Chapter 15 #3
I looked gravely at her after confessing my partial truth and instinctively touched her cheek.
I felt a shiver down my spine as my fingers made contact with the softness of her skin, and she sucked in a breath at the gesture.
I stared into her blue eyes, still shiny with suffering, and at her dry lips and clenched teeth.
“Lie down,” I whispered, and she obeyed. Then, still wearing her father’s sweatpants and my leather jacket, I arranged myself beside her. On my side, touching her hair.
Selene lay before me, and she was staring so intensely at me that I felt naked.
“Will you tell me someday what makes you so angry?” she murmured, delighting in the feeling of my fingers gently gliding through her long hair.
“Sleep now,” I answered, studying her rosy cheeks and eyelids puffy from crying. She sighed as I soaked up her coconut smell, trying to capture it in my lungs so I could take it back with me.
“So, will you stay tonight or—” she continued, fighting her exhaustion because she still wanted to talk to me.
“Shh…” I whispered before planting a kiss on her forehead.
Her eyes closed completely then, and after a few minutes, her breathing deepened. She was asleep. I stopped stroking her hair and carefully got off the bed, making sure not to let the springs squeak so she wouldn’t wake up.
I trod silently to her desk and rummaged around in her pink pen holder that had a kitten pattern printed on it.
I smiled at that childish detail and then wrote a note for her on a Post-it, scrawling the first thing that came to mind.
I put the pen back where it went and stuck the meager little message on the top book in a nearby pile.
Then, I prepared myself to do what I did best—run away and leave her disappointed.
I opened the door, which did let out a slight creak, and I took one last brief look at her. The bedside lamp was still on, and soft light illuminated the shape of Selene stretched out on the bed, one hand in a fist beside her lips, the other by her side.
She was my Babygirl, and she would always be my Babygirl.
I crept out of the room, shutting the door behind me, and breathed a sigh of relief as I headed down the stairs and made it to the living room undisturbed.
“Are you leaving?”
I sucked in a breath when I heard Judith’s calm, confident voice. I turned to look at her and saw that she was right behind me. She was still wearing her elegant clothes and high heels, suggesting she’d just gotten home.
“Yes. I’ll wash the clothes you lent me and—” She shook her head and gestured for me to hold on a minute. She left and returned shortly thereafter with a paper bag in which she’d put my now-dry clothing and handed it politely to me.
“You can keep Matt’s clothes. Here are your own.”
“Thank you. For the clothes and the hospitality, but I really do have to go back now,” I said, taking the bag with a forced smile. I’d sleep in an airport motel or, hell, in the airport if necessary, but I needed to get out of this house.
“Dark…” Judith answered, and I froze just as I’d started checking my jacket pocket for my Winstons. I hadn’t had a smoke in too long because whenever I was with Selene, I forgot about nicotine.
She became my addiction instead.
“What?” I asked, furrowing my brow.
“Your name, it’s an old, old name that has passed through a lot of cultures.
It likely derives from the Gaelic Niall, which can mean, among other things, cloud.
The Normans wrote it N-E-E-L, the same as the Old French word for niello, a pitch-black mixture of alloys used in metalworking.
Niello came from the Latin nigellus, meaning darkness.
And so, as far as those Latin scribes were concerned, that’s what your name meant: darkness.
” She folded her arms over her chest and leaned against the wall with one shoulder while I looked at her in surprise, not expecting the etymology lesson.
“That sounds right,” I murmured, putting my hand on the doorknob.
“You were born a Niall—a white cloud—and then some things happened and you became Neel, the darkness. But it’s your choice whether you continue being that way or try to return to your original form.
” She held my gaze, studying me like I was a book of Greek mythology or a student struggling with a difficult test question.
I gave her a cheeky smile.
“Destiny’s funny, huh? My name, like me, has undergone a transformation, Ms. Martin. But unfortunately, there’s nothing I can do to become Niall again,” I said drily before opening the door to feel the bitter night air on my face.
Dark was my name; dark was my nature.
Should I have thanked fate for making me into a thing of darkness? For giving me such a pitiful existence? For making me a slave to sex, a lover of vice, a willing victim to every carnal sin, and allergic to all sentiment?
Did I need to thank fate for dropping this angel with the ocean eyes right in front of me at the wrong time, in the wrong place, and in the wrong way?
Did I say thanks for the nightmares that tortured me constantly?
For a sick whore using me as a child?
For forcing me to flee the one beautiful thing that had ever happened to me because I knew that if I connected to Tinkerbell, I would lose myself?
My life was a game of chess.
And this had been one more point to the fairy and another blow to me, the devil defeated…