Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
U nable to believe what he said, I actually thought I imagined it, that my brain conjured up his existence in Isles and his being here was a figment of my fucked-up imagination.
I reached over to where he was standing. For once, I had the upper hand. When it rolled off his tongue, I knew he was desperate for me.
As my hands slinked around his fingers, he stared at me. I grasped onto the umbrella and ripped it from him.
"My, my how the tables have turned." I cackled before walking toward the guest house.
He was in my house this morning; I knew it when I woke up undressed from the waist down and tucked into bed. I was exhausted physically and emotionally, but conscious enough to remember passing out on the ground by my door with my pants on. Sleeping nude was something I hated because of a weird fear that a bug would crawl up my hooha while I was passed out.
After I’d gotten up and saw the cum stain on my floor next to the bed, I knew exactly who it was. My worst fucking dream and most anticipated nightmare.
I opened the door and shut the umbrella. He’d sulked the rest of the way back to the house.
"Tea? Coffee?" I was being facetious, but I liked how it felt having the upper hand for once. Plus, his confession had me somewhat curious. I knew there was no way he came back three years later because he was merely curious, there had to have been an ulterior motive, and I found my answer.
"A glass of red would be preferred," he grumbled as he splayed out on the couch.
"Perfect," I stated as I headed toward the small kitchen, reaching up to the cabinet where I stored the quality wines professors had gifted me over the years. Pulling out a couple of glasses, I gathered my remaining courage.
"While you're at it, why don't you clean up the present you left me on the floor?" I rolled my eyes, poured the wine, and turned around, intending to approach where I thought Walsh was seated. Instead, I collided with a solid wall of abs, and the wine threatened to spill over.
"You think you're funny?" he asked.
I cracked a small smile. "Hilarious," I quipped.
"I'll keep your sarcastic mouth busy with something else if you keep it going," he said, reaching out to take his glass from my hand.
"But then who will you marry?" I questioned.
The corners of his lips twisted into a sadistic smile. "I have other options, Madison."
That gave me pause. There had to be more to this. There was no way he came back to Isles demanding I marry him to then say he had other options.
"This is dumb." I huffed, moving away and plopping myself down at the small table where I worked and ate most of my meals. "I don't even know why I'm getting so worked up about any of this. I don't even want to marry you."
He pulled out the chair next to me, cracking a slight grin. "I need you to."
I rolled my eyes. "This is very dramatic, Walsh. Even for you."
He leaned back in the wooden chair. "I'm being serious. I need you to come to Dansport with me and live in my house. I live near the woods."
"No," I said, setting my glass down. "I have school."
There were a lot of reasons I couldn’t marry Walsh Solis, but the biggest one was the secret I was keeping. I wasn’t worthy of love or being loved by anyone. For me, a love marriage was the shit people had in fairy tales. In real life, marriage was about two toxic people who fed off each other.
If I married Walsh, who was just as broken and toxic as I was, then we would somehow end up like my parents, with kids who had scars on their hands simply for being kids. I couldn’t let that happen.
"You can finish it online," he replied.
"You have an answer for everything?"
"Yes," he said with another lopsided grin.
"I don't understand." Real tears threatened to spill. "None of this makes sense. You don't even like me. The last time I saw you was at graduation outside your apartment. You stuffed me in the back of a car after you told me you were somehow going to ruin my life one day and that my time was coming for what I did to your sister. And speaking of Ember, does she agree with this plan?"
He flicked a piece of hair off his forehead and crossed his arms over his chest. "No. She has no idea. No one does."
"I'm not doing this. You can't decide after three years of ignoring me and an entire year before that where you were punishing me by purposely isolating me?—"
"I did not do that. You did that to yourself."
"Please do not talk over me," I demanded.
"Okay. I'm listening," he said, taking a sip of wine before putting his glass down on the table.
Truthfully, I was surprised he stood down from my request. He was the type to fight me on everything, so this felt…out of place.
"You cannot come in here and make demands of me, Walsh Solis. I have a life that I’ve tried so hard to work for, a life I am trying to be proud of."
"What happened last night—" I held up a hand, and he used his fingers to gesture zipping his mouth shut.
"What happened last night was a fluke. I appreciate you helping me at the bar, but I am tired, Walsh. I am exhausted trying to figure out who I am now after what happened with your sister. I lost myself when I was trying to punish you. I was so determined to fucking ruin your life by using Ember as a scapegoat to all of it, that I lost myself."
