Chapter 2
I smiled and reached out to touch him.
Selene
I regarded my hands, intertwined with Neil’s, and still, I couldn’t believe that he was really here.
He, who had always been so hostile to the concept of love and of opening up his heart. He, who was so spiky and so far out of reach, so explosive and stubborn, was now here with me. He was holding my body to his, merging our skin, our spirits, and our breath.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked me. I heard his deep baritone, and I couldn’t help but stare at his gleaming eyes, his lips swollen from my kisses.
“About how much you hated to talk to me until recently,” I answered, cracking a wry smile. I could smell his familiar musky scent. It was intense and all-encompassing.
“How callous I was, you mean,” he answered, sighing heavily.
“I didn’t realize how important you were to me.
Or maybe I didn’t want to admit it to myself.
You didn’t just come into my life, Selene.
You got in my soul. You wiped out all the evil inside me.
I would have just kept wallowing in my own personal hell if I hadn’t met you. ”
I smiled and reached out to touch him. My fingertips immediately met the formidable musculature of his chest. I traced the sculpted lines of his pecs with my index finger, delighting in the smoothness of his skin as I sighed.
“The important thing is that you did realize it.” I laid my head on his chest as he put one powerful arm around me.
I felt his heart beating in time with mine, and I tried to commit the lovely harmony to memory.
“Is it normal to want you all the time?” He stared fixedly at my bare breasts in that absolutely unashamed way of his that I loved.
“Don’t start this all over again.” I was too embarrassed to admit I wanted him just as much.
“You know I’m a demanding boyfriend, don’t you?” His voice turned authoritative and dominating.
I considered his question, and my answer—that he was an exceptional partner—was on the tip of my tongue, but I didn’t want to overinflate his ego.
“I know it, but I do need to go to class. We’ll just have to take a rain check.” I brushed his neck lightly with the tip of my nose. He smelled so good, and I never got tired of breathing him in: man, sex, and musk.
Incredible.
Though he had learned how to work with his demons, he hadn’t become a different person.
He never would, and I liked him just the way he was.
It still didn’t take much to rile him up, but by the same token, a single touch from me was all that was required to bring out his better side—docile and kind.
I realized that he was giving me a fixed, thoughtful stare and that, every time he looked at me that way, I became a little bit less my own and a little bit more his.
“I love you and your imperfections, Mr. Disaster.” I drew closer to him and put my lips to his in a sweet kiss. It was a kiss that tasted like us, like this chaotic world of ours and the love that had saved us, had united our souls and tied us together forever.
Neil, though, had never said those three little words back to me.
And there was no way he was going to, not out loud.
He might have barely whispered them while I was sleeping or distracted or when he was otherwise sure I wouldn’t hear him. He had always been a man like none other and that was why no one could ever take his place for me.
Together, we were a perfect disaster.
“Remember, I will always protect you, like the shell protects the pearl.” As I listened to his intense voice, a thousand butterflies took flight, fluttering through the air.
And then he smiled at me and squeezed me tighter in his arms, the only place I ever wanted to be, the only place I thought of as… home.
***
I lifted my eyelids slowly, taking note of how my lashes clung to one another. Colorful walls gave way to a dull, achromatic white. The scent of Neil faded, as did his lovely voice. The heat of his body was replaced by the biting cold of an empty space.
I glanced around in search of whatever device was emitting that strange beeping noise in time with my heartbeat and spotted a machine right next to me.
My head hurt, as did my abdomen and shoulder. I tried to move, but I just couldn’t.
What is going on?
“Don’t crowd her; she’s still going to be a bit out of it,” came an unfamiliar woman’s voice. I did feel fuzzy-headed and weak.
“She’s waking up…” murmured a voice I easily recognized. “Sweetheart,” she added. I shifted my gaze to my mother, who was speaking in her usual gentle tones.
I looked into her face, which seemed drawn and weary, and forced myself to give her a wavering smile.
I was already feeling tired, my eyelids straining to stay open. There was a tube in my nose that kept me from moving the way I wanted to, and my body felt weak and sluggish.
