Chapter 6 #6
How long had Neil’s torment gone on? How old was he? Why had the article referred to children? Had it been some kind of group? What had really gone on?
I still had too many unresolved problems, too many unanswered questions.
Logan had done nothing but confirm a suspicion that I had long been suppressing deep down in my soul. This was not an unexpected discovery. Still, in the case of Neil, I knew there was still more concealed. Who knew what he had been forced to endure? I felt so stupid and insensitive.
Neil…
I wanted to run after him and hold him in my arms and comfort him, whispering to him that everything was going to be okay and that the world and the people in it still had good parts. And that I would prove it to him.
Logan sat next to me the whole time, watching me collapse.
Sadness fell over me like a shadow, my saliva tasted bitter in my mouth and I began staring off into the middle distance. It felt like I could see an apparition of the evil that a little boy was forced to live through, imposed on him by a mentally deranged woman.
Evil: There was no other way to define it.
It felt like time was suspended between our breaths, between our silent musings and unspoken questions…
***
Matt and Mia returned an hour later. They’d taken Chloe for a stroll around the town while I stayed with Logan.
By then, we were sitting out on the wooden benches on the porch. Neil, meanwhile, had vanished after our short but furious argument. I was hoping he’d come back because I wanted to apologize to him and clear the air.
“How are you feeling?” Logan asked. He was worried about me while all I could worry about was Neil.
He’d run away because I made him feel wrong. My hasty words had reopened a wound in him that no one could heal, least of all myself.
For a moment, I considered the immensity of his struggles, and I wondered if I’d ever be strong enough to stand by his side.
Neil was afraid to form attachments to other people because he perceived them as a danger to him.
That was why he’d tried so hard to push me away.
He’d shown me the degenerate part of himself, intending to scare me off.
After my accident, he had refused to visit me in Detroit on purpose.
Neil didn’t want me deluding myself into thinking he might fall in love with me.
After all, how could he possibly believe in love after living through hell like he had?
For him, love was not salvation but ruination and that was why an actual relationship between us would have been impossible.
“I don’t love,” he’d told me once in one of our first conversations, and now I understood why. Neil would have to learn how to accept himself, to understand that he had so much more to offer than just his body. Then and only then would he—possibly—be able to be with someone.
“I’m worried about him, Logan,” I said for the thousandth time.
I’d been so self-absorbed, thinking about myself all the time, about the attention I wanted and wasn’t getting from Neil.
I never stopped to think about why he was so afraid to feel human emotions.
“I got it all wrong, right from the start.” Now more than ever, I knew that by pressuring him, I’d only pushed him further away from me.
“You didn’t know,” Logan answered with his characteristic kindness, just trying to make me feel better.
“I did, though. I saw all the signs, but I refused to put it together…” I swallowed hard as I recalled how Neil had manhandled me in my bedroom the night Jared visited.
The way he’d grabbed me by the hair, his brutal, ferocious thrusts, how he couldn’t stop staring at the place where we were conjoined.
The way he chased his orgasm as though I weren’t pinned underneath him, taking every harsh stroke.
His eyes had been so cold and vacant then; I had known that there was some kind of war going on inside him.
A war that he’d been fighting for who knew how many years.
Even when I’d caught him with Jennifer and Alexia, I’d never seen him look engaged. He was always impersonal, unflappable, and serious, with no look of pleasure or sexual satisfaction on his face.
“No one is ever ready to face that kind of truth,” Logan said, staring out into space.
It occurred to me then why Neil was so attached to Logan. He had such a strong bond with his siblings because what he felt for them was the only real form of love he knew.
“Who else knows about it?” I ventured.
“Just us and now you. Neil’s very private; he never talks about it with anyone. He barely talks about it with me,” he said, and other, sharper questions began to form in my mind.
Where was his abuser?
She was a psychopath. A demon. A monster.
“And she is…?” I wanted to say “dead” and hoped with all my heart that was the case. Looking into Logan’s eyes, I knew he could see the rage I was feeling.
“She was committed to a psychiatric facility in South Carolina,” Logan said, intuiting the information I needed.
