Chapter Eighteen #2
I snap. Something inside me cracks in two, leaving nothing but splinters behind. “You say you love me?”
“I do.”
“If you really love me, kill yourself. Right now. So I never have to deal with you again. If you really love me, jump.” I throw my hand out, referencing the great expanse behind him. The wide open air. The thousands of feet he could fall.
He cocks his head over the rail, looks down, down, down. Then he exhales a laugh, and steps away from the balcony.
“That’s what I thought,” I mutter. Swallow.
Breathe. Containing my rage, I battle to level my spiking emotions.
“Can we please stop this game, sir? I’m tired.
And it’s cruel. I’ll beg if that’s what it takes.
I’ll repent. I don’t care anymore. Can we go back to the way things were before you brought up this nonsense about liking me?
I don’t want revenge anymore. I’m not good at making you suffer.
I was never born to win.” I stare at the dark carpet.
“I’m too scared to face what other misfortune it’ll bring me if I keep trying to hurt you.
Right now, I just want it all to be over.
” His shoes stop in front of mine, inches away, so I pull my attention up along the firm planes of his body to meet his eyes.
“I just want peace. Can we please return to our professional relationship and leave all this insanity behind us?”
Smiling tenderly, he takes my hand and lays something in it. “Oh, dear sweet dove…” he murmurs, and a chill cascades down my spine. “I’ve already told you. The last thing I want…is peace between us.”
Stunned, I blink as he steps away, back. Turning, he marches out onto the balcony.
My heart leaps. I look down at my palm. At the elevator key.
Then I look up.
At the man on the railing.
“Malcolm!” I jolt forward as he teeters on the edge and swings around to face me.
A breeze whips his hair and clothes. He throws his arms open. His face tints red, melding with the hues of the setting sun. “I love you,” he says. “Sincerely so. To the grave…and beyond.”
Then he steps off.
?
My blood rings in my ears as I stare at the empty space in front of me.
Mouth dry, I gape. I gape and shake and feel every last nerve in my body pinch.
Malcolm just…jumped. He’s gone. That’s it. This is it. He just jumped off a building, because I told him to, so he did. Malcolm jumped off a building for me, and I can’t even unpack that, because he’s gone.
There is a man in this world who would jump off a building for me, and he’s likely seconds away from hitting asphalt, seconds away from no longer being in this world.
And you know what’s worse than all the convoluted, messy, insane feelings I can’t handle right now? I’ll be accused of pushing him. I’ll go to prison.
My breaths stumble through my chest as I make stilted motions backward.
I knew I shouldn’t have come in here. I knew it. I said I’d die if I did. I guess I was too self-centered.
Panic surges. I trip out of Malcolm’s bedroom and thread my fingers into my hair, fumbling toward the stairs.
What can I do?
What am I supposed to do?
Why would he do that?
Why would he actually kill himself for me?
Head swirling, I grip the railing at the top of the steps and try not to see them as a downward spiral.
Don’t tell me…
Was Malcolm mentally unwell and depressed? He said recently that he thought we were similar. Heaven knows I’m messed up. Have we both just been incredibly messed up people this whole time?
What have I done?
I take one step, another, then another. Painstakingly, I make my way down the staircase as tears flood from my eyes.
What’s wrong with me?
What’s…wrong with me?
This is it.
What I wanted.
He’s gone.
He’s gone.
And I—
I collapse on the last stair, clinging to the railing, letting the cold unknown of the bars press into my bare cheek. My body turns over on itself, wrestling with everything that the past few weeks and years have held.
In the haze, the sensation of Malcolm’s phantom arms return. Haunting me even now. They close in. They constrict. They hold.
I can’t remember the last time…before him…that I was held.
Covering my mouth, I sob.
A soft, tsking sound breaks through my broken gasps for breath, and I startle, looking up past my tears in the same moment that Malcolm drops into a crouch inches in front of me.
“Wow,” he whispers—very much alive. “So.” He smiles, and it’s insane, and his face is crimson, and his eyes are subdued with rampant heat. “You do care.”
Frail, I stare at him. At the ghost come to haunt me. At the punishment sent to torture me for the rest of my miserable life.
Fingers shaking, I reach toward the wraith, and he clasps my hand, settling it against his cheek. “Hi, love,” he whispers.
My attention drags beyond him, scans the wide open space, and finds a terrace past the living room. Far more expansive than the balcony attached to the bedroom above, it boasts outdoor furniture and an entire bar.