“How are you feeling, little one?” My mother rubbed my arm and gazed at me with misty eyes. “You’re in the hospital. You were in an accident, and you hit your head pretty hard, but you’re going to be fine,” she reassured me quickly.
I shifted my gaze from her face to the rest of the room, and suddenly, I recalled everything.
I had been in a car accident.
I was supposed to be heading back to Detroit to take back my life.
Instead, I had almost lost it. It was a miracle that I’d survived.
I remembered the lancing pain I’d felt on impact, the blood all over my clothes.
I remembered the driver slumped lifelessly in the front seat, his face unrecognizable, gazing dully off into another world.
It hadn’t been a nightmare after all. It was all real.
I felt disconnected from everything around me, and bursts of pain in my head made me squeeze my eyes shut before slowly reopening them.
“My head hurts,” I rasped. My mother, alarmed, looked immediately to another woman, who must have been my doctor, to judge by her scrubs and white coat.
“That’s absolutely normal,” she reassured my mom. “The headaches will be more frequent in the beginning.” She spoke in a calm, polite tone. She was a young woman with an aura of dependability and a sweet smile.
“How long…” I licked my lower lip, which felt dry and chapped, before continuing. “How long have I been here?” I asked.
The doctor gave a sigh before replying, “About ten days. You’ve been in a medically induced coma.”
I stared at her in shock.
Ten days?
I tried to wrinkle my forehead, but my skin there felt like it was on fire. I lifted an arm to touch my head and felt the rough texture of gauze meet my fingertips.
“That’s nothing, sweetheart, just an injury you got in the crash.”
Mom gathered my hand in hers and sat down beside my bed, probably trying to calm me down. But it all felt like a dream to me. A very surreal dream.
Meanwhile, the doctor continued her explanation as she patted my arm.
“We chose to keep you in a medically induced coma as a precaution, Selene. This is standard treatment for patients who have sustained traumatic brain injuries. In your case, your CT scan revealed an intracranial hemorrhage—bleeding in your brain—that had resulted in a hematoma, basically a blood clot. We needed to give your body and brain time to rest and heal so the hematoma could be reabsorbed. Fortunately, it was a smaller hematoma, and the impact on your brain was not severe.”
I only processed a few of her words, my one consolation being her statement that there hadn’t been serious consequences.
“Is it a bad headache?” she asked thoughtfully, and I nodded, unable to do anything else. “Then I’ll give you something for the pain.” She moved away but turned to address my mother before leaving the room.
“Selene won’t be able to have visitors today because we’re going to need to run some tests.”
After that, I couldn’t track anything that was happening. It felt like the world was moving on around me while my life had stopped.
About a half hour later, the doctor came back to free me from the IV and the nasal tube that had fed me for those ten long days. Then, she sat down next to me with a stack of papers ready to be filled out.
She asked me a battery of questions designed to rule out any post-traumatic amnesia. The accident I had experienced could have caused memory loss, but it hadn’t. My memories were all right there, completely intact and crystal clear.
She confirmed this when she put me through a normal questionnaire, starting with biographical data like my name and age.
Then she asked me to count, compile a list of words, and track an object as she moved it around.
When we were finished, she told me that I’d have to get an MRI and some more specific neurological tests.
She also said she’d prescribe me some painkillers.
I stayed quiet and tried to listen to her, though I was still bleary.
I was so confused and increasingly angry as I realized that my accident had been no accident at all but was instead caused by that masked bastard. The burden of all those emotions only made my headache worse.
While the doctor informed me that I could experience problems focusing, insomnia, and flashbacks to the traumatic event that would only fade with time, my mind was elsewhere.
I half-listened in a state of rising turmoil as the doctor continued giving us the technical details, mostly addressing my mother in a composed, knowledgeable tone.
She said around sixty percent of people in my situation recovered on their own in the months following their injuries, though some did require further physical or psychiatric treatment. If I experienced symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, she could refer me to a specialist.
Finally, she said that I was generally in good condition and would soon be able to go back to my regular life. But even that wasn’t enough to soothe me.
“Thank goodness.” My mother pressed a hand to her chest, relieved to hear that I was fundamentally okay. I tried to rub my temples, but the discomfort I felt in my head made me give up immediately.