"No." He butt-in again, and I scowled, but his hands reached for me. I refused to take them, but he still held them out. "You lost who you thought you were."
I paused, taking in his comment. "But I want to be that version of myself again. You don’t get to dictate which parts I get to show to the world just because you think you know me better, which, by the way, you don't."
"Bet."
"Oh my God." I groaned. "Stop with the fucking interrupting."
"No, but seriously. Ask me a question you think I don’t know."
"My favorite ice cream flavor?" I cocked my head. I hated ice cream, so it was a trick question.
"None. You are slightly lactose intolerant, so if you are forced to eat something, you much prefer Italian ice or sorbet."
"How the fuck did you know that?" I asked, then held up a hand, stopping him as he was about to answer. "No, I changed my mind. I don’t want to know."
Walsh always had this weird knack for knowing things about me, sometimes even before I did. When we first met, it was like he had a GPS tracker on me, always aware of where I was on campus and what I was up to. At first, I thought it was just because I'm a creature of habit, but there was something more to it that I couldn't put my finger on.
"Tell me about my scars, then."
He paused. "I don’t know."
I scoffed. "I somehow don’t believe that. You seem to know every minute detail about me but my scars…?" He had to have known. It was written in every paper. Although I was a minor back then and the papers never published my name, he had to have figured it out.
"I didn’t want to be invasive. I thought that was something you’d want to tell me."
"Not invasive?" I laughed.
Sighing deeply, I tried to ground myself in the present, aware that the moment was slipping away. "I'm just drained, you know?" I confessed, my gaze meeting his eyes as he leaned in, displaying genuine interest in what I had to say. "Tired of being the easy target, the girl who's taken advantage of because she's desperately trying to fit into everyone else's mold. Sick of being haunted by my own dreams, driving me to drown my fears in the bottom of a bottle every damn night."
I paused, taking a moment to connect with him on a deeper level. "I'm exhausted from being the one everyone despises. Whether it's because I seem like a tryhard misfit or get dragged into this vortex of revenge, like with your sister, I end up playing the role of the heartless bitch, and truth be told, I despise the person I've become. I hate that I'm now just a hollow version of myself, standing here exposed while self-loathing consumes me from within."
"I like you for who you are," he mumbled, but I heard every word.
"You don't know me, Walsh. We met once. We hooked up when you were dating my roommate." I sighed, remembering that part of my life. "Before you met her, that was the person that I loved being. I was popular, but when she went missing, I became obsessed with trying to right a wrong. You ruined the life I’d worked so hard to live, because everyone was so sad about Cagen’s mystery that they forgot about me. I wasn’t invited to her freaking funeral. I was her roommate."
"Because you were someone you weren't."
"Fuck." I jumped out of the chair and screamed, "You don't listen. I am trying to tell you. You. Do. Not. Know. Me." No one knew me, not even myself.
He savored another sip of his wine before placing the glass back down and rising from his seat. He approached me, my hands shaking at my sides as his fingers intertwined with mine, his touch feeling like an embrace. Time had come to a standstill, the clamor of thoughts in my mind and the persistent ache of self-doubt fading into a hushed background melody.
If his touch could weave such soothing magic, I could only imagine the symphony of emotions and solace he held within.
"I'm depressed," I whined as his chest drew near. Our breaths, like ethereal whispers, synchronized, creating a delicate dance of shared vulnerability.
My words held the weight of the world. My chest constantly felt like it was caving in, and the only time I got a reprieve was when I was doing yoga or working obsessively with some new hyperfixation I had.
It consumed me. I was exhausted most days. A monster lived inside of me, one who ate my soul and spat out a horrible human being. I tried to tame it, but it was so fucking exhausting.
"I know," he murmured, dropping his head into my hair and inhaling deeply.
"I hate looking in the mirror. Ask me why," I whispered.
"Why, Muse?"
I flinched at the familiar nickname. "Because I despise the reflection of who I am. I don’t know what I am supposed to look like or become." I also hated the way my physical scarring reminded me of my past.
"I know," he repeated.
His kindness unfolded, catching me off guard. He withdrew from our shared embrace, his eyes locked onto mine with an intensity that seemed to pierce through the veil of my vulnerability. A warmth, so unfamiliar from his usual cool demeanor, emanated from his gaze.
He lifted a hand to cradle my cheek, the touch carrying an unexpected softness. It felt like the first rays of dawn, breaking through the darkest night.
His thumb traced a gentle semicircle along my cheekbone. It was as if, for that fleeting moment, he had stepped out of the shadows and allowed me a glimpse to a side of him obscured by the complexities of our shared history.
