Chapter 27 Selene
“How impolite, this sun.
How unjust, this life.”
Selene
I strolled down the tree-lined street.
The sun delicately caressed my skin.
The air was brisk and sweet-smelling all around me.
Maybe I should have gotten a bouquet of flowers for the occasion? But no, Neil wouldn’t have liked that.
That kind of mushy stuff wasn’t for him; he would always rather have a pack of pistachios.
“Hi, Mr. Disaster…” I knelt down. “How are you? See, I came again to see you today. Did you think I’d forgotten about you? How could I?” I smiled at him.
I wondered if he could see or hear me. I liked to think that he could, that there was some sort of other world where souls had a different kind of life.
“I took my final exam today. Pretty soon, I’ll be graduating myself, and you’ll be right there with me, won’t you?” I stroked the marble tombstone that bore his picture. It was cold to the touch.
“I brought you some pistachios…” I showed him the package with a sorrowful smile before resting it on the warm ground in front of him, amongst the fresh flowers.
I traced the image of him with my fingertips.
My eyes ached and my heart hurt; a tear streaked slowly down my face to settle on my lips, where I could still taste him.
It was a taste I guarded jealously because it was the most precious one in all the world.
“I still hear you whispering my name at night when I’m trying to sleep.
At school, in class, I feel your hands touching me.
I still feel your kisses on my body, your honey-colored eyes all over me.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. You were hurt so much in life, and you deserved to have a second chance.
But life is cruel, you know. It takes from those who don’t have anything to give.
And sometimes it gives to those who don’t deserve it.
” I imagined that I was touching him as I knelt on the earth while the sun eavesdropped on our conversation from high up in the sky.
How impolite, this sun.
How unjust, this life.
“Who would have guessed that you with all your chaos would be the one to make your way inside my heart? You’re a complete weirdo.
A total disaster. Way too complicated and unmanageable.
And I miss you like I’d miss a limb. I miss watching you draw in your notebook with a cigarette between your lips.
I miss your intellect that you tried to hide because you didn’t want the world to see how deep you were, how different from your outward appearance.
I miss being able to nag you about smoking too much.
I miss your dirty jokes that made me turn bright red and how you’d kiss the tip of my nose. It was so unexpected and so sweet.
“Sometimes, I give my mother a kiss like that, and I think of you. Remember when you called her Ms. Calvin? You were always terrible with names.” I smiled wistfully and wiped my cheek with the back of my hand.
“There are so many beautiful memories of you that I treasure. Every one of them is a part of me. I had never needed grand declarations. All you had to do was look at me and I felt you with me. Your golden eyes could crumble and disintegrate me like a powerful wave crashing down a castle made of sand.” I smiled.
I smiled as I clung to that part of my life—the story of us that I would never forget.
“Ya pihi irakema… You contaminated me too, Mr. Disaster, and there’s no cure for this disease, you know.
There’s no…” my voice broke, and I was incapable of continuing to speak through my sobs.
It wasn’t a life anymore, what I had. It was a prison sentence.
“You asked me to make all those promises to you…and I never said I would, but you left anyway. And that was unfair…that was so incredibly unfair of you.” I wiped my nose with the back of my hand, tears blurring my vision.
I struggled for air, my heart aching. I felt like I was being torn in two.
I was a cracked and broken pearl who had lost all of my luster because what was a pearl without its shell?
Without Neil, there was no me…
* * *
A hand was stroking my hair tenderly.
I opened my eyes slowly and gave a little yawn. The first thing I saw was the colorless wall in front of me, followed by the machine that monitored vital signs and finally the bed where I’d been resting my head and arms after falling asleep in an extremely uncomfortable chair.
“Was it the same nightmare again?”
I heard a voice—warm, deep, his—and my eyes immediately moved toward him. I kept my eyes opened wide just in case this Neil was also a dream. I didn’t want to blink and have him disappear.
“Neil…” I said softly.
If I’d thought I was cried out, I was sorely mistaken. Just seeing him safe and sound was enough to churn up all the things I’d felt when Ryan shot him.
Neil could see it, the misery and the joy, and he just kept on stroking my hair.
