Chapter Thirty-one
To insanity, and beyond.
Mars
This is it. This is the end. The end, and I can’t even think clearly. I’m burning up and my heart is racing and everything hurts and I spilled the soup that Ceres went to the store by herself to get me.
Making matters worse, she’s on the floor in front of me, kneeling by that soup to clean it up, and looking up at me as though…as though this isn’t the end at all.
“I hate that you’re sick,” she says.
Because if I weren’t, she’d have no compunction against hitting me square across my face?
“I hate that it’s not Friday.”
Friday…date night? Trampoline time?
“I hate that we’re not already married.”
My panicked heart crashes into my ribs, shattering the bone. “You…still want to marry me?”
“More than ever.”
“But… I’ve lied to you. I’ve kept my identity secret.
I’ve kept massive secrets. I…” I lamely reference the monitors depicting her house, which I watch, constantly .
Just dying for a glimpse…just one glimpse…
of her. Heck. I turned them on today because I’m sick, but desperate to see her.
And now my desperation has become my downfall.
As, truly, I always figured it would.
“I don’t consider omission lying,” she says, matter-of-factly. “People are allowed to have their privacy.”
Yes. Agree. Big agree. Yet, if you will note, my love, that did not stop me from infringing upon yours? A lot. At every available opportunity, if we’re going to be blunt about it.
She looks back at my monitors when I glance at them myself, trying to compile words in my foggy brain to express how correct she is and how wrong I am. Once her attention returns to me, she says, “There are exceptions to the rules. Particularly when you’re dealing with a dark romance girlie.”
I. Flagging. Knew. It.
“So you…don’t hate me?” I ask.
“No. Not even a little bit.”
I swallow, hard, past my sore throat. “And you…aren’t disgusted?”
“I am overflowing with attraction.”
“I’m a ball of insecurities.”
“Relatable.”
“A-and my shoulders…they’re still…modest.”
“Hot. Perfect. Will bite someday.”
I think I’m actually too ill for this conversation. Melting back into bed, I hide from the most angelic woman in the world by tugging my blankets up to my stuffy nose.
Something lights in her eyes, breeding excitement, and she closes in, merciless. “You’re an author .”
“Half an author,” I murmur into my protective blanket.
“And you’re going to be my husband.”
That is true… That is still true. Despite all of this. I wish I were well enough to understand exactly how precious and uncanny that is.
She beams. “You can write me books. And we can act them out.”
Lord have mercy. Of course that’s where her mind goes. My Sara, my Ceres…is absolutely, unequivocally nuts . I pull my blanket over my head and sink into the security of the darkness. “What…fun.”
What blissful torture.
“Mars?”
This is it. This is the moment it clicks in her brain and she says we’re done.
“Yes…my dearest love?” I peek from beneath my comforter at her, expecting fury, retribution, a revelation on how messed up I am.
It does not come.
Heat coasts across her cheeks until the shade matches her beautiful hair and highlights her perfect birthmark.
“I’m sorry for all the nonsense I’ve said about your male lead and if any of it has hurt you personally.
You’re not genre standard. But that’s okay.
Because I like you just the way you are. ”
I can barely swallow.
“I love you, just the way you are.” Her gaze lowers, shy. “Or…perhaps…because of the way you are, I love you.”
I’m not sure if I manage to reach her gracefully, or if I slump onto her in a feverish puddle. One way or another, though, I’m on the floor, kneeling atop a towel full of soup, and pulling her into my arms as my eyes fill with tears. “Ceres…”
“You’re burning up,” she says, tucking her ice-cold fingers under my shirt, against my back.
I swear. “Ceres, please.”
Her frigid lips touch my neck. “You should have planted a camera in my bedroom, to watch me sleep without my knowledge.”
Feeling as though I’m falling apart, I murmur, “This is real life, little goddess, not a story. Don’t encourage deeply-unsettling behavior. Despite all evidence, I maintain that I…am not a creep.”
“I know. You aren’t. I might be. Because it wouldn’t unsettle me at all to learn that you’d put cameras in my house so you could watch me every moment of every day.
” Her fingers coast against my flesh, freezing my skin in their wake.
Yet again, I find myself relieved that this nuts woman is with me instead of with literally anyone who would hear what she’s just said as some kind of permission.
Because, yeah. No.
She asks, “Can I see your notes about me?”
I sigh. “You already have.”
“I want to see the tear stains.”
Oh, of course. A tear cascades down my cheek and soaks into her clothes, proving that they’re not really all that special, but whatever she wants, she should have. Always.
Except when whatever she wants is more concerning than what I can mentally bear to facilitate.
I say, “At my desk. The green notebook in the top drawer.”
Interest piques in her body, but she doesn’t pull away. “Are you going to be all right if I let go? Or are you going to collapse?”
An excellent question. “…collapse.”
She helps me back up into bed and kicks the soup towel into a pile by my door before retrieving my notebook and snuggling up with me, her body an ice pack to torment me in every possible way.
“Ceres,” I say as she opens the book and nestles against my shoulder. “Ceres, I’m still sick…” And she’s very, very close. In my bed. While my head is already a throbbing disaster.
Her eyes widen. “Sorry. Should I let you rest? We can go through this later, and you can show me your favorite saved video clips, and I can make you delete any that I find embarrassing, and—”
My nose wrinkles, and I capture her in my arms. “None of them are embarrassing. They’re… you .”
“I’m a very embarrassing person, don’t you know?
” she says, with a straight face, as she opens my tear-stained notebook about her, which I all but transcribed into her story, because mentally unstable isn’t even the tip of the iceberg.
Gentle, lovingly, she turns the pages, reads the breakdowns and the scribbles and the abandoned devious plots I toyed with as options to get her to love me.
Gasping, she points at a crossed-out word. “Kidnapping?”
I groan.
“Man, missed opportunities.”
My heart can barely handle this. My lips graze her forehead. I try another, feeble, “I’m…sick.”
“I know,” she says, almost delighted. “You’re sick. Twisted. And safe. Everything I’ve ever wanted.”
“I’m so sorry.”
The peace and elation in her expression may haunt me until I die.
“I’m not. I’ve waited my entire life for someone to love me like this, to the point of breaking, with morally-gray desperation and crimson-tinted green flags.
Because, you know something? If I told you to stop?
If I told you to delete everything? What would you do? ”
My eyes close. “Mourn…and obey. The last thing I ever want to do is hurt you. All I’ve ever wanted is to know how to make you happy.”
“Good villain,” she says, closing the notebook to wrap me up in a tangle of my sheets and her arms. “We’re the same kind of crazy, Mars.”
“That excuses none of my sins.”
“I’m sure, and yet who alone has the right to condemn you for these particular ones?”
I mumble into her hair, “You.”
“And what do I want instead? What do I always want from my dark romance leads?”
What indeed… I sigh, and—in my delirium—pin her to my bed. “For me…to be worse.”
Her eyes shine.
“I’d kiss you if I weren’t congested,” I mumble, through the aforementioned congestion.
Glowing, she responds, “And I’d marry you, if it were Flag Day.”
A tentative smile tugs on my mouth until I can’t stop myself from chuckling. “I love you so dearly, Ceres. I cannot even begin to express it.”
“Not even if I get you to write me a dozen books?”
“Not even if I could write you a million.”
“Do you love me to the brink of madness?”
I sigh, and when I can no longer keep my head lifted, I let my blazing forehead settle against her chest, beside her necklace, against her beating heart, and say, “Well beyond.”