Page 32 of Never Bound

But she didn’t. Instead, she nodded. “I completely understand,” she said.

“You do?” Louisa squeaked in surprise.

“I do, and I’m sorry. I was blinded by my own privilege. I wasn’t listening.”

I pushed back my chair and stood. “Lou, can I talk to you in the kitchen?”

HER

“I shouldn’t have said anything,” I said immediately, thinking he was about to scold me. As if he weren’t always the onegettingscolded by everyone. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to say—”

“It’s not that,” he interrupted. “I’m glad you did. It’s just—why are you here?”

At some point in the last hour, I realized I wasn’t angry anymore. It wasn’t about him coming back. It wasn’t about him sticking up for my father. It wasn’t about whether he meant what he’d said. Though whatever his other opinions on the man might be, I suspected he did. It wasn’t even that when I heard him talk about his sister like that, I suddenly understood everything he’d done for her and why.

It was about the fact that he was trying. And now—if I couldn’t make it right, if I couldn’t put the shattered smithereens of whatever we’d had back together again—I could at least try, too.

Too bad it was looking like I’d fucked it up. Again. “What?”

He stood there, in the shelter of the trailing vines hanging from wicker baskets, speaking in a slow, dark voice. “Seriously, Lou,why are you here?”

I hadn’t been expecting that. Ridiculously, I felt embarrassed. Denuded. Disarmed. Like maybe Ishouldn’tbe here. “I … I thought it was obvious?”

“No, it’s not obvious,” he said, absently fingering the heart-shaped leaf of a curious philodendron vine that had drifted in front of him. “And here’s why. My mother was raped and left to die. My sister was abused. Their innocence was stolen. They didn’t get to be children. They weren’t even considered people. Their lives were thrown away like garbage, and I couldn’t stop any of it,” he said. “Meanwhile, you had the opposite. Everything in this world was designed to make your life a fairy tale. From your birthday cakes to your prom dresses to your college education to your fucking furry pink pillows, as much as I hate to bringthoseup again.”

I opened my mouth, but he cut me off.

“Which you could be lying on right now, doing your nails or something. But you’re not. You’rehere. You’re in the last place in the world you have to be, and it could ruin your life if anyone knew why. And none of this is an excuse for why I said what I said, or why I did what I did, and after this, I’m going to start apologizing like a motherfucker the way I should have done two days ago, but for now, I’m just saying this so maybe you can help me understand the crazy question that keeps running through my head. The one I can’t get over.Why are you here?”

He flicked away the vine in frustration. And the hand in the hair; I knew that was coming. And I also knew this wasn’t rhetorical. He was genuinely demanding an answer. He looked baffled, almost stricken, trying to comprehend that one scientific equation that just didn’t compute, no matter how many hundreds of different ways he tried to write it out so it did.

“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “I just am.” Which was true, although it wasn’t the whole story about why I was here, or why I’d been crying in front of Erica. “Does everything have to make sense?”

“Yes,” he insisted. “Everything does.”

“Oh, please.” But I knew he meant it. And my tutor couldn’t be argued with when he got like this. When he found a problem that needed solving, nobody was allowed to give up until it was solved. I’d learned that the hard way.

“No, I’m serious,” he continued. “According to science, everything has to make sense, and if anything doesn’t, it’s only because we don’t yet know the exact theories that explain it. But that doesn’t mean they don’t exist,” he finished. “Someday, when you’re a doctor and someone is suddenly healed and they claim it was a miracle, are you just going to take that at face value?”

“Well,” I said thoughtfully. “Yes.”

“Oh,come on.” He turned away in exasperation as if this personally offended him. “Slow learner, have I taught you nothing? You’re an intelligent person, Lou. How could you possibly—”

“But I would, okay?” I interrupted. “Therearethings that can’t be explained by science or anything else, and I’m not going to stand here and try to explain them becausethey can’t be explained. Hell, maybe scienceisa miracle. Or maybe miracles are just another kind of science. But it’s not your job, or my job, or anyone’s job, to have it all figured out this second, as much as we would like it to be. And fuck, if you want to talk about logic, why do you think it doesn’t make sense that I’m here?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe because it doesn’t make sense that you’re here?!”

I sighed. “See, there you go. The gambler’s fallacy again. As smart as you are, you keep falling for it.”

There was a bit of curiosity on his face now, amid the confusion. “What do you mean?”

“Look, as humans, we all want things to make sense, so we invent patterns where none exist. We convince ourselves that past events affect the probability of future events, even when they don’t. Like thinking that just because you’ve lost the last five hands, you’ll keep losing,” I said. “In other words, just because nobody was ever here before doesn’t mean nobody was ever going to be.”

He swallowed, obviously thinking about it in a way he hadn’t in the car, given that we’d both been watching our lives flash before our eyes.

“Okay. Okay, but—” He didn’t finish his sentence, and I was close enough now to see that the sleek muscles in his neck were taut, shoulders and chest moving up and down arrhythmically; the whites showing around his beautiful eyes. Strayed far from home, into territory he didn’t understand. But he was trying. Oh, he was trying sohard.

“Because, listen,” I continued, my voice gentler. “You think there has to be a reason for everything. I know you, and I know how you are, and that’s fair. But I think thatyouthink, like the gambler you are deep down, that the reason is secretly because I want to own you. Because with people in your past, that’sbeenthe reason. That they want to punish you or control you or hurt you, which would in turn leave your sister hurt. And I fucked up because I made you think that I did want to do those things. But I don’t. And I know I don’t. I didn’t know it before, but now I do. And I’m sorry, and now I guess it’s my turn to make a whole fucking embarrassing apology speech.”

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