Chapter 26 Selene #4
My tongue slid into his mouth and sought his desperately.
I could taste the blood filling his mouth and more tears fell down my face.
I didn’t want to cry, but I couldn’t help it.
I wished I had the power to absorb all that physical and mental pain for him.
I tried to tell him that with my eyes, and he seemed to understand because he gave me another kiss, this one innocent and brief.
A kiss of reassurance. A kiss to say for him too it was enough to simply be in my presence to be “okay.” He urged me to get up, and my legs shook as I wrapped my arms around his waist. He was unsteady on his feet, his wrists still bound with ropes, but he was trying not to put too much of his weight on me.
Together, we made our way over to Xavier under the defeated stares of the lunatics who had ambushed us.
“Luke, cut Neil free. Jennifer and Alexia, get Selene out of here,” Xavier ordered, his weapons still pointed at Player and Bryan. Before I knew it, the two girls had pulled me away from Neil while Luke held onto him so he wouldn’t go tumbling to the floor.
“No!” I cried. I couldn’t leave that place without him. I stretched out my arms, trying to grab on to him. His mouth curved into a smile that contained pain as well as bravery and gave me a look that said “everything’s going to be okay.”
“Go, Babygirl. I’ll come back to you, I promise,” he said in a low murmur. I couldn’t quit staring at him, like I might never see him again, like those bastards might start hurting him again. Just thinking about it made more tears spill from my eyes.
“Go, go, hurry up,” Xavier prompted us. Without another word, Jennifer dragged me toward the exit with Alexia following closely behind.
Outside, we were surrounded by darkness. Only the warehouse in front of us produced any sort of light.
We walked a few feet away and stopped in front of Xavier’s Cadillac, parked in a dirt clearing.
Exhausted, I leaned on the hood and tried to catch my breath.
“Police should be here any minute,” Alexia told Jennifer.
It occurred to me then that had the Krew not come in when they did, Ryan would have shot Neil. They may not have had a moral code or much compassion for anyone outside their circle, but they had shown for sure how much they did value and respect Neil.
“Thank you for…for doing what you did.” I turned to face the girls so they could see the gratitude in my face, and they both scowled like I’d said something wrong. Jennifer ran a nervous hand over her braid and gave me a mocking smile.
“We didn’t do it for you, brat. We did it for Neil,” she said haughtily.
“We all know how much you mean to him. There was nothing else we could do,” Alexia added, her expression considerably softer.
I was just about to answer her when the sound of screams from inside the warehouse made me jump.
I assumed the worst and moved to go back inside, but Jennifer automatically stopped me with a hand to my chest.
“Just wait here. It’s probably just Luke and Xavier beating the shit out of someone,” she said in an attempt at reassurance that did nothing to calm me down.
The noises coming from the warehouse, which sounded more like animal growls of rage, made my skin crawl.
Neil was still in there, and I would die if he didn’t come back safe to me.
I stared at the warehouse’s entrance the whole time, fear bubbling up to throttle me.
I began to weep with frustration and mentally counted the minutes that passed way too slowly. But then, at last, I spotted Luke and Xavier making their way toward us with Neil between them. He was exhausted and hurt, his head drooping, and the moment I saw him, my heart began to beat again.
Suddenly, he raised his head and his eyes locked on mine.
In all that chaos, Neil was searching for our chaos.
Bright and colorful, joyous and pure.
Cobbled together from candy and fortune cookies, secret smiles and chills of delight, and long kisses.
Made of us.
“I’m here,” I said to him, and his gaze softened. On his face, I saw the guilt he felt over everything: his past, Ryan’s insane revenge plot, the eager complicity of Bryan and his friends…all the things that had spilled over onto his loved ones. I shook my head; it wasn’t his fault.
He was a victim just like the rest of us.
I began to run toward him; I couldn’t wait a moment longer to have him in my arms.
Meanwhile, I heard the sound of police sirens in the distance.
“It’s really over,” I murmured to myself as I raced toward Neil, and it felt for a moment like the world had been freed from all evil.
Suddenly, a dark silhouette lurched into view behind them.
I slowed involuntarily as my eyes fixed on the blond head of Ryan, who was at that very moment lifting his arm to aim a gun right at the three men.
