The Boy Who Didn't Love

34 - a revelation

  "Hey, Sawyer!" a familiar voice called as he headed to the back room.

  The sociopath twisted his head to glance over his shoulder, then purposefully quickened his pace. He safely locked himself inside of the storage room, letting out a small sigh of relief, before searching for the boxes he needed.

  "Sawyer, didn't you hear me calling you?" Brady asked, suddenly materializing in front of him, and he flinched out of surprise. Sawyer looked at the door, then back at the sugar addict; he frowned when he noticed the extra set of keys in his hands.

  "I did. I was ignoring you."

  Brady smiled, not the least bit fazed by his intentionally callous candor. Since he started dating Ali, and their relationship had proven to be genuine, his coworkers had been growing less fearful of him. Sawyer still hadn't decided whether he liked this new development or not. "That's okay. I'm used to it."

  "What do you want?" he asked tiredly as he continued to look around the storage room.

  "Oh, nothing. I was just wondering how things are going with you and the city girl," Brady said, fishing a mystery lollipop out of his pocket.

  Sawyer paused and shot him a dubious look. "Why are you asking me instead of Alice, like you usually do?"

  "Because I want to know your perspective," he replied simply, rolling the diabetes stick around in his mouth, and Sawyer stared at him for a moment. He wasn't sure if Marina had put him up to this, as a safety measure to definitively verify his true intentions with their precious city girl, but he doubted she would've trusted him with such an important task.

  "And why should I tell you? You never supported our relationship."

  "True, but it was with good reason, you have to admit that. I mean, how was I supposed to know that Ali would be the one person you wouldn't manipulate? You never gave us a reason to trust you before," Brady reasoned, and although Sawyer was slightly taken aback by this sudden display of intellect from him, he knew he had a point.

  He faintly remembered his first encounters with Brady and Marina; he was still in high school at the time, and he was much more merciless in his teenage years. He knew he had to lay low in school in order to avoid expulsion—not that he cared about his education, but because he simply wanted to graduate as fast as possible.

Outside of school, however, he was able to behave as he pleased, and his job at the department store was like target practice for him. When he didn't have any customers to manipulate, he turned to Brady and Marina instead, using all of their weaknesses to his advantage. They eventually saw through his act, thus creating his sociopathic reputation among his coworkers.

  Brady studied the man before him and sighed, pulling the lollipop out of his mouth to speak. "Listen, I know that's still no reason to have spoken about you so badly. I should've been the bigger person and yada yada yada. I'm actually rooting for you and the city girl now, which is why I'm asking you how it's going. Sorry if I offended—"

  "You didn't," Sawyer interjected, tossing him one of his famously impassive looks. "As long as you don't try to intervene with my relationship with Alice, I don't care."

  "Of course you don't," Brady chuckled, shaking his head.

  A moment of silence swept over them as they looked away from each other. Sawyer hesitated, knowing he would get nothing out of telling him anything, before he surprisingly caved. "We're doing good, better than I ever hoped. What we have is strange, we shouldn't work as well as we do, but I've never felt so...happy. Every day is a new surprise with her."

  "I don't know what's crazier: the fact that a sociopath is in love, or that someone is knowingly in love with a sociopath," Brady remarked, then furrowed his eyebrows when Sawyer visibly tensed. He opened his mouth to apologize in case he had overstepped, while Sawyer met his eyes with an enigmatic expression on his face.

"Love?" he repeated slowly, as if this was his first time hearing it.

Brady looked around awkwardly and nodded. "Uh, yeah. You guys have been dating for a while, haven't you? Don't you, like, love her or something? I'm just guessing here because I've only ever been committed to candy."

  Sawyer's eyes glazed over as he became absorbed in his thoughts. The word kept echoing in his mind insistently, like an earthquake rattling his brain, and he wondered if it could be true. A sociopath in love. It was possible, of course, but it was a difficult feat.

  But when he thought about her and all the things he made her feel, he knew the cause had to be love. She was no sorceress; she was simply Alice, and he loved her. He loved everything about her. He was sure of it.

  "So do you need some help carrying all of those boxes?" Brady asked, drawing him out of his thoughts.

  Sawyer blinked, still slightly dazed. He briefly glanced over at the boxes and nodded. "Yeah, there's four."

  "Great, you and Marina can each carry two. I'll go get her for you," Brady said nonchalantly as he skipped out of the storage room with his lollipop. Sawyer didn't bother stopping him, using the time alone to think about this emotional revelation.

  A smile crept onto his face; he couldn't wait to tell her how he felt.