I woke up different.

Sunlight streamed into my face, waking me from my slumber. Groaning, I craned my neck and opened my eyes, suddenly covering my eyes from the blinding sun that was directly on my face. When I shifted, I fell to my sides. I didn't realize I had been leaning against the wall. When I did, I remembered that I slept on the floor last night.

The memory of seeing Rogue, talking to him, and sleeping off beside me came back all to me. I felt it all over again—the emotions that had passed through me last night were going through me now, except, I didn't feel sad or hollow. I felt peaceful. At ease. Maybe it was because I had accepted Rogue back into my life again. I had decided I would rather be happy with him than torture myself without him.

I breathed that in.

I smelled coffee.

With a yawn, I stretched my muscles and rose from the ground. My clothes were still on me, and I felt a drool at the corner of my mouth, which I quickly wiped away, then rubbed my eyes again. I led myself to the kitchen, where I found Rogue. He was standing with his back to me at the island, reading on his phone. He wore a dark red T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants. Emotions rushed through my body like a tide that swept me off.

He didn't turn around when I walked in, though I was sure he heard my soft footsteps and felt my presence the same way I felt the heat radiating off him in my direction. He didn't turn around. Normally, he would have done that, walk up to me and plant a kiss on my lips, but not today. Today, he seemed resigned. His shoulders were bunched up with tension. I guess last night was still on his mind. How long would it take for him to be more comfortable around me like before?

"Morning," I greeted, coming to stand in front of him. Rogue lifted his head and set his eyes on me, letting his gaze linger on me.

"Good morning," he answered, crossing over to a cabinet and pulling out a coffee mug. He handed me the cup when he filled it, then quickly looked away to get back to his phone.

I wanted to ask him why he wasn't looking at me or be comfortable around me. I wanted to ask him why I woke up on the floor without him, instead of on the bed with his arms around me. I wanted to tell him that I was here to stay because it looked like he thought I was going to leave any second now. Last night may have been different, but today was another whole different thing because it was usually when common sense started to kick in—sort of like being drunk and waking up sober. I guess that was what he thought the situation was right now.

Idiot.

"Thanks to you, I'm going to have to get a neck brace," I teased to lighten the kitchen from the charged tension. "Seriously, couldn't you have put me on the couch or bed? My neck is sore."

"I didn't think about doing that, sorry." His tone was neutral and didn't give me anything to go on. "Does it hurt a lot?"

"Your neck doesn't?"

His chest rose and fall. He looked at his phone briefly. "I didn't sleep last night," he murmured.

"Not even a wink?" I questioned, receiving a shake from him. "Rogue, you should've woken me up. I would have stayed up with you." Thinking about him staying up all night without getting any sleep made my heart twist. Who knew what else he had gone through?

His voice came out faint. "You looked peaceful."

"That's what we think about dead bodies too until they wake up as zombies," I pointed out with a grin on my lips. Rogue lifted his brow and laughed. "I finally got you to laugh." I couldn't stop grinning from ear to ear.

After examining my expression, he said, "Beth—"

"I don't want to hear it." I turned away from him and strode to his fridge. I opened it and went through it to busy myself with doing something because I didn't want to hear him say anything I wouldn't like. We had already settled it last night. There was no need to revisit it.

"You don't know what I'm going to say."

I closed the fridge and turned around to lean my back against it. "Which is good because I'm not interested. Today, you're going to listen to me."

He lifted his brows. "And why would I do that?"

"Uh, because your life is in my hands? If you don't want my lips to start talking, then you're going to have to listen to what I say." I was worried when I joked about it because it could have been too soon. Even as I said it, I tensed. I didn't want him to think there would ever be a chance where I would reveal his secret to the world. Even if he does something that hurts me and we break up, I would die with his secret.

Rogue suddenly laughed. "You're going to keep using that against me, aren't you?" He shook his head.

"You've threatened, blackmailed, and manipulated me. What do you think?"

In a tone of wonder, he added, "But it didn't seem to bother you. If anything, that brought you closer to me." His eyes were as soft as his voice.

I drew my brows together, squinting my eyes and peering at him from across the kitchen. "Is that your kink? Then, do I do all of those things to you like you did to me?" When I grinned up at him, his eyes twinkled as though grinning back.

He just shook his head and brushed off my question with his question. "What are you doing today?" He looked at his watch. "It's eleven thirty-four. You don't have plans?"

Was he....was he trying to kick me out by telling me that?

I shook my head emphatically, which was suddenly pounding as heavily as my heart. "No, I have no plans. I don't feel like going out today and we both need to talk so much more. We didn't go through everything last night. You listened. Today, I'm going to listen." He seemed about to argue until I shot him a glare from the pits of hell.

