Chapter 32
Tilian
This time, when I woke up beside Brooks, I didn’t run. All I wanted to do was scoot closer, so I did. He slept more deeply than I’d expected. He hadn’t budged when I left yesterday. I had this idea in my head that he was the type who woke up at the slightest sound, always ready for war, but I was wrong.
His arm was still around me, just like it was when we fell asleep. I was surprised that neither of us had changed position throughout the night.
I was ready to change that.
Raising up on my elbow, I leaned over him and kissed his chest. When he didn’t wake up, I grazed his nipple with my teeth, which made him suck in a breath. I twisted and swung my leg over him, then made a path up his sternum.
His hands settled on my ass and gripped it firmly. With his eyes still closed, it almost looked like he hadn’t woken up.
“Brooks,” I murmured against his neck.
“What time is it?” His sleepy voice convinced me that I wanted to wake up to this every day.
“I have no idea.”
“You’re the devil.”
I moved my hips and felt his hard dick against the inside of my thigh.
“What time’s your first class?” I asked.
“Who cares?”
I swore when he flipped me onto my back. The way he rolled his hips was far sexier than when I did it. I couldn’t wait for the day I’d get to experience what he was like during sex.
Far more aggressively than I had, he started kissing my body. It was like he wanted to one up me on everything, not that I could complain.
“You’re…” He kissed my neck. “So…” Another long kiss. “Sexy.” He sucked on my skin in the same spot as yesterday. It was more painful, which made me hold him to me. I’d wear his mark anywhere, every day.
“No, you.”
With a chuckle, he pulled back and stared down at me. I almost dropped my gaze on instinct, but I didn’t want to, so I stayed locked on his dark eyes. With the sun shining through the window, they were liquid- deep, endless pools that held promises, ones that would pull me under the surface. I thought I might drown, but when I looked at the rest of his face, I wanted to trust that he’d never let me disappear into that void he seemed to know so well.
The grin that appeared on his face made my heart skip.
“Come on,” he said before he got to his feet.
“But why?”
“Class, remember? I need to shower.”
“Or we could spend twenty more minutes in bed. I haven’t had enough of you.”
I stuck out my lip in a pout that made his whole face soften. Did dominant men truly hold the power? Yes and no. The answer was nuanced. I was interested in learning how much I could get him wrapped around my finger.
“Hurry up,” he said, heading for the bathroom. “This shower is divine.”
For a second, all I could do was stare at him. He turned around at the door and dropped his briefs, leaving him completely naked. His brow raised as he took a step backward, then another.
I was out of the bed so quickly that I was surprised I didn’t face plant. He disappeared into the bathroom and I heard him laugh.
When I caught up to him, still at risk of cardiac arrest, he was already in the shower. It was ridiculously nice, set back behind a glass wall with black tiles. I stepped inside and was just as amazed as the first time I saw the rainfall showerhead.
“You live an insane life.”
He grabbed my hand and tugged me under the water. I tipped my head back with a smile, amazed at how good it felt. I ran my fingers through my hair, then looked at Brooks. He was staring, looking very serious.
“What?” I asked.
His fingers traced my cheekbone. “Can I keep you?”
My heart fluttered. “If you want.”
“How could I not?”
“I’m just me.”
“Exactly. The fact that you don’t know you’re so special is part of what makes you who you are. You don’t lack self-confidence. You just overthink everything, which is why I freaked out when you started pursuing me as more than just a friend. Thinking about how much you must’ve agonized over it, then you still chose to do it…”
“Please tell me.”
He took a deep breath. “I don’t feel like I’m worth that.”
Anger flared in my chest with the resurfacing of that ridiculous sentiment. I gripped his hands tighter. “There’s no way that you think that. You’re per-” I cut myself off, remembering the way he’d reacted to that word before. “You’re incredible. Not for your academics, the things you have, or what you might become someday. Just because you’re you. It’s all the parts that you have to read between the lines to find.”
His jaw was tight as he listened to me. “That’s… kind.”
“It’s not kind. It’s the truth.”
“Tilian… You don’t know me yet. Not really.”
“Then, tell me.”
“I’m afraid for you to know me.”
I tried not to let him see how deeply that struck me. “We can’t change that we’re afraid of something, but some things are worth taking risks for. You decided that you want to do this, so part of you must want to show me who you are.”
“You see all these good things, but my soul is ugly and wretched and there’s nothing I can do to change that. I’ve done things that disgust me. There’s no taking any of them back. Even if I could, I wouldn’t because I need them in order to survive this fucking life.”
“Yours or theirs?”
“What?”
I leaned forward and held either side of his neck. “Yours or theirs? If you don’t want to be something, you don’t have to. Nothing is chaining you in place, Brooks.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Sure, it is. Tell the world to fuck off. Raise your middle fingers and live unapologetically in whatever way makes you happy.”
