Chapter 15
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I have lost my mind.
Zakery
I don’t know where those words came from. She’s just…close. And the air feels…tense. And I… I’ve forgotten myself. What Viktor said Monday night shouldn’t still be tumbling around in my brain today. It’s Wednesday. I never let words cling to me for this long.
Stomach turning over, I stand. “Forget…I just said that. Please.” I really need that cliff or building right about now…haha. Gripping my hair, I clutch my tablet to my chest and mutter, “I don’t even know how to kiss someone. What am I…” My feet move toward the door, fleeing.
I don’t know how.
She’s still recovering from the number Harry did on her.
I’m not in love with her.
Love is…love is deeper, kinder, all-consuming. Love is peace . Not whatever this building anxiety alludes to. Love is resting in the knowledge that Viktor or Lukas or any of my brothers will be there for me if I need them, at a moment’s notice. Love is the compulsion to be there for them in the same capacity.
“Zakery?”
I freeze, one foot out of the dark, dark pit of a room hosting a single ivory angel. Looking back at her, I lose my breath. Which cannot be good for my already struggling brain.
She’s just so… celestial .
I wish I could do her justice. I wish my hands knew ways to give life to the pure fantasy of her . She sits, like a star, amid the darkness of space. Glowing. Twinkling. Enrapturing.
And I, the fool, lost in her gravity, spin aimlessly around in a futile off-kilter orbit, that will send me eventually careening into the licks of her zealous flames.
Oh, what cruel fate.
That I would be Icarus, aflight with melting wings.
Doomed always to fall and never to soar.
Maelin slips off the bed, and my heart clenches. She glides to her craft cabinet, retrieving a measuring tape wound tight in a circle. Lifting it, she looks at me. “I need to measure you. So I can start on your suit.”
Right.
Yes.
Reasonable.
I return myself to the room, where the air must be liquid.
She gathers a pad and pencil. “Are you wearing an undershirt?”
“Do I need to take off my jacket?”
“It would make it easier.”
Very well, then.
Keenly aware of her approach, I put my tablet on the bed then undo the silver buttons from the high neck of my jacket all the way down to my waist. Slipping out, I reveal the oceans of ink on my arms that disappear beneath my tank top to crash over my chest and down both my legs. I’ve long since run out of real estate. Unless I want a face tattoo.
I do not, shockingly, want a face tattoo.
Maelin gasps. “You have tattoos?”
Yeah. A couple.
Smiling, I say, “No? What gives you that crazy idea?”
Without warning, she takes my hand, examines me. “Wow…” She turns over my forearm, looks at the semicolon on my wrist, goes still.
I pull away. I’d really rather not talk about what compelled me to do that one.
She asks, “Is…most of this your art?”
“It’s all my art. I did it myself.”
Her eyes widen.
I give her my back. “See? Couldn’t reach most of this.” Only a few spinning galaxies melded with flower petals fall over my shoulders, and I had to fumble my way through those in the mirror.
“But…” she begins, “aren’t you right handed?”
“Ambidextrous, actually.”
“That’s incredible. Why don’t you ever show any of this? It’s beautiful.”
Being the margin of a homework assignment is not entirely beautiful . And neither is displaying my personal brand of self-harm, I don’t think. My parents had such a strict vision for me and such high expectations. They wanted me to be perfect, my art to be flawless…
But perfection achieved through anything less than love results in little more than an empty chasm—devoid of emotion, opinion, personality . There was a time, before they died, when I didn’t remember how to frown. I’d wake up with a soft smile on my face, and no matter what happened, it remained etched into my features.
They say healing is a journey.
But, man, am I tired of walking uphill.
Containing herself when I refuse to answer her question, Maelin begins measuring, jotting down the numbers, murmuring, “I did think it strange of you to wear all black and long sleeves in the summer.” She drops into a crouch. “It must be hard, hiding them. Would covering them with makeup be too much effort?”
Unbidden heat crawls up my neck. “I’m…not a fan of hiding anything with makeup these days. That’s…something Viktor used to do. To cover the bruises. Whenever our parents would hit us.”
Shaken, her gaze meets mine, hands positioned against my thigh, getting my inseam.
My mind blanks on a swear.
Pity erupts, tangoing with obliviousness. “That’s horrible,” she whispers. “I’m so sorry.”
They were horrible. This, however, is also a little horrible. What’s the difference? I can’t figure it out. My body seems to be breaking right now, too, but I’m not sure I want this to end.
I can’t swallow.
I can’t think.
I don’t understand what’s going on.
She’s beautiful. So what?
I’ve seen beautiful women en masse with far fewer fluttery dresses covering far more ample curves. It’s the curves and the skin that are supposed to turn my brain off like this, right? I… I don’t understand. I don’t understand attraction. Where it comes from, what to do with it.
Assuming this sensation is actually attraction. Right now it feels an awful lot like dread .
Maelin finishes measuring.
She gets off the floor.
I still cannot breathe.
As she returns to her craft cabinet, beaming, I lose the ability to remain on my feet. Carefully, I back myself toward the bed and sink into the plush. Watching her. Entranced. Helpless.
This is Viktor’s fault. He put nasty thoughts in my skull.
