Chapter Nineteen
?
If only I could actually keep her forever…
Malcolm
To be so clear, this isn’t torture—no matter how Azalea’s reacting to it. It’s closer to cognitive behavioral therapy, but I’m no therapist, so what do I know?
“If you die, we can die together, and won’t that be fun?”
Snuggled up in the white sheet I laid carefully over her chair in my private movie theater, Azalea folds her arms and protests. “It fell on the floor. Your floor. I don’t care what you say. I’m not going to eat anything in it now.”
Still painted in crimson, she is the most beautiful creature I have ever seen. Even if she’s refusing to eat one of the individually-wrapped-and-secured-in-a-tupperware cookies she made simply because the bag holding them fell on my floor during our—ahem—altercation earlier.
“It’s not safe anymore,” she says.
I haven’t opened the tupperware yet, by the way. I’ve taken it out of the bag with my gloved hands, but that’s as close to compromising the food as I’ve gotten. It’s safe to say that these are the cleanest cookies in the world. “Dove…” I croon.
She focuses on the dormant projector screen before us, gleaming white and awaiting a directive.
I figured getting her situated with the food she brought before we dimmed the lights would be the best idea.
Given the struggle she’s putting up now, maybe I was wrong.
Maybe I needed to distract her first then weasel a cookie into her hand before her brain could decide something else was going to kill her.
“It’s fine,” she says. “I don’t need snacks to enjoy a movie.
You can eat them by yourself and die alone. ”
The half-constricted way she says as much suggests that she no longer wishes me dead, which is the most progress we’ve had yet, so I smile.
“Ah, I see.” I pop the lid and remove one wrapped snickerdoodle. “You poisoned them special for me.”
“I should have,” she mutters. “What are we watching?”
“Whatever you’d like.” Rising, I power up the projector, get the mouse to control it, and offer the set up to her. “For you.”
Hesitant, she accepts the mouse and lap desk before looking toward the waking screen behind me. “It’s…a computer?”
“Technically it still would be even if it weren’t hooked up to a tower, but yes.
” I settle in with my cookie, unwrapping it and taking a bite.
Full sweetness meets me, and I allow myself a moment’s delusion of blissful matrimonial thoughts.
I can’t wait for Azalea to be my wife. She’d be a fantastic wife. The best wife, even.
I wonder if there’s any way to easily coerce her into marrying me. I’d like the coercion to be so blatant that there’s still something resembling consent to it. I don’t know. I think it’d be nice if she married me because she wants to, at least a little bit.
But I’m not what anyone would call picky on the matter if an opportunity to arrange our marriage against her will presents itself.
Shortly, fluttery music plays from the surround-sound speakers, and I draw myself out of the delicate cookie bliss, opening my eyes to see what movie she’s picked, but no movie fills the screen.
Instead, something…else does.
“Kaleidoscope Dawn?” I ask.
Smiling—smiling—Azalea clicks Start Game.
I stare at her soft, upturned lips—enraptured—and miss the entire premise of what I believe to be a dating sim.
Her smiling lips move, and I can’t look away when she speaks. “Do you want to play through the true path, or my favorite first?”
I blink, yanking my mind away from the drug that is seeing her smile for the third time, because it’s the first time she’s smiled without thinking of my imminent death. “Sorry,” I murmur. “What, exactly, are we doing?”
“I might be about to torture you.”
Ah, so. She’s smiling in anticipation of my agony. Got it. I still can’t say I’m not a fan of the character development.
She meets my eyes and loses her pretty about-to-torture-my-lover smile. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You were smiling.”
Her brows knit. “Was I?”
“Yes.”
Calculations trickle through her eyes, analyzing the past few minutes while her thoughts wander.
“I think…I thought it’d be funny if you expected me to choose a movie but I picked a dating sim instead.
Also, I bought it on your Steam account.
I was prepared to download Steam and log in to my own account and everything, because I never expected you to have one already.
It was forty dollars. But that’s the price you pay for a fully casted sim.
” She sighs back into her smile, snuggling against the white sheet. “And just look at those graphics.”
I do. I look at them. I look at them, and I find a man in dark attire. Deep violet butterflies whirl around him, adding life to the mostly still image. “Who’s that?” I ask.
