felt that way, when I was having trouble understanding myself? The memories nibbled at the edge of my consciousness, threatening to bite viciously into me at any moment. I was barely holding it together.
It was all his fault. Madaster’s. He laid ruin to everything he touched.
“It’s so much, Evan. I can’t just act like everything is fine between us.”
“I know. I don’t want to press you. But, Anna—”
I heard his hesitation and turned to look at him.
“There is something I have to ask you.”
“About Madaster?” I asked uneasily. “I don’t remember much more about what happened than I did yesterday.”
It was kind of true. I didn’t have that many more flashes of concrete memory than I’d had after ten minutes of awakening in the ER yesterday. But increasingly, I strained to hold back that thick, sickening feeling of dread. It was that sinister horror that slinked closer whenever Evan touched me.
“No. Not about Madaster. Anna—”
“Just say it,” I prompted, feeling irritated at his reluctance. Trapped. The dread edged closer now, an insidious, hungry shadow. It crept forward, even without Evan touching me.
“Is it possible you were adopted?” Evan asked me.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I’d thought the day before yesterday—the day at the library, and then hearing Evan’s confession—had been the longest, most miserable day of my life. Then I’d visited Noah Madaster in the South Twin, and that day had moved into first place.
Now I knew this day in the hotel room with Evan would be the hellish new winner.
It was enough to make a girl prefer oblivion to tomorrow.
When he said the word adoption, it triggered a wave of emotion in me. I shuddered uncontrollably.
“Of course not,” I cried out. “What would make you say something like that?”
“I’m sorry,” Evan said, clearly taken aback my reaction. “It was something Noah said while I was in his suite yesterday.”
The only thing that kept me grounded in that moment, that allowed me to stave off panic, was the weight and history of my happy, mundane childhood. I couldn’t allow that to be ripped away from me as well.
“I’m not adopted. That’s ridiculous. Don’t you think my parents would have told me?”
“I suppose,” he said slowly, and I could feel his gaze on my face: studying, gauging. Worried. “Although I’d imagine it’s a decision adoptive parents make early on and try to stick to: whether to tell the child, or let the child assume they are a natural part of the family.”
“You’re suggesting I’m unnatural?” He reached for me, and I struck his hand away. I stood—too abruptly, because dizziness hit me. Unnatural. Adoption. Unnatural. Adoption.
“What are you trying to do to me, Evan? Tear me apart, piece by piece?”
“No. God, no, I’m sorry—Anna!”
I rushed to the bathroom and slammed shut the door. When I heard him call my name again, I locked it.
I turned and stared at the pristine white bathroom. It was a blank canvas, blazing in my eyes. They say nature abhors a vacuum. Upon that clean, white canvas, the memories started to slash and splatter.
I believe that at that moment, if I could have ripped my heart from my chest in order to stop the pain, I would have.