Book!AeneasWouldNever: So what was already upsetting you before you saw the thread?

Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: It’s kind of a long story.

Book!AeneasWouldNever: You don’t have to tell me. Ignore the question.

Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: No, it’s okay.

Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: Without going into too much detail, I met a friend for dinner, and she disappointed me.

Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: I thought she accepted me the way I am, but

Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: She wants to fix me. Improve me.

Book!AeneasWouldNever: WTF?

Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: She had to speak up, BAWN. Out of CONCERN.

Book!AeneasWouldNever: I’m certain you already know this, but: You don’t need to be fixed or improved. You’re perfect just the way you are.

Book!AeneasWouldNever: I’m so sorry. That must have hurt.

Book!AeneasWouldNever: I don’t have a ton of friends—maybe three? And they’re all coworkers. But they would never do that to me. You deserve better.

Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: Given how kind and funny you are, I’m shocked you don’t have an enormous circle of close, loyal friends. But quality over quantity, right?

Book!AeneasWouldNever: Honestly, I’m still surprised sometimes to have ANY friends. I didn’t growing up.

Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: Being a kid is so awkward.

Book!AeneasWouldNever: Yes. Anyway, I’m forever grateful for the friends I do have. Definitely including you, Ulsie.

Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: I feel the same.

Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: Thanks for listening, as always.

Book!AeneasWouldNever: Any time.

Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: I don’t let everyone in, and it hurts to do it and be disappointed.

Book!AeneasWouldNever: I’m an expert at disappointing others, sadly.

Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: Well, you’ve never disappointed me.

25

APRIL WAS CRYING AGAIN. WITH HURT, YES, BUT ALSO RAGE.

So much goddamn rage.

Marcus was Book!AeneasWouldNever. At one time, that would have been her most fervent wish, to have the two most important men in her life somehow merge into one. To not have to choose between them. But now—but now—

All this time. All this time, he’d pretended they’d met as strangers at a restaurant. All this time, he’d fucking lied to her.

“April, I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.” When Marcus tentatively reached out to dry her tears again, she slapped his hand away.

“Why?” That single syllable was so choked with betrayal, she could barely understand herself. “Why didn’t you say something?”

He raked a hand through his hair. Gripped it in his fist so hard he must have ripped some out. “I wanted to, April. Fuck, I would have done anything to let you know.”

Jesus, what bullshit. Exactly how gullible did he think she was?

“Anything.” She laughed, a horrible, scraping sound. “Anything except tell me.”

Such a small slip-up he’d made. So easy to dismiss, to explain away, if his stumble hadn’t involved something she couldn’t second-guess or doubt.

She’d decided months ago not to mention being fat-shamed on dates to Marcus. It was a very deliberate, very conscious omission, one intended to spare her pride. She’d told herself that part of her past didn’t matter, really, not when he did love her body exactly the way it was.

If she hadn’t caught that damning little slip, would he ever have told her? And how long, precisely, had he known the truth?

“Did you know who I was when you asked me out on Twitter?” Her tone had hardened now. Turned colder, as her tears dried.

He frantically shook his head. “I had no clue who you were. I swear. Not until you told me at dinner.”

That blank look of shock when she’d shared her fanfic name. Those initial, probing questions about Marcus—about himself, and how she felt about him—on the Lavineas server. All those conversations where he pretended to know almost nothing about fanfic.

“You’ve been keeping this a secret from our very first date,” she whispered. “From our first fucking date.”

He grabbed the back of his neck, squeezing hard. “April, you have to understand—”

“Oh, how wonderful.” She’d never used that voice, rich with sarcasm and disdain, on him before. Not even once. It made him flinch, and she was savagely glad. “Yes, please tell me what I have to understand. I can’t wait to find out.”

“If anyone knew I was writing fix-it fics in response to the show, if anyone knew the things I said about the scripts on the Lavineas server . . .” He sounded so sincere, each word a heart-wrenching plea. A hell of a good actor, as always. “I could have lost the role of Aeneas. I could be sued, potentially. And no one would want to cast the guy who—”

Enough. She didn’t need a lecture on how grave the consequences could have been, or how grave they could still be. Of course his showrunners would be unhappy. Maybe even his colleagues. But he’d lied to her, and she wasn’t letting herself be dragged off-topic.