A week and days is no time to fall in love with a person. We’ve been on one mock date and one trip full of errands. She’s still terribly timid around me. I can’t have seen who she is at a depth that would matter for real affection to bloom.
My system is failing.
They say you treat a woman you care about the same way you treat your mother.
I despise my mother. When she died, I cried. After years and years of doing nothing but calmly smiling, I cried from joy . I laughed. I hugged Viktor. I repeated thank goodness they’re gone over and over, disregarding entirely what their absence meant for his shoulders.
He pulled the four of us together, sorted our public appearances and the funeral, found Kaleb to invite him back home. He held me in his arms and pleaded forgiveness as he implored me to act, one last time, at the funeral. To not break the illusion of a perfectly sane family now. To not draw that kind of attention to us when we were already so often put on pedestals in the public eye.
Smiling from joy for the first time in my life, I told him not to worry. I’d do anything for my big brother. Because I knew, when he asked something of me, it came from a place of love.
He wanted us to be family, a real, safe family, and I was desperate for the very same thing.
Seven years I’ve spent healing. Crumbling. Plunging ink into my flesh. Learning how to be a human without a default.
But I’m still nowhere close to stable.
I can’t be coming to care about Maelin in a way I’m not trained for.
That’s not fair to her.
Maybe we can both learn to overcome some of our emotional baggage, together?
She did say that. But she can’t possibly understand.
Unless she can?
Who am I, after all, to weigh the effects of abuse or judge the depth with which different kinds scar a person?
Maybe she understands perfectly the way being treated unjustly erodes a soul.
Maybe she would be willing to help me figure this nonsense in my brain out, together ?
Bright as a blinding sun, she smiles at me. “I’m excited.” When I don’t reply, her smile tames; concerns ripples. “Are you…all right?”
“Hm?” I wet my lips, keeled over on my side, hugging my legs. I’m not sure how I got in this position, but I am sure it’s fine . “Yes. Of course. Why? What’s wrong?”
I might, ever so slightly, be rocking in the fetal position. But. That’s normal.
Probably.
“No…particular reason.”
“ Ohh . This?” I clear my throat. “Don’t worry about this.” I am just experiencing feelings , you know. Perfectly normal things to have. As a human, anyway. It’s just. Well. The part where I am not accustomed to feeling them, and all.
“Should I get your brother?” she asks.
“I’m not entirely close with Kaleb. Kyran’s streaming right now. Lukas is on tour. Viktor’s not home.”
For reasons utterly unknown, she assumes this means soothing my meltdown is her problem. Determination ignites in her beautiful eyes as she marches across the room, sits on the bed, and combs her fingers through my hair. “I’m here to listen. I’m not very good at it, but I can try to do more than just talk.”
Excellent. She can try that . I’ll try to breathe while she’s touching me with all this foreign, feminine tenderness.
“Are you panicking because I saw your tattoos?” she asks. “I won’t tell anyone.”
She’s not allowed to tell anyone of importance. Matters of the Bachelor brothers within the confines of Sunset are strictly private, by threat of eviction and the total decimation of one’s professional life. Even without an NDA, she can’t tell the press, and I don’t care if her sister knows about my tattoos. Morana won’t care either.
My eyes close. Her fingers comb and comb.
“Is this because you…asked to kiss me?” she begins, soft. “And then you backpedaled. And tried to leave. But I made you stay?”
Made me? My good lass. Very few people can make me do anything anymore.
Merciless, she continues, “And…then I ignored it. Because I thought you were joking again, but you weren’t joking this time, were you?”
“You know something?” I say, hoarse. “You are a very bad listener.”
She winces, deeply agonized. “I know… I’m…sorry.”
Fighting for air, I push myself up to look at her downcast eyes. “I never said I minded.”
She glances toward me. Still, beautiful, gentle. She whispers, “You didn’t give me a chance to reply, to say whether or not I minded.”
“Minded what?” This woman has got to assume I am operating with approximately two percent of my usual max brain capacity.
Heat turns her cheeks rosy. “If you kissed me.”
And we’re down to zero percent.
Lovely.
My head shakes. “Oh. Um.” Now I’m um- ing? While she’s been somewhat eloquent this afternoon? “I don’t know how to do that.”
“Oh.” Her lashes flit. “Um. Right.”
The ums.
They’re contagious.
The rosiness in her cheeks spreads, blistering. “N-never mind then. I don’t know why I brought it up.”
“Probably because I’m pretty. My family has marvelous genetics. Lukas and Viktor? Those tanks have eight packs . That’s a gene thing. I looked it up because, honestly, what the—” I cuss. And I’m rambling. And I should shut up, right now.
“I don’t think I’m that shallow.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know.”
Silence.
Fricken silence .
Silence and water for air. And red cheeks. And heat boiling in my chest.
“Very good then,” I croak. “I’ll just…” Go stare at the collection of your portraits, and ram my head into the wall. Repeatedly.
Unsteady, I find my feet and banish myself from Maelin’s studio. Despite my best intentions, I don’t give myself brain damage, though. I merely collapse—face first—in my bed, willing the abandon of sleep to take me.
Graciously, it does.