Chapter 4 #2
That’s not what I want for him, not at all.
Of course I want him to be all mine but more than that I want him to be happy, even if that was in someone else’s arms, in their bed, basking in their attention and affection like the glorious thing he is.
I guess that’s how I know this is love, for all the ways I’ve hurt him.
When I want all those things for him instead of him withering away in alone this tinderbox.
I just keep doing this, breaking things.
Breaking pieces off of people I love because I am a broken person, too, broken in ways far more insidious than Noel is.
There is nothing secret about who or how he is; he just owns it.
Hell, he’s actively fixing it. He’s on medication.
Presumably back in therapy, if that’s the case.
Meanwhile I make mistake after mistake and then desperately try to erase it, undo, hit the back button—but I can’t.
And yet I can’t find a way to just live with it, either.
I don’t want to hurt him anymore. I’ve done so much damage already.
But I don’t know how to fix it. This. Us.
I don’t know what the solution is. I only know what I want, and that is Noel, and I am trying so hard to find my way back to him.
Standing here mere inches apart and the gulf between us has never been so wide.
It’s miles. It is light-years. I’m crying out for him and he isn’t hearing me.
I’m screaming at the top of my fucking lungs.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he tells me.
“Like what?”
“All sad and shit, like you feel bad for me. I don’t need your pity.”
I know I shouldn’t touch him, but I do it anyway.
I reach out and tuck a stray lock of Noel’s dark hair behind his ear, my movements slow, deliberate and careful.
Giving him all the opportunity in the world to move away or bat my hand, but he doesn’t.
My fingertips linger on the sensitive spot behind his ear—a place I have kissed so many times before—and he sucks in a soft breath.
I wait for him to snap at me and slap my hand away, tell me to fuck off and fuck myself, but he doesn’t.
He has gone so still suddenly, rigid as if with shock.
His long lashes sweep his cheek; he’s watching the trajectory of my hand as it comes around to cup his face, and his rosy lips part just slightly.
I can hear his soft, tremulous exhale as the pad of my thumb strokes his cheekbone very gently, and he even begins to turn his face into the caress before he catches himself and freezes once more.
Emboldened, my hand goes further south still, past his jaw until it reaches his neck, where I let it lay.
My thumb traces his Adam’s apple and I can feel his pulse flittering like a panicked, trapped thing beneath my palm.
This is all I want, just to touch him, and there’s something restless in me that goes quiet when I do.
Some feral thing that has been pacing the bars of my brain since I left him ceases its prowling, and the rest falls away.
And then his gaze snaps up towards mine and his face goes from soft to hard in an instant. His pupils are blown so wide they swallow all the lovely amber that frames them. “Black,” he says.
I don’t know why it cuts so deep, hearing our old safe word, but it does. Through skin and muscle and sinew until it hits bone.
I drop my hand and he shakes himself, almost like a dog, like he’s casting off my touch and whatever residue it must’ve left behind.
Rakes his hair back from his face and I can see his expression crumpling, and fuck, I wish he would just let me.
“No,” he hisses at me. “No, Luca. You broke my heart.”
“I love you,” I whisper, desperately, helplessly. “I’m still in love with you, Noel.”
“Just go away.”
There is a beat where I consider begging to stay, for him to reconsider.
To let me plead my case in a million different ways, to ask him to let me show him.
But I know him and I know it’s pointless.
He doesn’t want to hear me and he doesn’t want me the way that I want him, not anymore, or at least he won’t let himself and it all amounts to the same thing.
He’s right. I did break his heart.
I look at him for one long, aching and lingering moment, and then I get up and walk to the front door that might as well be gallows. Behind me, Noel says, “Your hair looks like shit, by the way.”
I let myself out without a word.
My old greyhound Amelia greets me at the door with her usual enthusiasm, and I think she must catch Noel’s scent because she sniffs at my hands and clothes for much longer than usual before looking at me with a low whine. “Know how you feel,” I murmur, stroking her ears.
“There you are.” Demi appears in the entryway. “It’s not like you to be gone overnight.” There’s a pointedness to her tone that I probably deserve, but I’m tired, sore from sleeping on a floor and already feeling beat up enough, so I just shrug. She studies my face. “Are you okay?”
“Someone I know had their drink spiked last night,” I say wearily. “So I stayed over with them to make sure they were okay.”
Her eyes widen. “Jesus. Are they? Okay, I mean.”
“Yeah. He’ll be fine.” Probably. I hope. At least Noel has a therapist to talk this out with. I’ve got the strong feeling he won’t tell another soul.
“Did they catch who did it?”
I decide to leave my part out of it all. “Dunno. Hopefully the club has footage.”
“Hopefully.” She leans in, sniffing my shirt. “You need a shower, I think.”
I definitely do. “Did you have fun last night?” I ask over my shoulder as I make my way to the bathroom. “You know, with your coworkers.”
There’s a long enough pause that I stop and turn around to reissue the question in case she didn’t hear me, but she’s standing there with a strange expression on her face, one I can’t quite read. She’s chewing on her lower lip quite ferociously. “Oh, yes,” she says at length. “I sure did.”
I give her a faint smile. “That’s good. I’m glad you’re getting out more now.”
“It’s sort of hard.” She puts a hand on her bump, which has started to pop at six months. “The extra weight doesn’t make bumbling around the city after hours all that enticing.”
“You look fantastic,” I assure her.
“I guess I can’t let you have all the fun.”
She turns to go, but I call out to her again. “Hey, Demi—you know how we sort of agreed, I wouldn’t dye my hair because you can’t…” It was supposed to be a show of solidarity. Seemed like a nice gesture at the time.
She raises an eyebrow. “Just cut off the ends.”
“But I like it longer.”
“It’ll grow back.”
“And I like the color.”
Demi shrugs and turns away from me, disappearing into the kitchen. “Do whatever you want, Luca,” she calls back to me. “You always do.”
I don’t. But maybe I should start.