12 You Are Still You At Your Core

It wasn't Bryce's place to pry so he backed off. Tessa was entitled to keeping her problems close to her chest, especially since they hardly knew each other. He did want to help though. There had to be some generic way he could do that.

"Hey, you said you have too much time to think, right? Why not overload yourself with fun instead of work? That way you won't get burned out and will still have plenty of things to do," he offered.

She raised an eyebrow. "Oh? And who exactly would I be doing this with? You can't exactly have fun by yourself."

"Well…me. If you're okay with hanging out with me that much. Truthfully, I could use more fun in my life too. You wouldn't have to worry about planning anything! Leave it to me and I'll come up with a bunch of ways to keep us both busy."

It would be a win-win. Bryce would be able to spend more time with her and stop floating along aimlessly and she would have less time alone to think about her problems without working herself to death.

"What exactly do you get out of this? That's an awful lot of effort on your part and you have a full-time job," Tessa pointed out.

"I like you," he said bluntly since she already basically knew and still agreed to see him today. "Isn't it normal to want to spend more time with the one you like and to make them happy?"

"That's pretty altruistic though if you don't have any expectations attached."

"I'm not going to lie and say there aren't any expectations on my part…I do hope you'll become my girlfriend eventually but even if you don't, I won't change my mind about wanting to help you."

Tessa stopped in her tracks and scrutinized him with obvious shock in her eyes. "Why? Why would you do that for me?"

"I want you to be happy, Tessa," Bryce said truthfully. "It's distressing seeing you be upset. It's why I got you flowers in the first place. I didn't like seeing you sad and it was the first thing I could think of to cheer you up."

"But why would you care about that when you hardly knew me?"

"Because every time I saw you before that you were so bright and cheerful that you quickly became the highlight of my day. My life is pretty boring, you know. You're the least boring part of it."

Tessa went quiet for a while after that. "…has anyone ever told you that you move too fast?"

"No."

"Well, you do. Can you give me the weekend to think about it? I can give you an answer on Monday night."

Bryce hadn't expected any sort of answer right now anyway. It would be a terribly long and stressful weekend for him but she didn't need to know that.

"Totally fine! Take all the time you need."

"I don't want to leave you hanging longer than necessary so I promise I'll get back to you on Monday," she said firmly. "But I do need to think about this. Can you take me home now? I have an early day tomorrow."

"Absolutely."

Her hand still in his, Bryce lead Tessa back to his car. She was quiet the whole ride home and was so preoccupied with whatever she was thinking about that she barely managed to say goodnight when she got out.

Had his proposal of sorts been that weird? He wasn't sure if she liked him but she definitely didn't dislike him considering she kept letting him hold her hand.

It wasn't like he asked her to be his girlfriend right away either. The answer he was expecting was about the idea to keep them both busy as friends. Did that require so much thought before saying yes?

===

Jenna's head was a mess because Bryce was a ridiculously nice person and she didn't want to let him down. Goodness knows she could use nice right now. And fun. And distraction. All things he was offering to her basically for free.

She said she needed to think about it until Monday night partly because she needed to weigh the pros and cons of this regarding her own conscience and partly because she had to make sure she wasn't breaking any rules by getting close to someone with Killian. Rule breaking was the one thing she could not do.

She would see him on Monday during their usual check-in and could ask then. He was the one that wanted her to date casually and be like a normal young woman in her twenties. He might be singing a different tune about dating seriously though.

Jenna didn't think it was fair to use Bryce without giving him anything in return, no matter what he said about it being okay. If she was going to say yes to his deal to entertain her so she didn't have to overwork herself so much, she was going to have to at least give him a chance romantically.

People got together and broke up all the time. She didn't want to hurt him but she shouldn't use the fear of breaking up when she went home as a reason not to distract herself right now with someone fun, should she?

She didn't want to hurt him but she also didn't want to hurt herself. Right now she didn't have any feelings for him but what if that changed later? What if he became someone she couldn't bear to leave behind too and then she had to leave him to go back to everyone else she loved?

That wouldn't be fair to either of them. Especially since he liked someone that didn't exist. Jenna had been lying to him from the start.

A lot of what she said about herself was true since it was hard to lie about small details but the big things were lies, like her family, where she was from, and what her name was. Even what she looked like was a lie.

Tessa O'Brien was a girly girl that liked dressing up in pretty outfits, wearing makeup, and doing her hair nicely. Jenna Mitchell was as rough-and-tumble as they come. She was a jeans and t-shirts kind of gal and Bryce might not like that. He had already called her pretty while she was dressed up. The real her would be a letdown.

She tortured herself all weekend and still hadn't come to a satisfactory conclusion. The only good thing was being able to feed and play with baby ducks at the wildlife sanctuary on Sunday.

Jenna supposed she could also include Del's rather ridiculous punk rock rendition of the song "You Are My Sunshine" as well. That had been hilarious but Josh's reaction to it might have been even better. She had been listening to it and singing along with her earbuds in while mopping the floor when they didn't have any customers, not realizing they could hear her at first.

Then she was totally embarrassed and ended up hitting poor Josh with the mop. That was pretty great too.

Maybe Jenna's weekend wasn't 100% terrible but she was still stressed and lacking answers! It made her struggle to concentrate in her classes too. She took pages of notes out of habit and hadn't absorbed a single word. Ugh.

By the time Killian arrived she was a total wreck. The first thing she blurted upon seeing him was, "Am I allowed to have a boyfriend?"

He blinked at her uncomprehendingly. "…you found a boyfriend in the week I haven't seen you?"

"Of course not! I would never do something like that without asking for permission first. But there is a nice guy who's interested in me and I don't want to get involved if I'll get in trouble for it."

Killian recovered and was back to his usual neutral expression. "There aren't any rules about not having boyfriends or girlfriends. Some people in Witness Protection even get married if they're hidden away on a permanent basis.

"However, the usual rules apply. No giving identifying details about your past or your identity. If you must talk about your past and give some degree of detail, it can't go against the framework of the cover story we created for it.

"That's why we let Tessa O'Brien have so many brothers despite large families not being the cultural norm. So you wouldn't slip up about your family so easily. As long as you follow the rules, there is no reason for you not to live a relatively normal life."

Jenna wasn't sure if that made her feel better or worse. Now she didn't have an excuse not to go through with it. The decision was hers and hers alone.

"But what about when I get out? I'm not allowed to talk about the program or the case so I wouldn't be able to stay in contact with him if we were still together then!" she protested, grasping at straws.

Killian shook his head. "That isn't entirely true. You can't talk about details of the program but since your alias will be deactivated you are allowed to tell people that you were in the program for the sake of telling them your original identity. It's how we're going to get all of your references together for your volunteer work and school transcripts in the end."

Oh. There goes another potential excuse.

"But I'll be lying to him the whole time," Jenna said quietly. "How could I do that? How does anyone do that?"

"You are still you at your core, Tessa. Changing your name and backstory doesn't change that. As long as you stay away from tricky details, you'll be fine."

"What if he wants to meet my family?!"

"We'll get agents to pose as them if absolutely necessary," Killian replied. "You seem awfully worried about this. Do you like this young man that much? I forgot to mention this but I will need to run a full background check on him to make sure he isn't affiliated with Anthony Shaw and trying to get close to you to cause you harm."