His face was beautiful, even with the now-fading bruises and healing cuts all over it. He still had that shadowy aura that had drawn me in from the very first moment I met him. His plush mouth curved into a fond smile, and his bright eyes enveloped me.
He had a white bandage wrapped around his chest. There was an assortment of pillows behind him that allowed him to sit up comfortably, and a blanket lay over his hips.
“Come here,” Neil said, raising his left arm and inviting me to nestle underneath it.
“It was a really bad one. You were dead, and I was talking to you, but it wasn’t really you—I mean, it was you, but you were…
” I muttered, sniffling as I clambered onto the bed next to him.
I embraced him and rested my head on his chest, on the area that wasn’t wounded.
The place where I could feel his heart beating, strong and sure.
“Relax, Babygirl.”
The surgery had been tricky, and the area was still painful, despite the doctor’s assurances that he would be able to remove the stitches soon.
I grazed the warm, bare skin of his neck with my nose and breathed in his smell, clean and all-encompassing just like it always was.
I didn’t stop crying, and Neil continued to hold me gently, like a baby.
His Babygirl.
“I’m right here, and I’m still alive, Selene.
Shake off the bad dreams; you know I hate to see you cry,” he chided me with just a hint of severity.
His voice was like a pair of hands, stroking my most secret places, touching the depths of my soul.
I reddened at my own thoughts: I wanted him.
For better or worse, I wanted all of him: his strengths and his weaknesses, the finest parts of him, and the most awful.
I accepted him completely, and that, for me, was love.
“I know. But it was traumatic, going through all of that. Watching your eyes close and your breathing stop…”
Neil pressed his fingers to his lips to silence me. His skin was warm and soft. I pressed a chaste kiss to them, then another and another. I moved down his smooth palm worshipfully. I tried to imbue each kiss with all the love I had for him, because it was there and it was strong.
Even stronger than before.
“Let’s talk about something else. I was just thinking that this is one of the few times you’ve been in bed with me fully clothed, and that’s terrible.
” He gave me a tiny smile that told me exactly what he was thinking about.
Even after having gone through such a tragic situation, Neil could still find it in himself to be cheeky.
I shook my head and gave him an amused look.
“Now is not the time to be thinking about…” He moved his hand over my breast with his usual proprietary ease and gave it a squeeze through my sweater. I gasped.
“Fucking?” he offered in a low whisper, and I couldn’t help but stare at his chest. My Disaster was half-naked, his torso almost completely on display and all the dizzying angles of his upper body exposed.
He didn’t even need to get undressed.
It was almost like we were already making love.
My body went heavy with longing because, in a very real way, Neil was already inside me. He stared into me as I stared into him. I was burning up not just with embarrassment at his total lack of shame but also from the lusty, carnal feelings coursing through me.
“I was going to say ‘that kind of thing.’ Now is not the time to be thinking about that kind of thing,” I said throatily.
“But I’m glad to see your pervy instincts are also fully recovered; I was starting to worry,” I teased as I gently caressed his stomach.
I loved to touch him, and I knew he loved my touch as well.
I knew exactly what kind of attention Neil required.
And, indeed, his breathing became unsteady, and I could practically feel the sexual tension pulsing in his swollen veins.
“Move that hand a few inches lower, Tinkerbell, and we’ll be in business. There’s someone down there who could really use a little touch from you…” he murmured into my ear. His breath was warm against my cheek, and I shivered. Memories of our intimate times together stole the air from my lungs.
It had been more than seven months since we’d last been together. Long months in which I had no physical comfort or relief because I was too busy torturing myself over Neil. He, on the other hand, had spent that time sleeping with an unknown number of women, Megan included.
It still hurt whenever I thought about them together.
What hurt even more was the uncertainty: What was going to become of us? What paths would our lives follow?
Neil had been different when he came out of surgery.
He still had cheeky little comments for me, and he’d touch me like he owned me, but he never said a thing about us having any kind of relationship. He hadn’t even kissed me.
“Sorry, lovebirds, are we interrupting something?” Logan poked his head into the room, followed by Janel and Chloe. I automatically climbed out of the bed and stood up, smoothing my hair and sweater nervously.