Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Achilles
KARMA – Dutch Melrose, benny Mayne
Nyx comes out of the shower with only a towel wrapped around her and her long brown hair dripping.
"Thank you for packing me a bag," she says as she comes to the end of the bed and starts to unpack it.
I brought it up while she was finishing in there. I think she needed longer to get the whole scene off her. But I wasn’t worried for one second that she’d be traumatized by this.
She likes when I play with her, and she enjoys when I'm rough or restrain her. But nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, turns her into a good little whore like playing with her fears does.
It's fascinating.
"You say you're selfish." Her voice takes me out of my daydreaming.
I'm sitting on the bed in my boxers, my back resting on the pillows behind me, just watching her, and my imagination was about to start working on what I'm going to do to her next.
"But you put these in the bag." She shows me a pack of gum.
I feel a smile pull at my lips. I love how she always tastes of bubblegum. It's so silly and innocent, and I wonder how anyone over twelve can still enjoy the taste. But weirdly, I like that she likes it.
"Do you think it's for you or for me?" I ask.
"Well, I'm the one who likes them," she explains slowly, like I'm a four-year-old.
"And I'm the one who likes to taste them on your tongue."
She gives me a pointed look, and I shrug. "It'd be stupid of you to ignore the fact that I'm selfish. Na?ve even."
I notice the hurt in her eyes in the way she retreats slightly, but there's nothing wrong with what I said. She just doesn't like the truth.
"Mon trésor," I say. "Why are you getting upset?"
She clears her throat. "I'm not."
I have to bite my lower lip not to smile at her pout.
"You're a good girl, Nyx. You can't help it. I don't understand it, that's for sure, but you shouldn't be hurt by the truth. You're too forgiving, I've told you that before. And yes, it makes you na?ve, so I have to keep reminding you that I'm selfish and not a good person."
"I'm not na?ve," she snaps. "I'm a dreamer.
No one is all good or all bad. And I choose to hang on to every piece of good everyone has in their hearts.
It's what I do. I hope, and I imagine, that even people like Chase, and my dad, and you have a good part within themselves. That one day, you’ll feel safe enough to let that come out when you're with me.
You…you gave up on everything, everyone.
It's sad. So much that you don't even realize that the good in me has got you in a chokehold because you’re jealous of me and the things I can feel.
So, yes, you keep reminding me that you're a bad person, and you keep doing bad things, but you can't even stop yourself when you're good to me. "
I feel my eyebrows crunch. Ouch.
Deciding she's done with this after throwing the realest thing anyone ever has in my face, she keeps looking in the bag.
"Seriously? Where did you find these?"
She shows me the picture of me she had in her old room. The one she didn't tear to pieces.
"I picked it up when I saved your violin from the fire."
"Wow," she snorts. "Obsessed with yourself much?"
"It's yours, baby. And I was on a mission to save your most precious possessions." I wink at her, but her gaze is stuck on the picture. "Why the nostalgic look?"
"I don't know," she mumbles. "Those were such simple times."
I observe as she bites her tongue. Something she tends to do when she's not chewing gum.
"When I loved you from afar."
"You didn't love me," I say seriously. "You were obsessed with the idea of me you'd concocted in your head. You were in love with your imagination."
I stand to make my way to her, and she finally looks at me. Big brown eyes that are still half-filled with fear every time I approach her stare into mine.
I push her fringe out of her eyes with my index finger while grabbing the pack of bubblegum with my other hand.
"It's a painful realization, isn't it?" I ask in a low voice as I unwrap a piece of gum. "That I'm not the artist you thought I was?"
Pressing on her lower lip with my thumb, I caress it, pulling it. The hitch in her breath is more dangerous than a siren's chant. Is that what drove Chase crazy? Is that why he wasn't willing to let her go, because he’d rather see her dead than with someone else?
I get it. And that's why he had to go. There can't be two of us feeling like Nyx belongs to us and no one else.