She held up a steady hand. “I get it, Marcus.”

“I don’t think you do.” His lips tightened, just for a moment. A flash of anger, when Marcus was never, ever angry at her—at least, not until he was caught in a lie. “Not really.”

Ignoring that attempted feint, she cut to the most crucial, most hurtful part of this absolute shitshow. “I also get the real issue here.”

“The real issue?” It was almost a growl.

“You don’t trust me.” She sat back in her car seat and laughed again, and the sound was just as horrible, just as sharp, as before. “We were friends for over two years online, and you’ve been living with me for months, and you don’t trust me.”

She’d been so sure of him. Of them.

And from the very beginning, she’d been building a relationship on quicksand.

The anger had faded from his expression, and the desperate shake of his head must have hurt his neck. “No, April. No. That’s not—”

She bit her lip, her cold, calm facade cracking. “I w-would never have told anyone. Not a soul. Not my coworkers. Not our friends on the Lavineas server. Not my mother. No one.”

The honest fucking truth, and she hoped he recognized it.

“I know that!” He flung his hands in the air, his own voice breaking. “Do you honestly think I don’t know that?”

The air seemed simultaneously too thin and too thick to breathe, and she wanted to fling open the car door and run. Instead, she stayed and faced him dead-on.

“Right. Of course.” Her lip, now bitten red and raw, stung as she gave him a mean little smile. “Except for one problem: if you knew that, if you trusted me, you would have said something.”

He clawed at the seat belt as if it were strangling him, finally stabbing at the release to fling it free. The violence of the motion didn’t seem to satisfy him, though, and his chest heaved with labored breaths.

“I was scared.” It was a blunt, rough statement, unvarnished enough that her desolate sneer faded despite her best efforts. “When we met in person, I was cautious about sharing something so damaging, and I think that’s understandable, even though you may not agree. Then I knew I could trust you, but I didn’t—”

Jaw clenched with frustration, he seemed to search for words.

“I didn’t trust that I’d say the right thing when I explained. I didn’t trust that I’d be enough to make you stay, once you knew I’d been hiding something so important all this time. From that first date.” His brows had drawn together, a mute plea for understanding. “I love you, and I was terrified you’d leave me.”

Her sudden inhalation removed all the remaining oxygen from the car. Dizzy and sick, she stared at him.

I was scared.

I love you, and I was terrified you’d leave me.

Even desolate and enraged, she couldn’t dismiss the naked honesty in the admission. Couldn’t pretend to herself that he was playing her, misleading her, wheedling for her forgiveness through strategic, manipulative vulnerability.

At long last, he was letting her see him without any barriers, any artifice, any deception between them.

And it was too late. Too goddamn late.

Outside the car, children shrieked in a game of keep-away from across the park’s expansive grassy field. The sound was distant, almost inaudible over the ringing in her ears, the subtle creak of her seat as she sagged into it all at once.

Her voice wasn’t angry or disdainful anymore, but still thick. Still despairing. “For months, you’ve known much more about me than I realized, and you kept that information from me. It’s a horrible violation of trust. You realize that, right?”

It was disorienting. Sickening.

Every conversation they’d had, every moment of their relationship, she’d now have to revisit and question. When had he lied? When had he simply not told her the truth? When had he used his knowledge as BAWN to further his own purposes as Marcus?

He’d definitely pumped her for information about Marcus as BAWN, she knew that for certain. And then—and then he’d cut off contact on the Lavineas server. Just like that.

“When BAWN s-stopped”—she inhaled through her nose, exhaled a hitching breath through her mouth—“when you stopped writing me on the server, I told myself I’d done something wrong, or you’d finally seen me and realized I wasn’t anyone you c-could want. You were m-my—”

Her sob shook her shoulders, and he bowed his head.

She sniffed back more tears. “Y-you were my best friend, and you just . . . left. With no good explanation, only some dumb excuse that was obviously untrue. You lied to me as Marcus, but you lied to me as BAWN too. You a-abandoned me.”

Tipping her head back, she stared at the gray fabric of her car’s ceiling and waited until she could speak intelligibly again. “You hurt me, lied, and violated my trust because you were scared.”