I’m about to challenge him to prove any of this, preferably all of this, and actually, why the heck was Kasey present and accounted for when he was not if his story is true? Luke reads my mind and chimes in with that exact point. “Kasey didn’t disappear when you did.”
“He was supposed to,” he replies. “When the time came, he double-crossed me. He no-showed to our exit zone. He left me no choice but to leave him behind and penniless.”
“Why didn’t he tell these people you were alive?” I challenge.
“I was involved because of him. Kasey would have been told to find me or die. And finding me wasn’t going to pay the bills.” His gaze latches onto mine. “I know you, Ana. Had I told you any of this, you would have worn this problem like an obligation your badge created. You would have tried to fix what cannot be fixed.”
“Of course, it can be fixed,” I snap. “Everything can be fixed.”
“And therefore, you were obligated to make her suffer,” Luke interjects, replying directly to Kurt. “Because she suffered, Kurt. She hurt. She literally heaved her guts out at the funeral.”
He flicks Luke a look filled with condemnation. “She can handle it. She’s tough.”
Don’t put Baby in a corner. Well, don’t even think about putting me in a corner. Luke isn’t having it. “What she can handle and what she should have to handle are two different things.”
I reach out and catch Luke’s arm, silently letting him know how much his presence means to me but also that I’ve got this. All of this is, after all, the price I pay for being blind and stupid until now, but no more. The idea that Kurt knows me, really knows me, and I clearly don’t know him, is not just pathetic. It’s potentially deadly when it involves a man who can spot weakness a mile away.
And as Kurt once told me—know how you are perceived and use it against your enemy.
I was dumb and stupid so he sees me as dumb and stupid.
I file that away in my mental information box.
At some point, even if it’s not this moment, I’ll use that against him.
And I’ll use it against him as painfully as he used it against me.