What A Girl Wants

"What to do?" he asked me with a raised eyebrow and a grin, "What not to do? Well that all depends on what you want out of things, Emily? Why did you come all the way out here? Why didn't you stay home?"

I didn't have to think, the answer I gave a thousand times before to my parents and to everyone from back home came so easy to my lips, "I want a good job that won't break my back and I want to live in the city. That means getting an education, and this school has a really good reputation for-"

Lucas held up his hand and I choked off my words. He shook his head slow, telling me that he didn't believe one bit of what I was saying.

"That's not your answer, not your real one. That's the answer you give because you think it's the one that people want to hear and you think it's the sensible opinion to have.

"But the truth is never like that, not really. People aren't logical machines who step out and follow everything in an orderly fashion and we don't always wind up doing what we ought to. We do what we want to far too often to discount."

Lucas took another long pull from his beer and settled his way forward. Not closing the distance between us by any stretch, but in a moment where the tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife even one solitary single step forward was enough to be palpable to me.

"No you chose to come here for another reason. Maybe you know what that reason is and maybe you don't. I think personally you've probably got a sense of it, even if it does run below your surface a little. You know why you're here though. You know that it isn't to get a good job working in some tower in the city somewhere. You know the thought of whiling away an eternity behind a desk doesn't strike your passion. Right?"

"No," I shook my head, shuffling a little closer to him almost unconsciously, almost as if the gravity of him was drawing me in, "It doesn't."

"So what does then?" he asked again, he challenged me, "Why did you come all the way out here? Why did you take this chance and leave the nest? What do you want, Emily? What do you want from your time here? What strikes your passion?"

I swallowed. Hard. I stared up into his eyes and saw them staring back at me and they were blue or maybe grey but they were almost cold and certainly hardened. He wasn't judging me but he was pushing me, that imposing figure standing behind me at a precipice half challenging me to leap and half threatening to be the one that tossed me over the edge himself.

"I don't-" I whispered, my breath catching in my chest, "I'm not certain."

And there is an instant where I think I see a glimpse of it. It's like I'm chasing a truth through a maze and all I catch are glimpses of the scarf it's wearing as it trails along behind it. I can only see a glancing blow, missing the whole of it but witnessing enough to get my own ideas.

But there is a lot there. There is a lot to unpack and a lot to understand. There is so much and so very much of it is terrifying to me and goddammit why did I have to be here as this.

I was promised a second chance, but I figured it would be in a body that I recognized.

I don't. I don't know this body at all and yet I don't know why it still feels so familiar to me all the same. I don't know how I can even walk in these legs and pick things up with these hands and I don't know why, even though all the wiring is all so different for me, I can still recognize the signs when they're blaring in my head and my heart and my belly.

The warm orb deep within me. The one that pulses with a beat that doesn't match my own heart which is pounding while this one is steady. Steadily building beat by beat and getting faster as I feel my world go closer and smaller as it narrows down to the two of us. But not just the two of us.

Because I feel it with Lucas but I felt it before. I felt it when Blake, that fucking asshole, had his arms wrapped around me and when he cornered me. I felt it when Eddie, that feckless jerk, sneered dismissively at me when all I wanted was to know him better. And when Rachel smiled at me, well that was all sorts of different that it was too confusing to wrap my head around.

Because if we're talking about heart of hearts and little secrets, well I know exactly what that means.

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