He walks into the room, forcing a curtsey from her. She flees from the room quickly, as if scared of the pussycat before her. She doesn’t realize it’s me who’s the dangerous one. Especially when cornered.
“I am sorry. I had intended to tell you on the way over.” He pauses for a second, as if just seeing this shitty thing he has done to me. “Dashiell is my middle name.”
I laugh harder. “Dashiell is not a name. Dash is a last name.”
He shakes his head. “I swear to you, Dashiell is my middle name. Benjamin Edward Dashiell Townshend is my full name.”
“You are lying. That’s a terrible middle name. No one would do that to their child.”
He sighs, reaching for his pocket and pulling his wallet out. He offers the driver’s license I have never seen, something I should have checked. Jesus, it says Dashiell. I choke a little bit. “It’s a lovely name.”
“It’s my mother’s maiden name, which is why I have it as my middle name.” He drops to his knees, making us nearly the same height. “It all means nothing. I am not the eldest; I will never take the title of sir from my father. His baronetcy will pass to my eldest brother, Henry, who is heir apparent. This isn’t my life. I left it a long time ago.”
“Have you seen a purple scarf or a black-and-white cat?” I ask, starting to look around. “I think I’m being fucked with. I think I’m actually in a mind run. Oh God, I’m in a coma. I was in that girl and she died, and I’m stuck in here?”
“No, this is very real.” He shakes his head, gripping my cheeks and forcing my face to turn and see him. “This doesn’t change who we are. You are you, and I am me. If I could tell the truth about who you are, how you’re a profiler and mind reader who used to be a top-secret spy for the UN, I would. If I could tell them who we really are, I would. But we are both sworn to secrecy on the matter, so I lie about being doctors together in a research facility.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. “First rule in lying and spying, Dash, is that you pick a lie close to the truth. So close, you believe it too.” I open my eyes, licking my lips and nodding. “Okay, so your parents are not American. They’re some sort of gentry, and you are not the heir apparent, ’cause that’s apparently a thing. Who knew? Anything else?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”
“You ever hear the phrase, ‘Is the juice worth the squeeze?’”
He nods slowly.
“I’m starting to wonder that very question.”
“If I am worth it?” He looks genuinely hurt.
“Not you, just love in general.” He doesn’t realize I have never loved a single person in my entire life except him. I don’t recall loving my family, not properly. I never truly loved the nuns or the other children. We knew what we all were. But Dash and Binx, I love with all my heart.
He kisses me softly so as not to smear whatever the fuck is all over my face. “None of this reality is ours. If you only knew how many baronets there are—it’s not a special term. It means that during the 1600s one of my relatives bought his way into the courts to help the king at the time, James the First. It’s no different than being mayor or senator or a judge.”
“I don’t care. I care that they think I am way fucking smarter than I am in a subject I know nothing about. I care that they think I’m somehow lesser because I don’t have any family. I care that they clearly had a path for you in life and you’re using me to stray from it. And I wonder if you ever really loved me at all!”
“Don’t say that.” He clenches his jaw. “I strayed a long time ago. I went to Eton, as was expected. But I never chose politics as my father did. Or as my brother did. I chose to be me, a man of science. I joined the UN out of university and never looked back.” His hands shake a tiny bit, and I can tell now that he fights to not have an accent in everything. He actually tries to sound American. “I need you to understand why I kept this from you. I was preventing you from giving up on me and us. It’s so easy for you to walk away unscathed, but I have nothing if we aren’t together.”
I sigh, fully aware of the weight of it all. The rational creature I am is slowly stamping out the fires built by the silly girl in me. “I know. You’re completely right, I never would have come. I would have hit you up with some sleeping pills and phoned to cancel for us. I probably would have said you’d come down with something. I never would have come here. And I might have never given us a chance.” I redirect all the fight in me. “I have been trained to lie for a living. Now I hunt and solve for a job. I can handle three days of this bullshit. I killed the head of state in Algeria without getting caught when I was twenty-two—I can do this too.” I nod, take a deep breath, and roll my shoulders. “Let’s do this.”