My tears—somewhat immediately—dry.
My fingers twitch against his face.
My eye twitches.
I scrape my gaze back to his infuriating smile and something very important within me—possibly my last nerve—explodes.
Launching on top of him, I knock his back to the floor, choke off his airy laugh, and grip the collar of his shirt, shaking him. “Are you—” I swear. “—insane?”
“Yes?” he croaks. “I thought we’d been over that. Rather intimately, even. Do you think it’s something I attempt to conceal in any way at all?”
“What if you’d missed!” I blurt, half-screaming my head off while I attempt to shake even a drop of sense into his.
“That was a chance I was willing to take. For you.” His gloved fingers lift and run, featherlight against my cheek. “Oh darling. Be careful what you command of me. Haven’t I already said that I’ll do anything you ask?”
I twitch. Again. Then I pound my fists against his chest. “You’re an idiot.”
“Probably.”
“An absolute and utter moron.”
“Love makes people stupid and crazy.” His smile is driving me mad, so I grip his cheeks and crush. He mumbles around my constricting fingers, “Imagine what it can do to someone already so mentally unwell.”
“Do you have any idea what would have happened to me if you’d been found dead on the pavement with all the security cameras proving I was the only other person up here?”
“You’d have been fine. I’ve already told Ivy that if I wind up dead, he’s to protect you and do whatever it takes to make sure the verdict is that it was my fault.” Malcolm takes my wrist and frees his mouth. “It’s like you think I don’t know you’re trying to kill me.”
I go cold.
“It’s okay,” he soothes, caressing my hair, planting his hand flat to my back, pulling me into a hug. “I’ve said I’d die for you. And I am nothing if not sincere.”
Stiff, I lie there, on top of him, at the bottom of the stairs, and lose all the strength in my body.
For the moment, my issues feel distant. For the moment, I am untouchable. My mind is too full of real horrors to worry about the make believe.
His hold on me tightens, and his breath skates across my brow. “I love you, Azalea. Why are you fighting it? Why are you fighting me? I know it’s hard for you, but let’s think logically for a moment.”
I flinch. “How dare—”
“How dare I tell you the truth? How dare I challenge you? How dare I do exactly as I’m told? How dare I what, dove? Tell me. What have I actually done to you that’s been so horrible?”
I bite my tongue. Because, right now, I haven’t a clue. The little things he’s done have been consistent, irritating, and nerve-wracking, but thinking back on it all feels so childish. Nothing he’s ever done would matter if I weren’t…me.
He murmurs, “That’s what I thought.” His lips press to my hair. Kiss. Then his nose nuzzles. “Talk to me. Tell me the truth.”
“So now you want to talk?” I force air through my lungs and words past my raw throat.
“What about when I wanted to talk last night and you told me there was no fun in that? I know I’m weak and pathetic.
I also know I’m a toy to you. I know I’m stuck playing your games.
But why should I have to tell you anything when you won’t return the favor? ”
Sitting up, he leans me back until I’m stretched out on the stairs, the hard corners of the steps biting into my body. Our gloved hands meet and kiss as he closes his fingers around mine and pulls my arms up above my head.
Dark, looming, and close, he takes me in. “Make me return the favor, then.”
“How?”
“Are you sure you don’t know?”
My eyes flick to his lips, then back up when a swirl of anxiety hits the roof of my mouth.
His eyes spark, and his smile spreads. “I won’t argue if that’s the method you choose to make me talk, little dove.”
“Don’t be disgusting,” I whisper.
“I would never. Tell me, is your mind quiet for once?” He leans in, hovers a centimeter from my forehead. “Or is it just screaming different terrors?”
I dare to give him the truth. “The latter.”
He kisses my skin.
I buzz. I tremble. I…fear.
He murmurs, “Would you like your mind to always scream these new things instead of the old ones?”
I’d like my mind to be quiet for once in its life.
I’d like a spare moment of nothing that feels like the unlimited, unburdened possibility of everything.
I don’t even know why I’m like this. I don’t know why I’m so certain existence is out to get me.
I don’t know why everything is so hard. Why I have so many rules just so I can almost function.
I’m tired.
I don’t want new terrors.
I whisper, “I want peace.”
“Peace is never an option,” he says, tone cryptic and heavy and forlorn. “Not with brains like ours.”
Ours.