I traced the rose tattoo on his hip. Stepping back, I looked at his legs. He had more ink there, simple things. There was the outline of a skull on his thigh and on the other one, what looked like a crescent moon but unfinished. I walked around him and found an anchor on the side of his thigh, along with a butterfly.
When I came back to his front, I noticed a duck holding a knife on his foot. My brow furrowed as I took them in. It wasn’t that they weren’t done well; they were. They didn’t look like they were the result of a tattoo machine, though.
Touching the skull, I looked up at him. “These are tattoos…”
“Glad you can identify things. This one’s a moon.” He tapped the opposite leg.
“Yeah, I see that. But this… Did you do these yourself?”
“Yup. I’m what’s known as an artist.” He touched my lips, which were turned down in a frown.
“You shouldn’t be doing this,” I said.
“In this house, we possess bodily autonomy.”
“Brooks.” My firm tone made him purse his lips. “Why do you do this?”
He shrugged. “I like it. Tattoos are unbecoming of someone in the professional world, but if I do it myself, it doesn’t make me feel guilty. And I like the way it feels.”
If I expected him to be ashamed of it, I was mistaken. He sounded proud.
“You like the pain,” I guessed.
“It helps when I’m talking to my mom.”
“God, Brooks.”
He pushed my hand away. “Don’t do that. I’m not some wounded thing.”
“I’m pretty sure this counts as self-harm.”
“Maybe.”
“And you don’t care?”
“Everything is something, baby. Some people hurt themselves with food, others gamble, and a huge amount of people binge social media. If I turn my pain into art, the only one who’s affected is me, and I don’t really care.”
“What if it gets worse?”
He touched my cheek. “It won’t. I’m not suicidal or anything. If I wanted to actually harm myself, I’d do drugs or something.”
“You numb yourself.”
He pulled his hand back, but I caught it and brought it back to my face.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “I do that, but again, it’s just a fucking coping mechanism. I need places where things don’t have to be perfect. I don’t have to be me .”
“What would it take for you to be happy, Brooks?”
When he didn’t answer, I thrust my fingers into his wet hair and moved closer to him.
“Tell me.”
“You make me happy. Aside from that, I don’t have a clue.”
“I don’t want you to do this anymore.”
“Boo hiss.”
“I’m serious.”
Without saying anything, he pumped some shampoo into his palm. He started massaging it into my hair and while it felt good, I was still hung up on our conversation.
Since meeting him, I’d studied the things he did. He often stared out of the window when I was here, unmoving and silent. When he was stressed, he chewed on his tongue, which he did a lot. He wanted to keep his long hair, but he rarely had it down until recently and even then, he didn’t seem entirely comfortable with it.
A lot of things were out of his hands, that much was clear. The weight of whatever expectations his parents set was suffocating him. If I didn’t know better, I’d be convinced that he wanted to live like this. That wasn’t the case at all. Aside from some small things that might’ve been weak attempts at rebellion, he was locked into this life, the one his parents lived and the one he was supposed to have when he made his own money.
Did he even want that?
As he continued to wash my hair, I wondered if he had dreams of his own. I didn’t know if he’d even let himself think about it. I wanted to learn what else was inside of him, the things that made him Brooks Elrod when everything was removed and only he remained.
“Tell me what you’d do if being a lawyer wasn’t an option.”
He smiled a little, then tipped my head back to rinse my hair. “I’ve never thought about it.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Maybe… a paralegal.”
Lowering my head, I frowned at him. “That’s subterfuge.”
He was smiling, which was annoying when I was trying to be serious.
“Fine. You won’t answer that satisfactorily. Why are you so afraid that you’ll hurt me?”
His movements paused in his own hair. “Do I have to answer that?”
“Please.”
He was silent as he continued to wash his hair. It wasn’t until we were completely finished with the shower that he met my eyes.
“I need you to understand that I have a lot of fucked up wiring in my head. The way I grew up taught me that getting ahead was the most important thing and to do that, you had to be willing to be anything. I’m trying to figure out the balance between who I was, who I am, and who I want to be. I don’t even know where any of them begin and end. If you want something from me, I can’t promise that I’ll be good at it, but I’m going to try. I’ll fuck up, though. I already know that. I’m worried I’ll hurt you because my life is full of these expectations and I have no choice but to meet them.”
You have a choice. It was what I wanted to say, but I refrained. Maybe I could show him that instead of telling him. If he let me in, I could help guide him out of whatever dark pit he was drowning in.
I would show him that he was beautiful.
I would prove that he was worth something. Everything.
I would make him love himself again or, if he never had, I’d teach him how.
“Wherever you are, I’ll meet you there, even in your darkest places. Give me your pain and I’ll help you find the beauty inside of it.”
He traced my cheekbone with his lips. “I’d rather share the good things, but I don’t know how much I have to give.”
“Give me whatever you have and it’ll be enough.”