Page 73 of A Barista's Guide to Love & Larceny
“Oh yeah?” Kass had finished his in record time and was lying on one side, head propped on his hand, staring at her.
“Ohyeah.”
“I trust you, too, Dani.”
A javelin of guilt impaled her through the gut. She set down the second half of her burrito and swallowed.
“What’s wrong?” Kass asked.
“Nothing,” she said, eyes trained on the stars. “I don’t know. Everything, maybe?”
She bit her lip. She’d cracked the window: She could tell him everything right now, if she was brave enough. Maybe he’d hear her out if she emphasized just how desperate she was to help her friend and to get the money, how she’d truly had no idea it was his family’s company when she’d agreed to do this. She looked down from the sky and into his face; the tender curiosity in his eyes almost made her tell him. Shewantedto tell him.
But she couldn’t. There was too much at stake.
However, that wasn’t the only secret Dani had been keeping. Maybe she couldn’t come clean about the OneiroLabs of it all, but there was another window she could open for him. The idea terrified her even now, but she felt like she owed himsomething, even if it was only a modest offering. She took a deep breath.
“Listen, there—there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”
He sat up, his aura going from sunrise to sunset in the shortest day ever. “Okay.”
“I should have told you earlier,” she went on, “but the thing is, I’ve never told anyone, at least not until recently, and I don’t even really know how to do it.”
“You’re not married, are you?”
“What? No,” Dani said with a tense laugh. “Nothing like that.”
“Then there’s nothing you can tell me that will make me like you less,” Kass said gently. “Whatever it is, it’s not going to change anything.”
Somehow his kindness only served to make the situation moreagonizing. Dani felt moisture burning in her eyes; she blinked hard to keep it at bay. “You’re so nice,” she said, “so nice and honest and fucking perfect, and I’m just afraid you’re going to hate me once you know.”
“I could never hate you. And I’m definitely not perfect.” Kass reached out and took her hand in both of his, apparently not caring that he was getting burrito residue on his mittens. “But you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“No, I want to. I need to.” Dani took a deep, shuddering breath. “I have this… this thing I can do. Or notdo, really, it’s just something that happens because of me, I guess. I’m not doing it on purpose.”Not usually, anyway.
“What do you mean?”
Dani paused, trying to get her ducks in a row and pick the one that would explain this to him in the clearest quacks. “You know earlier, when you said how you didn’t have a filter around me?”
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s the thing,” she said. “Nobody has a filter around me.”
Kass tilted his head, opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. “I…”
“I know it doesn’t sound real, but I’m being serious. Something about me just makes people want to reveal things they normally wouldn’t. You’ve done it all over the place. Like when you said you liked girls with purple hair?”
“Sure,” Kass said, “but crushes do that to a person.”
Dani shook her head. “It’s not just you. It’s everyone, my whole life. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been good at, and I never even wanted to be good at it.” She paused, realizing she didn’t know if that was still true. “My parents were con artists, gamblers, whatever they could think of. They made me use it all the time, treated me like I was their employee, not their kid. That’s part of why I left.”
Kass was quiet for a long, harrowing minute. “Truth-telling is a mage thing,” he said finally.
“It—no, it isn’t truth-telling, not quite.” She was starting to get flustered, which was only a couple of steps away from losing her shit. “It’s not like you can’t lie. It’s just that people seem to share extra details and thoughts when they’re talking to me.” When he didn’t say anything, she added, “Go on, try it. Lie to me.”
Kass blinked. She couldn’t read him in this moment, and it was killing her. It was like he’d closed up, and she couldn’t exactly blame him. Finally, he said, “Okay. Let me think… I broke both of my arms when I was six.”
“Is that true?”
