Chapter 34
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
ELLISON
I feel like I’m in a haze while I walk down the stairs. For so long, there was a part of my mind, a part that belonged to El, that was closed off. I remember the first time he closed it off from me was in that closet. And then… it just got easier to keep that part closed.
Asmodeus leads me to the SUV where Nolan is still sound asleep. I slide into the back seat and Asmodeus promises to return shortly. I watch as he talks to the others and then he opens the back door and jangles some keys in front of me.
“They’re going to be a while, so I procured us a vehicle. I told them you needed to get out of here.”
“I’m fine,” I say, not wanting to inconvenience anyone.
He raises an eyebrow. “They didn’t mind that I took the keys.”
“Who didn’t mind?”
“That guy who punched you.”
I give him a look as I say, “No.”
Asmodeus smiles. “I’m joking. It’s Wyatt’s work car. He said he’d ride with Valerie and get it tomorrow.”
“Okay,” I say, still not positive if I can trust that he didn’t steal the car, but leaving this place sounds best. I follow him to the car, and once inside, he begins to drive.
For a long while, we’re in silence before he pulls off to the side of the road.
I realize we’re in the woods not far from my house, the same woods I’d run into that day after visiting my mother.
He gets out and I slowly follow him as we head out into the trees.
“Spending forty-two days in the wilderness sounds dreadful for most people,” he says as he sits down in a clear patch.
“But there was something about it that set me free. It let my mind relax. There were no people, there was nothing but the serenity of it all. The birds… the sound of water, the beauty of it.”
I sit down next to him, and I look up to see the sunlight cutting between the leaves. As it shines down on me, I drop onto my back and close my eyes.
The part of my mind that El had shut off is open. I can feel El there, but I can also feel all of the things that made me hurt so badly. All the things he protected me from are crashing back down.
“I can close it off again.”
My eyes snap open and I look up at El, who is standing over us.
“No.”
“But it makes you hurt.”
“It does… it hurts… but I can’t run from it forever, no matter how much I want to.
I became such a monster. I wanted my father to pay.
I wanted my mother to pay. I wanted that place from hell to pay.
” I turn to Asmodeus. “I saw my father preaching about it yesterday and then hours later El had destroyed it… and still I blamed him.” I hold my hand out to my right and Asmodeus takes it.
“You’ve been trying to get through to me for days and I just couldn’t get it. ”
“I don’t believe that you didn’t ‘get it.’ I think it just took you some time to realize that as a child, you needed that protection from El… but as an adult, you are strong enough to do it alone, though you shouldn’t have to. That’s why El and I are here. Aspen too.”
“How could I have twisted things to hurt you, Asmodeus? I don’t know how to forgive myself. Because if I accept that El did these things to protect me, then I have to accept that I tried to hurt you.”
“Because you were afraid. And fear, when left unwatched, can manifest into some wild things… so many emotions can. If I hadn’t been forced to suppress my own emotions since the second I was born…
maybe I wouldn’t have done what I did. But Ellison, you can stab me all you want and I will happily take it with open arms.”
“That’s not… no.”
“I can handle whatever you throw at me.”
“But I don’t want you to have to. I want to cherish you.”
“Oh, My Lord of Suits… our lives would be very boring if you treated me like glass. I need you and El and Aspen.”
I hold my other hand out and El slowly walks over to it. El’s fingers wrap around mine as I draw him down to the ground next to me.
“I need both of you to make sure I don’t fuck up and fall into hell again because I’m not sure I’d make it back out.”
“Good thing you have a demon or two to hoist you out.”
“Good thing,” I whisper as a tear runs down my face for the brother whose life I took, for the childhood I was never allowed to have, and for myself… for hating myself for so many years.
Asmodeus rolls into me and brushes the tears away. “What if we both just start again?”
“Can I?” I ask.
“Of course you can. Your brother sounds like he was a really good person; he wouldn’t want you to punish yourself any longer.”
El rolls into me and I feel him pressed against me without a word, holding me like he had when I was a child. When I would hide from the things that haunted me, the things that tore my life apart.
But this time, I have someone on both sides of me.
“Hey now, I feel left out,” Aspen says before lying on top of Asmodeus. “I’ll take this one. Do you know how hard it was to pretend to be all grumpy like Ellison?”
“Were you the illusion I was following in the mall?” Asmodeus asks.
Aspen gasps. “You knew it was me? Am I special?”
“You’re letting Aspen steal him from you?” El asks me.
“At least I didn’t try stabbing him… I mean… I want to stab him with something, alright—” Aspen says as he smacks Asmodeus’s ass.
I try to get up so I can banish all illusions and hurry for home, but Asmodeus won’t let me up.
“Frisky,” Aspen comments.
“No! Aspen, you are prohibited from speaking.”
“No thanks,” he says, trailing a finger over Asmodeus’s cheek.
“I have to apologize to you too, Aspen, because I tried to control you for years. I tried to force you to hide your personality away because I was too afraid to face myself.”
“It’s okay. I still knew that you loved me,” Aspen says. “And now I have more to love.” He kisses Asmodeus’s cheek.
I’m quiet for a moment before asking, “Why would you guys ever forgive me for all I did to you?”
“Because we love you,” Aspen replies.
“Because I was made to protect you,” El says.
“I don’t need to be protected from my family anymore… but I still need you. I need all three of you.”
Asmodeus squeezes my hand. “I’m not going anywhere. Remember? Gum on shoe.”
“I remember,” I say. “I do have a question… El, why did you let the villains in the facility loose? How would that help anything?”
El shakes his head. “I didn’t.
I can feel a shift in Asmodeus’s body. “I don’t think Henrik did it… so then who did?”
“I don’t know… I’m not quite sure,” I say.
Asmodeus looks thoughtful but shakes his head.
“What?”
“You don’t think your father did, do you?”
“My father?” I ask in astonishment.
“Just… what better way to prove that supers need to be eliminated than letting a significant number of supers with felonies loose?” Asmodeus muses.
“He had coverage on it before anyone else… I’m just saying that it might be something to keep an eye on.
I bet if I rush back to your father’s place of work, I can stick him back in the building and fan the flames. ”
“I’ll help,” El offers.
“I know you all think I’m an angel, but I would very much help as well. I think I’d look sexy as a bad boy,” Aspen says.
“You will not help. We’ll look into that idea to see if we can figure out if my father is tied to it, but I’m not promising anything. And I’m not letting the three of you become felons!”
Asmodeus doesn’t seem to love this idea. “I can promise you that I can make your father disappear.”
“You’re so sexy,” Aspen says as he hugs Asmodeus’s face to his chest. “Isn’t he sexy, El?”
El just stares at them.
I sigh and push Aspen off before rolling over to Asmodeus and kissing him.