Chapter 31 #2
Taking a breath, I open them and step out of the car to head to the door.
The house definitely needs some restoration.
The paint on the railing of the porch has flaked off, like the wood has endured some heavy rain and weather in its time.
I wait a little while before I raise my hand to knock, my knuckles hitting the wooden door three times.
After a few seconds, the doorknob turns and it creaks open, revealing the beautiful hazel eyes behind it. As soon as she sees me, the door flies open and she’s in my arms. I walk us both in, carrying her with her legs wrapped tight around me.
“About fucking time,” she whispers through our kiss.
In this moment, I’m convinced that maybe, just maybe, I do have some good left in the karma bank after all. Because it’ll take an insurmountable force to pull me away from her. The universe had already tried, and like fate, it brought us back.
“Sounds like you missed me,” I breathe, inhaling her scent as I walk us up the squeaky timber steps and into the bedroom.
She breaks our kiss, pushing herself out of my hold as she stands there and stares at me.
“Don’t confuse my greeting with how I’m feeling right now,” she says with a hardness in her voice.
Fuck, does she know?
I raise my hands mockingly, taking a lazy step toward her. “My bad. I thought you were happy to see me.”
“Smirk at me one more time, and I’ll leave,” she threatens, and now she’s got all my attention.
“I hope you’re joking because anytime you threaten to leave, something short-circuits inside my head and all the blood rushes through me, convincing me you’d look so much better muzzled and chained so you can’t leave.”
A rosy hue blooms across her nose and cheeks.
“I’m not going to pretend you don’t mean that,” she says, breath hitching as she tips her chin up to look at me as I crowd her.
“Good, because now that I have you, Little Nycto, they’ll need to drain every drop of my blood before they claw you from my corpse.”
She bites her lip like she’s nervous to say whatever she’s thinking.
“Why did you go back in there, Malik?”
This is your chance. Tell her. Tell her now!
“I needed to get that evidence, Isla. Whatever it was in those tubes can help us expose them.”
She scoffs. “The evidence which is now in Police custody!?” She pushes me, clear frustration in her voice, and I want more of it. More of her wrath. Just more of anything she’s willing to give me, even the fucking crumbs of her anger.
When I don’t answer, she does it again, pushing me harder.
“You fucked everything up!”
My brows pull in with disbelief. Is she fucking serious right now?
“Would you rather I hadn’t come to you!? Jesus fucking Christ, Isla, what the fuck is this about? I took the fall because I had no other choice,” I grit out, gripping her face in both hands.
“There’s always a choice,” she whispers through those irresistible red lips.
“Not when it comes to you, there isn’t. It’s the one choice I know how to make—”
“I don’t ever want to be the reason you lose your freedom,” she says, her soft hands now on mine, pulling them away.
I chuckle at her words because when have I ever been free? She’s had me shackled, carrying me within her orbit for thirteen years.
“Why the fuck are you laughing? Is this funny to you!?” She steps back and turns to walk away.
“Baby—”
She cuts me off, whipping around with her finger in my face. “Don’t...call me that.” She crosses her arms. “And while we’re on nicknames, why do you keep calling me Little Nycto?”
I smile, scratching the stubble on my chin. “Because you’re a little nyctophile.”
She waves her hand in the air. “Okay?”
I take a step toward her, circling her before pressing myself against her back. “A nyctophile is someone who finds peace in the night and darkness.”
Her hair is smooth in my hand as I move it to her front, exposing the nape of her neck. I keep looking for reasons, proof or something substantial to verify she is truly her, and if I wasn’t looking hard enough, I’d have missed it.
Again.
But this time, as I stare at the smooth skin on her neck, the faint outline now featherlight on her skin in the same place as my branding…another reason that I should tell her.
She’s mine.
She has been mine.
And she will always be mine.
“You love everything and anything dark, Little Nycto. It’s why you choose to represent people like me. It’s why you crave my touch, rough and passionate. It’s why you’ve always felt like you never fit in…never belonged in the world you were brought up in.”
“You talk as if you’ve known me all my life,” she murmurs.
I wish I had been there through it all, Isla.
But I’m here now.
It’s what I want to say to her, but I hold myself back. Not until I’ve had a proper chance to tell her, to explain everything in detail.
Maybe not even then.
“How are your headaches?” I ask, running my fingers over the thin fabric of her dress, circling her waist and pulling her into me.
She releases a breath, leaning back into my touch. “Tolerable, but,” she whispers, turning in my hold to face me, “it’s not the headaches that keep me up at night anymore.”
I’m transfixed by the sheer exhaustion in her eyes, the pained expression on her face like she’s been battling through her own war without me. I hold her tighter in my arms, searching for the fucking courage to bring up the words and tell her.
“The drug they injected made me forget, and although the littlest glimpses from my past have filtered through, it’s like my mind refuses to remember anymore,” she says, resting her head on my chest. “I just want answers to the holes in my head. It hurts to live with them, day after day…and the nights…they’re even worse. ”
“What will help you remember?” I ask, hoping to do exactly the opposite.
She lifts her gaze to mine. “You.”
I almost believe she can hear the thuds beneath my chest.
“When I’m with you, they come back. Piece by piece. But every time I think I break through that dark cloud, it’s like my body rejects the memory. Like it shuts down completely, forcing a restart to avoid it.”
I clench my teeth, not knowing what to say. Because every single day that passes is another day I’ve kept this secret to myself.
Yes. I’m selfish, and for the first time in my life, I will be because I finally have what I want.
“You know what I’ve come to realise? Living in the past might not be a great use of energy.”
She narrows her eyes. “Says the man who has searched far and wide for his woman.”
Her words launch daggers deep into my chest, but I don’t make it obvious.
“Exactly. I’m speaking from experience.”
She sighs. “Even if I don’t remember, and I don’t get the answers, I want them to see hell.”
The corner of my lip tips up into a smirk. “Now that I can help with.”