"I've watched you struggle," he spoke, his voice a soothing murmur. "And it's time for you to break free from the chains that bind you."
The vulnerability he displayed, so contrary to his usual self, left me both bewildered and captivated.
"And how am I supposed to do that?" I said, grabbing onto his hand as it paused on my cheek.
"Marry me," he whispered.
I stopped to think about it. Even if it was barely for a second, the thought of our life together fluttered through my head like a quick movie. We could be happy. He could protect me, but we were toxic for one another. His sister, her fiancé, and probably everyone else in his family despised me. There was just no world where we were good together.
"No." Just as the word escaped my mouth, his touch burned my cheek. I pushed him away, turning toward my bed and regretting how small this place felt all of a sudden.
"I am not asking, Madison. I am telling you to marry me." Ah. There was the stoic man I knew.
"And I am telling you no."
He took one step toward me. "I need you to."
He was begging, and part of me loved the fact I had the upper hand here, yet again. "Why do you need me to do this?"
"Because my father is forcing me to get married to someone else."
"What?" I balked, backing into the footboard of my bed and falling back. I scurried up so I was sitting.
"Do you know what the Mafia is, love?"
I’d heard rumors about what the Den and the Alpha house really were. There were always big blacked-out SUVs driving around, and people seemed to deal in handshakes as much as they used money around these parts. There was also the spring bonfire where people would go missing. I assumed it was something else. Rumors said the Mafia and Cartel beefed that night and their treaty to keep the peace somehow disappeared for one night of the year.
"Yeah."
"My family is the Luchesse family," he said as if he was reading the ingredients off a can.
"You’re in the mob?" My voice lifted a few octaves. Again, I shouldn’t have been surprised, but hearing it come out of his mouth was shocking.
"We use my father’s last name, but the family comes from my mother’s side, so yes." He paused, raking his hands through beautiful, long black hair that fell in front of his face. It was much longer these days, and he even had a little stubble on his jawline that somehow accentuated his features. It was hard to deny his beauty. "And my father wants me to marry someone this week. When I go back to Dansport tomorrow, my engagement will be announced."
My heart sank to my feet. The room spun around me.
Why was I having such a visceral reaction to this news? Why did I care so much? I hadn't seen him in three years, and before that, we only spoke once, where he’d yelled at me. Yet my body was unmistakably shutting down over the fact that Walsh Solis was going to get married.
"T-to who?" I got it out as he turned his back on me. Then I noticed a paper at the end of the bed, sitting atop Walsh’s luggage, and scrambled to pick it up and read it.
There were pictures of a beautiful woman who looked oddly familiar, but I couldn't quite place where I had seen her before.
"To her."
"Who is she?" I asked, throwing the paper back in his direction. You don’t care. That's what I needed to keep repeating to myself in order to make it true in my mind.
"She’s part of the Irish mob. I need to get married to her for political reasons, but once I marry her, Madison, that little string of hope that I know you kept all these years will go away. I can no longer?—"
I raised a hand to stop him. "Please don’t."
I stood from the bed, mustering up every bit of courage I could find in my bones. "You mean nothing to me. You are nobody. I don’t know why you are here telling me all of this. I don't know what your ulterior motive is, but I am not marrying you. Go back to Dansport and get married to the person you’re supposed to."
"But—"
"No buts. We were never anything but a fucking mistake, Walsh. We both made a lapse in judgement, then I took it too far fucking up your family. You gave me my year-long silent treatment, then ruined me with your words. We are even. It is done."
I took a deep breath before continuing with what I needed to say before he could say anything. "I do not want to marry you to help you. Where were you when I needed help? You didn’t want me four years ago, why would I suddenly bow to your demands today?"
"Because—"
"Agh," I shouted. "That was a rhetorical fucking question."
The smallest twist of the corners of his lips leading to a sheepish grin was the only indication he was slightly amused. "Okay, Muse."
"Get out." I closed the distance between us, pushing him backward toward the door. "Do not come back. Get out."
Although I was pretty strong from the years of yoga, my strength was met with an iron wall. He didn’t move an inch even as I pushed with my entire body to get him to leave.
"One question," he said, and I stopped pushing him.
"Okay." I didn’t owe him anything but could grant him this one request.
"If we just met and none of our past happened. If my sister didn’t want your blood spilled"—I flinched at his statement—"if none of this happened, would you consider my request?"