"Alright. We will do what you want," he conceded. "For now. You can't always have your way." Both his tone and expression were serious. The kind of serious that scared the shit out of me in a delicious way.

"You haven't said anything about us," I finally said with a little courage that I had mustered. "I said I wanted you and I was going to be by your side. You haven't said anything about that."

"I'm assuming you already know my answer. You're here now, aren't you?"

"You weren't this difficult before. You would have been ecstatic to hear those words from me before. Why is it different now?"

Rogue stared at me for several long seconds. "Because this time, you know everything about me." I could feel the pain of his words between each of my ribs.

"You knew everything about me and you don't see me reacting the way you're reacting now."

He swallowed. "You don't have a terrible secret, Beth." His voice was heavy with something that could be sadness. Or maybe it was just weariness.

The silence was heavy and potent between us before I was able to ask, "What's so terrible about yours?"

"That's it right there. You don't think it's a big deal when it is. You're supposed to do the opposite of what you're doing now. I'm not supposed to get you back so so easily." He breathed hard as if he had been afraid that I would leave while part of him begged me not to. He pinched the bridge of his nose. "You're not supposed to understand and offer yourself back to me."

I took a step toward him, pausing just a distance away from him. "Because you've spent so many times thinking I was going to leave you, but what you failed to realize is you can't speak for me. You can't think for me. You're the one who expected worse from me, and when it isn't what you thought it would be, you don't want to be with me?" I took a slow shuddering breath in, hoping he didn't see how much his words hurt.

"I didn't say that," he dragged out tightly.

I took one step back as realization dawned on me. "You're disappointed." My throat sounded tight.

He raked his fingers through his hair before his hand fell to his side, his posture tensed. "No," he confirmed, although there was nothing about him that proved his word.

"Yes, you are," I challenged with a trembling lip. "You're disappointed that I'm still here. You're disappointed because you're wrong. For the first time, you got something wrong and you don't know how to handle that. Tell me I'm not right, Rogue," I voiced, as he regarded me with a look that had my insides quivering. But I wasn't about to let him up. "You have no control over what's happening right now and you want to push me away for it. Why did you come after me? Even when I hated you, you kept coming back. Why is that?"

His face was poker straight. Refusing to back down, I took a step in his direction. "Because you wanted to convince yourself that no one can ever get close or love this fake Rogue Slade, right? You kept coming back, trying to get me to love you, so when you tell me you're not Rogue Slade, I will leave you, and then you would have proven how undeserving of love you are. You will accept more and more of what you're right now, burying Tyson for good. You wanted someone to help you kill Tyson, but that's not what happened, isn't it?"

It was just a wild guess, but reading the confirmation in his eyes made my stomach knot. Rogue began to walk out of the kitchen, seemingly going nowhere except for escape. I was hot on his heels. He wouldn't look at me. He wouldn't turn around.

"Look at me, please," I pressed, and he spun around to face me. When I made sure he was really looking at me, I added, "I don't accept it."

His brows furrowed. "What?"

"Killing Tyson." My words echoed through the house like a glass shattering. "I won't let you be consumed by being Rogue that you forget who you once were. You may have changed your identity, but you're still Tyson. Your memories are Tyson's. Your feelings, your personality, what you love and hate—those are Tyson's, not Rogue's." I reached up to cup his cheek and he blinked at me. "You've chosen this for yourself and I have accepted it, but I won't let you bury Tyson."

Stepping back, I put my hand out. Rogue looked at it and ran his hand along the back of his neck, struggling for control.

"You can be Tyson and Rogue. No one says you can't be. I can be with you if you choose both, and between us, you can be who you once were. I want to know everything about Tyson. I want to talk about him and I want to see him." I stretched my hand further. "Take my hand if you're willing to give me what I want."

His eyes were wide and bright like he was alive. We stared at each other, unmoving. I was asking too much, I knew that. I wanted something that he was reluctant to give. If it were really that simple, I could walk away. Even though he claimed to bury his past, I didn't think he wanted to.

I ached for him more than ever. I agonized for every day he had to look himself in the mirror and see someone else. I anguished thinking that he must have wondered what he would have looked like with his real face. I hurt thinking of how he must have felt after the thought.

My hand shook when he took long to take it. I knew what I was asking for, but I wasn't going to let him win. Tyson was alive. His memories were alive. How could I let him fall deep into the lie he had created? To forget who he truly was?

"Please." I bit my lower lip. "Take my hand and let me make everything better for you."