“Neil!” I screamed and began running again, even faster now with my heart throbbing in my throat.
Xavier frowned, the first to process my warning. He immediately pulled his own gun out of his pants and whirled around to face Ryan.
Everything happened very fast.
Too fast. Two gunshots rang out, making us all tremble. I stopped abruptly and watched as Ryan slowly hit his knees, the gun falling from his limp fingers.
He’d been shot in the abdomen, but his cold eyes looked past Xavier to stare intensely at me. His swollen lips mouthed an almost imperceptible “game over” at me.
What…what was he talking about?
“Neil!” It was Luke’s shout that made me understand that the game was, indeed, over. And we had lost.
I stared at Neil’s body, his wounded face, his eyes still locked on me.
I ran to him just as his legs were giving out and grabbed him around the waist as he sagged against me.
A viscous moisture spread in the place where our bodies were plastered together. I glanced down and saw a red stain growing across the front of his white sweater.
That was where Ryan’s bullet had struck him: right in the chest.
“Neil,” I mumbled as he stared deeply into my eyes, a silent farewell.
His body collapsed, drained of all strength, and slowly, gently, I lowered him to the ground.
I knelt down next to him and cradled his head in my lap.
“Neil…” I said again. He was still there with me, I could tell because he blinked and his eyes roved over my face.
“My love…can you hear me? Stay awake. Talk to me. Do anything, but just please don’t go to sleep.
” I stroked his cheek. He looked dazedly into the darkness of the sky and swallowed weakly.
His breathing was slow, his gaze absent as though searching inwardly for more strength.
But all of his had been swallowed up by the curse that was his life.
There was no one around us then. Just me and Neil, marooned in our Neverland.
I touched his face and his injured mouth, and he groaned in pain. I gave him an apologetic look.
“Neil, you can’t pull any dirty tricks on me now, understand?
” I murmured around the knot in my throat.
“I can’t do this without you. You know that I…
” I stopped myself before I could say “I love you.” Small, simple words that he refused to hear from me because they reminded him of Kim and what she’d done to him.
But I do. I love you. I love you not just for the person that you are but for the person that I become when I am with you.
I wanted to tell him all of it, but I resisted the urge once again because I knew he couldn’t take it.
“Selene…” he said in a soft whisper as I continued stroking his cheek.
Tears began to pour down my cheekbones, the ocean in my eyes draining away with every labored breath he took.
“I know…how you feel. No need to say it.” He understood me; he had always understood me, and he was the only one.
“Ya pihi irakema,” he went on, and my brow furrowed in confusion.
I had no idea what he meant—it sounded like he was speaking another language.
“The…Yanomami people…that’s what they say when…
when…it means, ‘I have been contaminated by your being.’” A coughing fit forced him to stop, and I stroked his hair soothingly, and he gulped before continuing.
“It means…that a part of you is with me forever. It lives and grows inside me,” he managed.
His chest was heaving, but slowly, so slowly, and there was nothing I could to do to stop the terrible thing that was happening to him except cling to the thin hope that a miracle might occur.
Neil’s eyelids drooped, as though he were about to sleep, and I touched him gently, trying to keep him with me.
“Don’t go to sleep. Help is coming, okay?
We’re going to be okay. You’re going to be okay.
” I kept touching his face all over, trying to transmit my love to him through the skin.
His skin was still warm. His heart was still beating.
He was still right there with me, just like the stars watching us from above and the moon that held court over the entire world.
Even the unfair parts. Even the cruel parts.
“I always told you that I never…say I’m sorry, but I guess…
now’s the time to do that. I’m so sorry for…
everything I’ve put you through.” He gave me a weak smile and another groan of pain.
“Don’t cry, Tinkerbell…it’s not over yet.
Remember…” he went on in a small, almost inaudible whisper.
“The planetarium?” My vision was starting to blur as I floated in a sea of misery, trying not to drown.
Salty tears dripped down and fell from my chin.
He lifted his arm and used his index finger to gather them up, collecting them as if to take them with him.
Wherever he decided to go.
“Yes, I remember.” I couldn’t stop crying. The pain was a tearing, wrenching thing, a cord pulled tight around my throat.
I was choking. I was drowning. I was dying.