I take a deep breath as I push the bubblegum into her mouth. Her tongue wraps around my thumb, her eyes blinking up at me before I pull my finger out.
"Tell me it's painful, Nyx. That it broke you to finally see the person you'd idolized your whole life was an egotistical asshole who takes and never gives anything in return. Who enjoys mind-fucking you until you’re putty in my hands."
My hand slides from her cheek to her left ear, my fingers sliding into her silky hair.
"And tell me the worst thing of all," I purr.
I dig farther into her hair, gripping the back of her head and tilting it until her eyes find mine again.
I lower my lips to hers to murmur, "That you love it. That it makes you feel like nothing else ever has before. That the high grips your guts and steals your breath."
Unable to help myself, I nibble at her lower lip, teasing myself with her taste.
"Tell me that your heart is mine, mon trésor."
"I'm a dreamer, Achilles," she repeats in a whisper. "You should try it sometime. If you let yourself dream, you might find that your own heart doesn’t belong to you anymore."
Crashing my lips onto hers, I force my tongue into her mouth and relish the flavor of bubblegum.
Fuck. It tastes good on her. So good that I steal it from her, our tongues playing a war together. I bite her lower lip, and her cry feeds the motherfucker inside me.
I keep her locked in place as I take what I want, and the way her hands come to rest on my chest without pushing tells me she doesn't exactly mind when I take from her. That's her problem, isn't it? She finds the danger exciting.
We break from our kiss, my forehead still resting on hers.
But instead of telling me the things I demanded from her, she says, "What happens when you're done writing your concerto?"
My eyes flutter shut, my voice refusing to answer her.
"What happens when you're done torturing me?"
I can't put that into words.
Nyx already knows what she is to me. She just wants to hear me say it.
She's that one extra cigarette that turns you from a consumer to an addict.
She's the first ray of sunshine through your window after a night full of nightmares.
She's reassurance, beauty, and talent.
She feels like the freedom of chasing after a butterfly. Like the impossible happiness of finding the end of a rainbow. You keep chasing and chasing…and it keeps getting further away. Because she's everything to me, but nothing I deserve.
As she places her palm on my cheek, my heart begs to tear through my chest since hers is a magnet.
"When, Achilles, do you admit that you lost your own game?
You can keep making me do whatever you want just because you know deep down that I like it.
You can keep destroying my life so I'm forced to rely on you.
Ruin my relationship so I'm stuck with you.
And scare me to death to write your masterpiece. Do it all."
She takes a step back, and it's worse than a knife through my chest. God, it's painful when she pulls away from me. Can't she stay in my arms? Always?
"But don't do it under the pretense that I just inspire you.
Admit that you're falling for me. It might do you good to realize you do have a heart.
" She drops something on the bed. Something I know she found in the bag.
"You're not as selfish as you pretend to be.
You care. You just never found someone who made you feel safe enough to express the love you hide deep inside you. "
She picks up some sweatpants and a shirt of mine I'd put in the bag and leaves for the bathroom again. The click of the lock tells me I'm not invited.
My gaze drops to the picture on the bed.
It's of her and an older woman. They're both posing with a violin.
Nyx must be around twelve. I rescued it from her trailer too.
It was right there on her desk, in her open old violin case.
She clearly used to take that picture everywhere with her, and I had no doubt it's of her and her old violin teacher.
A quick internet search afterward told me I was right.
She's the woman who taught her how to play, who believed in her, and since her murder, Nyx lost the only person pushing for her dreams to come true.
Until me.
My phone pings the second she's gone, and I hear hers do the same in the bathroom. It can only mean one thing.
I put on gray sweatpants and a hoodie before looking down at the SFU app notification. I'm about to swipe it away when Peach's picture appears on my screen. I barely have time to pick up and put the phone to my ear when her furious voice pierces my eardrum.
"This is bad, Achilles," she hisses. "Really fucking bad."
"Bad for who?" I ask lazily as I eye the bathroom.
"All of us!" she shouts so loudly, I have to pull the phone away. "Did you see Hermes's post?"