His eyes pierced into me. He searched my face, and for half a moment, I thought I had him, but suddenly, the flicker of light disappeared from his eyes and they turned dark. Then they were glazed.

—————-

The graveyard was so quiet. Row upon row of marbled tombstones rose from the grass. Each one was perfect, polished and exactly the same as all of the others, except the names and dates were different. It wasn't my first time being in a cemetery, but it was a place that I didn't like to go to because it reminded me of the day Lauren's father was buried, and then I think of how someday, everyone I loved would be buried too.

A red scarf hung around my neck as the wind brushed through my hair. The sun was showering its yellow glow on me, giving my hair a more reddish hue. Rogue walked quietly and hesitantly behind me while I walked ahead, calmly directing me where to go. I knew he didn't want to be here, that he had no choice but to come despite how he felt about it. Chills scattered over my arm, coldness heavy in my bones.

He told me to stop as we came to pause in front of a marbled gravestone. I read the engraving on the stone, then looked over my shoulder at him. His pierced gaze was on the gravestone, no emotion on his face. Looking away, I knelt and placed the flowers that I brought, glancing at another beautiful bouquet that was leaned against the gravestone.

"Someone was here," I pointed out, grabbing the flowers and lifting myself to stand. Turning around to face him, I showed him the bouquet. Rogue breathed hard and looked down at his shoes, then looked up to blow a small air from his parted lips. "Take them."

He looked at me weirdly. "Why?"

"They are for you."

He didn't take them yet. He was prolonging it and he knew why I wanted him to have it, but he was willing to be difficult. "They're from my mother."

"I know you see her often, but she sees you as Rogue, so everything she gives you, in her mind, you're someone else's child." My voice was thicker than I had intended as my gaze traveled to the flowers in my hand. "These flowers that came from her are for Tyson. Take them."

His eyes narrowed, but his hazel gaze shot answers, then trailed from the flowers back to my face, closing a couple of meters separating us. "You can take them if you want."

I held on to it. Not for me, but him. I held on because I knew he wanted it.

We stayed quiet for a few minutes, soaking in the sun and watching Tyson's grave. I knew what I was thinking, but I didn't know what he was thinking. I wanted to probe his thoughts, wanted him to relinquish them to me, but I was curious about one thing.

"Did you go to the funeral?"

After a while, he said, "Yes."

Of course, I knew he would have. I stared around the graveyard, wondering if he had hidden somewhere around—behind the trees, far away in the distance, cloaked in shadows. Had he watched them bury an empty casket?

"Must have been hard for you," I murmured outright.

"My mother cried a lot. My father, too. I didn't think he'd cry because he had always been strong and crying wasn't something he appreciated." His tone was controlled and even and a little bit angry, and I wondered for a moment what his relationship with his father was like. Rogue continued to stare at the gravestone with a glazed look. "For a second, I wanted to walk up to them and tell them that I wasn't dead."

"Why didn't you?"

He twisted around and looked at me dead in the face. "Because it was already too late then, and I knew they would be devastated to know the truth. It was better for them they didn't know I was alive."

"Better for them or better for you?" I inquired when he looked away. "I think they'd have been happier if they knew their son is alive. Losing a child hurts."

"But they got better. That's how it goes. You hurt one day, and the next, it doesn't hurt anymore. You start to live your life again. My mother doesn't talk about me, you know?" He had spoken the words no louder than anything else he'd said, and yet those two words echoed through the graveyard. And I felt the hurt in his voice, despite how much he hid them. "All the pictures that have been hung in the house were taken down."

Something in my chest pushed out like it was reaching. Like a part of me wanted to wrap him in soft wool and protect him. Guard his heart so he didn't hurt. "It probably hurt to look at the pictures."

He shrugged. "It doesn't bother me. The following years were hard for them. I tried to be there as Rogue, especially for my mother. She took it hard the most, and not finding my dead body was even more painful for her, but I was there for her even though she hadn't known her son was with her. I did everything I could and I brought her out of her grief."

Rogue leaned closer, close enough that I could smell the faint scent of cologne. "Can we leave now?" He shot me a look before he turned around and started to walk away. I looked back at the gravestone and then turned, hurrying after him.

I slid into the passenger's seat just as he started the engine. He saw the flower in my hand and shot me a look.

"You're stealing the flowers?" His brows shot up.

With a snort, I placed the bouquet on my lip and retorted, "Why would you call it stealing? It's for you so I brought it with me. I can find a place for it in your penthouse."

"And if my mother comes to visit again and doesn't find the flowers? She's going to think someone had stolen it and you will break her heart for it. She's a sensitive woman."

I rolled my eyes. "Just drive."

He scoffed and pulled out onto the road.