I pondered it for a moment. "If we were strangers and you randomly approached me, asking me to marry you?"
"Yes," he murmured. His hand ascended to my face, sweeping locks of hair off my forehead.
So much needed to be said, but our shared history and undeniable connection loomed at large. It was a burning fire, both enthralling and addictive, created by forces beyond control. Like a ball of fire, it warmed instantly, making us feel alive, yet dared us not to let it grow out of control.
"If it was just us in another time?" I sought clarification.
"Yes, Muse," he whispered, lowering to hover his lips over mine. He remained still, and for a fleeting moment, I stood before the devil, craving a taste, yearning to be enveloped in his shadows and comforted by the darkness he exuded. Yet I knew it was too good to be true.
"You know the answer to that," I murmured. I had spent years trying to mend what was broken while he sought me out only when it suited him.
"Say it," he demanded. "In another time, would you consider my offer?"
A chance to reclaim my power? A house in the city? A man who'd protect me at all costs? Was that truly the debate I found myself in? The answer seemed so obvious.
"Of course, I would."
"Would you marry me, Muse?"
A pregnant pause lingered. "Yes."
"That's all I needed to know."
"That's not fair!" I shouted as he exited the house. Barefoot, I ran down the drive, the rocks wreaking havoc on my feet. "This isn't a fair request, Walsh."
He said nothing, but I continued to shout after him. "Go ahead and leave, that is what you do best. I hope when you get married to this new girl, you leave me the hell alone. This has been years of pure torture, and I cannot deal with it anymore."
I sank to my knees, tears streaming down my face. Amidst the torrential rain, I knelt on the cold gravel, my heart and mind at war. For a year, I’d sought retribution against him—the one who dismantled my grandmother's teachings, sabotaged my status, and destroyed my future. He left me to the vultures of loneliness.
As he disappeared into the night, a storm raged within me. His magnetic darkness, the allure of his forbidden world and Mafia ties, heightened the intrigue. The devil himself had danced into my life, leaving chaos.
It was a mix of revenge, rejection, and an inexplicable pull toward Walsh Solis. My hatred intertwined with an unsettling attraction, like two opposing forces in a relentless dance. Despite the pain, a part of me still yearned for him.
The devil had made his offer, and each raindrop echoed my conflicted heart. In mere moments, the revelation crashed over me: Walsh's mention of an impending marriage pierced through my defenses, leaving a sickening churn in my stomach.
The finality of our encounter left me disoriented. Walsh moving on, ready to commit to another, struck me hard. The image of him with someone new, stepping into a life that could have been mine, haunted my thoughts. The ache in my chest intensified as I grappled with a sense of loss and regret.
The walls that once shielded me from him now suffocated me with conflicting emotions. His entire family hated me; there was no world where we could work together, yet I yearned for the darkness slipping away. The devil had departed, leaving a void.
In those fleeting moments, I questioned whether I mourned the loss of him or the chaotic dance we shared.
I walked over to my small closet on the other side of the bed, opening the accordion doors. My thought was to get into something warm and pass out, but adrenaline coursed through my veins and I knew I’d never get to sleep.
But I also knew if I stayed here, lying in bed waiting for sleep to consume me, my thoughts would drive me mad. I’d be stuck here remembering how my father and mother would make me feel insignificant. I’d be stuck in a cycle of remembering my house burning down and the smell of gasoline torching my precious stuffed animals as I ran out of the house down the block.
I’ll never forget the one fire that my parents set that sent me fleeing as I grasped for any of my toys, getting burned in the process. The vivid images of fire stayed in my mind. The sounds of crackling pain as the fire burned me was something I never wanted to imagine again.
"Fuck it," I said, grabbing a pair of flared jeans and an oversized cream-colored sweater. "I’m going to get drunk."
I grabbed my keys and stuffed them into the front pocket of my jeans, then put my phone in my back pocket. I walked out of the guesthouse, slamming the door behind me, leaving it unlocked. Because whatever loomed in the darkness, I was no longer scared of. There was nothing that could terrify me anymore. I’d seen it all.
As I approached Main Street, the bar had a huge "Temporarily Closed" sign on the front of the building.
"Serves him right," I muttered as I walked down the street until I got to another bar. This one was far more popular since it was more in the hub of town, which I didn’t love, but if it had liquor, it would do.
I sat in a corner seat at the huge center bar top, away from the fraternities that had piled in to watch the game on the dozens of TVs playing a variety of sports games hanging on the walls.
"A double whiskey and Coke," I said.