As he spoke, a frosty wind whipped through the air, and the water grew restless. It was as though by speaking of the devil, we had summoned him, and even the natural world moved at his command.
“What’s her name?” I pushed a little harder, chewing on my lower lip. I was afraid that Logan would tell me to quit sticking my nose in at any moment, but he didn’t.
“Kimberly Bennett,” he said softly, and I immediately committed the name to memory.
I had no idea what to do now that I had some of the answers I’d sought, but I was pretty sure that remembering that woman’s name was going to be useful at some point.
I was probably going to spend hours thinking about Neil and about what Logan had told me, but one thing I already knew for sure: What I felt for him wasn’t sympathy or pity.
In fact, knowing his nature and how strong he was, I was positive that the last thing he wanted was pity. Neil would never have accepted a woman feeling sorry for him. He would have pushed her away immediately.
What I did feel, however, was a profound anger toward Kimberly and a new understanding of Neil.
But my opinion of him had not changed at all.
If anything, I found him even more remote than before.
If I’d imagined it would be hard to wriggle my way into his soul before, this new knowledge just made it more complicated.
Neil wasn’t simply some gorgeous, mysterious bad boy, gifted with a volatile charisma that drew women like flies. He was, above all else, untouchable.
I feared I wasn’t up to the challenge he presented, but, at the same time, the thought of abandoning him never even crossed my mind.
“He likes you. You know that, right?” Logan cut off my train of thought, drawing my gaze back to him.
Me? He liked me?
My palms began to sweat, and I felt a strange sort of unrest inside me. I wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or afraid.
“And you really like him too,” Logan added, a knowing look on his face.
I didn’t answer him but just looked away, trying to hide the sudden flush in my cheeks.
Neil was the only one who could shatter me and then put all my pieces back together.
All I had to do was look into his honey-colored eyes, and I felt the earth move beneath me.
Indisputably, he was the sort of man who got into one’s soul, fusing sex and longing together and creating the most depraved ideas in even the purest of hearts.
Still, I didn’t have the wherewithal to confirm Logan’s assertion.
***
We were having a cookout for lunch, and I decided to join the family, though I still wasn’t done ruminating on everything that had happened.
As I stood there watching Logan help my dad with the grill, I tried to smile and look cheerful.
The two of them squabbled constantly, and I watched them in amusement, trying to chase away my sadness.
“I could have done it on my own,” Logan grumbled as Matt continued to offer him advice in a know-it-all tone.
“That’s what he always says, but it’s never true,” Chloe murmured in my ear, making me snicker.
“Hey, I heard that,” Logan shot back, giving her a dirty look.
I had missed the youngest Miller. Even more than that, I had missed the understanding that had developed between us.
I looked over at her only to see her looking back at me with a strange softness in her eyes.
I couldn’t help but notice that her eyes were the exact same shade as the sky.
They, along with her bright hair, made her look a great deal like her mother.
Her facial features were elegant, just like Logan’s and Neil’s were. Beauty ran in the family.
Before we sat down to eat, Mia and I busied ourselves with setting the table and prepping various side dishes. Matt and Logan focused on grilling the sausages.
“Where’d Neil go?” Mia put a bottle of wine out on the table and glanced around, looking for her eldest son. It was my fault—my words that had driven him away. I was uncomfortable, afraid to look his mother in the eye. I was afraid she would see the guilt that was twisting my stomach in knots.
“Maybe he went down to the water?” Chloe suggested. Logan gave me a fleeting glance that only made me feel more ill at ease.
Did he also think this was all my fault?
“If you want, I can go look for him,” I offered abruptly, which drew my father’s attention.
“No, he’ll be back soon. He’s probably out exploring the local offerings,” Matt said lightly before sitting down next to me and rubbing my shoulder. “I found your present. That was a lovely thing to do; thank you so much.”
He pressed a kiss to my temple, and I smiled awkwardly, still unused to these weird displays of affection between us.
Then we went ahead without Neil. Logan tried calling him, but he didn’t answer, and, at that point, Mia said there was no reason to wait for him, and he’d probably be home later. Logan and I exchanged looks of pure concern.