Don't Tell Him He's In Love With A Genius

:Genius: Chapter Thirty

"Who are you, Jane?" Anton asked, his arms wrapped around mine.

 I blinked up at him, seeing his frustration and anger as he held me. My squirming, alerting him to the fact he'd unconsciously gripped me, which didn't hurt but was constraining in a way I wasn't comfortable with.

He realised the situation and took a step back, his arms falling away immediately. I immediately took a step forward, recognising a second later that it was my subconscious responding to his fear of over-anger with my implicit trust.

Anton, like me, becomes frustrated outwardly when he can't fix something - when there's a problem we can't solve. He stepped closer to me in response, but was still at least an arms length away.

"You're more than just some heiress, aren't you?" He questioned, and even with the distance he still lingered in the space around me, twitching like he still wished to touch me.

"Yes."

"Tell me." I could. I was tempted. So tempted. I wondered what would happen if I told him the truth.

I mean, people from McCeath's tell their loved ones all the time when they get married or have kids and that's accepted. And I did, I loved him; I could see us together for more than our academic careers. Anton is callous, and ridiculous, and sometimes mean, but I could be too. Just, in a different direction. We were like friction; we slowed each other down were gravity couldn't.

And the heat between us, well, it wasn't something I would talk about in such company.

But ... the problem was Anton's pride. No amount of love would change the fact that not only have I been lying to him in desperate and convoluted ways, but I'm also keeping the fact that I'm his favourite author from him. If it wasn't the pride that broke us apart, it would be the embarrassment. Anton was one of the smartest people I'd met, and while that held a great hand in having him understand me, people with high intelligence were more easily frustrated with not knowing.

And this would have been a big thing Anton missed.

Oh God, I'd told Harred before him; his best friend. Not only would he be feeling horrible, simple and embarrassed, he'd be feeling betrayed too. I'd trusted his best friend with this information.

I couldn't tell him.

Although, if I were being honest, I'd admit to wanting to tell him. There are days when I look over to him and the words are on my lips. I realised I had wanted to tell him, desperately.

For him to know me the way I know him. For him to look at me and not see all the walls I've built up, all the secrets covering up my hopes and dreams and my flaws. He thinks he doesn't understand me. We were so good together because of how we understood each other, and yet he wasn't aware of how much I just got.

My gaze caught a couple of the scraps of paper, laying on the floor where they fell, pushed by the opening of the locker, or our desperate hands; digging further into the pile to see a 'gotchu!.

Trying to find some sort of proof that these threats weren't what we were seeing-, they were jokes, an April Fools that is a bit too late.

He didn't ask me who I was out of anything but worry though, and while that was admirable, and I loved him still, I couldn't tell him the truth as a response to a pile of half hearted threats.

I thought of Mack, here to make sure I'm quiet as well as safe. Of my parents, who were killed for knowing too much.

I'd read somewhere that you had an 82% chance of meeting your soulmate before you were 16. There weren't any sources on the writing, and when I tried to search it came up with a few similar notes without sources, but it stayed with me.