“Valkhar Grimveil. Unromanceable. Because the developer hates me specifically.”
My heart trembles, and I believe I’m bearing witness to a different side of Azalea, one I’ve never seen before, maybe one spurred on by everything that’s happened tonight.
She’s delirious with exhaustion and overwhelmed by confusing emotions.
I understand that much. Whether she understands it or not, she’s reaching for a comforting familiar to help regulate her.
She just seems to have forgotten that she’s doing so in front of me.
Taking a moment, I scan Valkhar Grimveil on the screen. The man’s inhuman. Holding a scythe. Covered in ebony armor. There’s an unmistakably evil charm to him. “That’s the character you like?” I ask.
She shrugs. “He’s okay. I just usually like seeing what the villain path offers, so it’s a shame when there isn’t one.
I’m not as extreme as some of his fanbase is, probably because I’m less forgiving of the moments when you go down the wrong path and he kills the female lead. Pretty or not, he’s a monster.”
Her attention cuts toward me, and I get the distinct feeling that statement was pointed.
Holding the ire in her eyes, I finish my cookie. “These are really good, for being poisoned and all.”
“Thank you. It’s all in the ratios.”
“How long do I have left to live?”
She hums and advances the story on screen. “Minutes.”
“I’m grateful I get to spend them with you.”
Her eyes roll. “Pay attention, crow. This is educational. You’re about to witness how real men are supposed to act.”
Oh, am I? I didn’t know I wasn’t a real man. See? This is the kind of invaluable knowledge having a girlfriend brings to light.
Obediently, I enjoy more poisoned floor cookies and educate myself, asking important questions along the way like do I need to teach you sword fighting to be a real man? and do all real men aspire to commit mass genocide?
She assures me the monsters in the game are evil and deserve to die.
I argue that they just seem a little misunderstood.
Minutes tick by into hours, yet I persist despite the several poisoned cookies I’ve consumed. In fact, I’d go so far as to say I thrive.
Azalea is in her element, and it’s beautiful. She’s beautiful. I can’t help myself from wanting this forever. I want long nights together, talking over nonsense while we continue to survive in spite of the horrors surrounding us, forever.
“You keep staring at me instead of paying attention to the game,” she says, somewhere around eleven o’clock.
“You keep smiling,” I murmur, tired but happy.
Punishing me, she frowns. “Have you learned anything?”
“I need to buy you a sword and locate an evil minority. I’m considering mosquitos.”
She sighs, but then she smiles again. Sweet as the cookies I’ve all but singlehandedly devoured in their entirety, she says, “There’s something really, really wrong with you.”
“I know that, dove.”
Her gloved hand lifts off the mouse, and she pushes back the pale strands of her hair, revealing the shell of her ear. Coy, she glances my way out of the corner of her eye. “I don’t think the poison worked.”
“Shame, I’m sure. Maybe you forgot to add it.”
“Maybe.”
“Or maybe they were completely safe all along.”
She mellows, staring at the spare few left. “Maybe.”
Careful and slow, I lift one packaged cookie toward her.
She hesitates.
I say, “I am never going to let anything hurt you.”
“You expect me to believe that when the only thing that has hurt me over the past two years has been—”
“You,” I say, with her.
She freezes, fingers inches from my offering.
Gentle, I murmur, “I’m not the one who lies awake with you all night, beating you up inside.
I’d love to be, but I’m not. I think we both know who has hurt you the most these past two years and before them.
It’s not easy being your own villain.” I set the cookie in her hand.
“It’s more fun to let someone else have a turn. ”
Stillness consumes her before she gingerly unwraps the baked good. Her breath catches, but she forces herself to take a bite anyway.
I say, “I love you.”
“Shut up,” she mumbles around the mouthful.
“Pity. You found the one thing I won’t do.” Brushing my fingers through her hair, I kiss her temple. “One more bite for me.”
“I refuse to do anything for you unless it’s in my work agreement,” she snips.
“Uh-huh.” I kiss again. “Just one more.”
Scowling, she takes a shaking second bite and swallows.
Then I take the rest, hold her gaze, and finish it.
Spoiler alert: we both survive.