Chapter Twenty-Six #2
“Yes, in part. But also just because I could never imagine anyone being that incredibly kind. Even if I could have guessed you loved me, should have guessed it, I could never have known you would be that generous. You apparently love me enough to brave Hell for me, but Nancy, oh Nancy, you were willing to let me be. How could I ever have known that you’d be willing to let me be?
That to see me happy, you would have borne a kind of agony I could never have.
Like seeing me one day, on the street. Watching me pass you by with some other girl, living a life that you might have once dreamed of.
I think you actually dreamed of me, my darling Nancy, and you still unselfishly tried to set me free.
Oh lord, I don’t know if I could ever have unselfishly set you free,” he said, voice so marveling, so full of awe as he said it that she could hardly take it.
She couldn’t take any of it—not the words, not the sentiments behind them, no, no, no, it was too much.
It made her clutch her chest, too.
And not just because of everything it meant.
Because he was wrong. He was wrong.
“But Jack, you did. That’s exactly what you did.
You let me go. And not even while thinking there was someone else.
You made an imaginary man in your mind, and weighed yourself poorly beside him.
Compared yourself to him constantly, hoped you were him and always felt you fell short.
And yet you were never bitter about it, never furious.
There was never a moment when you made me feel that I should expect less.
In fact, you were so sure I should expect more that you showed me every day, and then sent me on to be with whoever you thought you weren’t.
But you are . You are , Jack. If my heart is good, then yours is a wonder.
And it does not belong in Hell ,” she said, heart pounding as she did it.
Every word coming out so passionate, so fierce that she was standing by the time she was done.
And the air rung in the aftermath.
The walls shook, so heavily she expected him to react.
But he didn’t—or, at least, he didn’t react to that.
All he seemed able to see now was her. All he drank in was her.
He stared like he had on the road, as if she was some wonder.
Then he simply crossed the room in one stride, and took her face in his hands just as he had after the spell, and kissed her.
He kissed her. He kissed her without asking, without suggesting, without anything at all except all the things he’d wanted to express a thousand times, and always fell short.
And he did it for a long, long time.
He claimed her mouth. Then when her mouth wasn’t enough, he kissed her cheeks, her face, her neck. And he finished by holding her so tightly to him, she wasn’t sure where he began and ended. All she could feel were his arms around her, his hands in her hair, his forehead pressed against her temple.
The way he rocked her.
The way he whispered her name.
The way he said the words: I love you, Nancy. I love you.
Like all her dreams of being passionately adored.
I am that girl , she thought. The one who gets swept away, desired, thought of every day.
I was all along, and just didn’t know. And now she got to.
She got to so much that she couldn’t let it go.
They were in Hell and they were most likely in big trouble and a thousand things were arraigned against them.
But all she could do was let herself be held.
All she could do was hold him in return.
They stayed like that for a long, long time.
And even when he finally broke the spell, she could hear the reluctance.
He spoke against her temple, as if he didn’t want to break the contact.
“You’re going to really be mad at me when I say this,” he said, and she didn’t want to understand what he meant.
But she remembered her last words— you don’t belong in Hell.
And knew.
“Is it that you’re trapped here now? It is, isn’t it.”
“Of course I am. The moment a deal is broken, my time on earth is forfeit.”
“Then maybe I can make another one. Maybe I can just do it again.”
“It doesn’t work like that, Nancy. Nancy, Nancy, Nancy, oh what bliss it is to say Nancy. What it is to tell you I love you. To hear you say you love me. You’ve no idea how much that will hold me up when I am ground down,” he said, so rapturously it almost made her sink into him again.
But then she processed that resignation in his voice, and no.
No. No. She could not have that. She wouldn’t. She refused.
“It would be even better to not have to be ground down at all. Now think .”
“There isn’t anything to think of. You get one shot with things like this.”
“But I don’t even know what the shot was, Jack. I don’t even know what spell I originally cast. All I remember is writing on the windowsill for someone to come, in that horrible place, but I don’t think—”
She stopped dead then. She had to.
She could see it all clearly now, behind her eyes.
Being on that table, waiting for them to do something terrible to her.
Hearing the fire alarm go, and everyone rushing out.
Being so afraid she’d scrunched her eyes shut tight, and only opened them when she felt the things holding her down being ripped.
But by something that shouldn’t exist.
Something that almost had a face, but didn’t.
Something that was nearly a young man, but wasn’t.
No wonder you blocked it out, he wasn’t completely formed into a human shape , she thought.
But that wasn’t what she focused on. She couldn’t focus on that.
She was too busy hearing the words he’d said to her.
On your feet, soldier , just like she’d imagined, just like Kyle Reese coming for Sarah Connor.
Then they had run, her hand in his.
And when she couldn’t run anymore, he had scooped her into his arms.
“It was you who carried me out of there. Oh, it was always you,” she said, through a flood of tears. Knowing he wouldn’t deny it, but being healed by the words all the same.
“Whenever you needed me, I always came.”
“Like on the path through the woods.”
“It wasn’t safe.”
“And my busted taillight.”
“You could have been killed.”
“And when they strapped me down, and tried to force magic from my mind.”
“I defied every rule to set you free, and rained hellfire on all who opposed me,” he said, then she felt him shake his head. Like he’d said the wrong thing. He even added on the end, “Because I was your monster.”
Though of course she knew the truth now.
“Because you were my prince. The one I dreamt would save me.”
He shook his head, rueful. “Honestly, the universe is terrible for interpreting a young girl’s longing like that. You wanted a golden-haired guy in shining armor, riding up on a white horse. And instead you get a seven-foot-tall demon in a pickup truck that hates you.”
“I would never have had it any other way.”
“Come on. You must have had something slightly different in mind.”
“To be honest, all my stories about finding someone to love me? They were always a little weird. Full of tangled forests and talking animals and terrors. Meeting a monster at the crossroads and making him my friend. Living in haunted places with a curse that won’t let me leave.
I didn’t want to leave, in any of those tales.
I wanted them all, but with a happily ever after.
Though of course I never—” she babbled, half into that sentence when the end of it struck her like a gong.
Harder than it had when she realized who had rescued her.
So hard that this time she almost had to sit down.
And so much so that he felt it. He knew.
“You got something, don’t you. A way out,” he said, as he eased her away from him. So he could look into her eyes, and see how much hope was possibly there. So he could gather some of it to himself, like a starving man scrabbling for crumbs.
But the thing was: she didn’t think they were crumbs at all.
This was something. She could feel it. It thrilled through her witchy bones.
“The words that dragged you from Hell. It was a story, wasn’t it.”
“Yeah, of course it was. But I don’t see how that helps us.”
“Because I think… I think it was the one about the prince who doesn’t believe he is. The one that had all my heart in it, all my despair, all my hope, when hope was still in me. I spent the last of it looking up at the stars, scribbling you without knowing your name.”
“Right, and then it happened. The spell was cast.”
“To drag you from Hell, yes. But I didn’t have enough hope to write the rest. I believed that you would come. I couldn’t let myself dream that you would stay. That me and you would be okay. In real life, nothing ever is that way.”
“So the terms and conditions went—”
“You were right. I didn’t write them. All I left at the end was blank space.
Something unfinished. Something that someone else could step into and twist to their own ends.
I was too afraid to go for it all, and so it was taken away,” she said, so fierce now that he stepped back.
He stared at her, like he could hardly let it sink in.
“Nance,” he said, in this eerily calm sort of way. “You don’t happen to still have that story, do you?”
But he knew by her expression what the answer was.
It was the reason he grabbed her hand, and told her they had to run.