Chapter XII
XII
EDEN
It’s the first time since her death I’ve had the courage to visit her grave—I feel an inexplicable pull toward her. Maybe it’s because I know that in the midst of this storm, Vivienne would be my only safe space if she were alive.
All I want is somebody to talk to.
Even if that someone is six-foot deep in the cold, wet earth.
But when I make it to Vivienne’s grave, she’s got company.
Lucian.
Suddenly, shame tingles all the way up my spine. I haven’t seen him up close since he broke the window during our Literature class. Even in the dull light under the moonless sky, he looks impossibly handsome. But the closer I get, the rougher he looks.
Apparently the shaggy hair was actually a style.
His hair has grown so long now that it’s slipping past his sounders.
Shadowy strands flap over his face like a curtain, his dark green eyes barely peeking through.
There’s the shadow of a beard on his face, more rings on his fingers than I remember and black nail polish that I’ve never seen before.
He looks like he’s fallen out of a rock band’s tour bus.
I’m ashamed because I look like something that the cat dragged in.
After Silas walked me back to my dorm. I changed my clothes, washed off my makeup and snuck out to visit Vivienne. Now I wish I was still wearing it.
At least I wouldn’t look like how I feel.
My hair is hastily pulled back, still tangled from my trip into the city. I’m in a slinky nightgown, wrapped in the first coat I could find in my closet—a tweed one, that was keeping me warm until seeing Lucian turned me cold. My fuzzy slippers crunch on the damp grass.
I lock eyes with Lucian.
His stare makes me even colder.
“Why are you here?” his voice rumbles, and I feel it in my chest.
I’m exhausted. I look him over—sitting on the damp grass, leaning back on his shoulders. I almost wonder what I look like to him, but then I realize that I don’t really care.
“I’m here to see, Vivienne,” I mutter. “Just like you are, I suppose.”
I take a wide berth, sitting on the opposite side of him. I look down at my nails, but I can feel him staring at me—and I know exactly what he’s looking at.
“Your face—”
I interrupt him, my voice coming out harsher than I intended it.
“I know, Lucian. I know. I tried standing up to him and it got worse. Somehow he figured out that I didn’t spend the night in my room after he proposed to me—I didn’t have an answer about why.
” I gesture to my face. “So this is the result.”
I hear Lucian’s breath catch. “Did you tell him that we…”
“No, but he didn’t believe me anyway. It was my fault, really.” Instinctively, I go to pinch the bridge of my nose, but it’s sensitive to the touch from where he slammed my head into the marble. “I should’ve controlled the conversation better—”
“There’s nothing that you can fucking do that warrants what he does to you, Edie.”
I fall backwards on the grass. Even that hurts, but not as bad. I look up at the sky.
“I can’t help but feel Vivienne pulled you here, then pulled me here. Even in the afterlife she’s orchestrating things,” I say, trying to change the topic.
Lucian is silent for only a heartbeat.
“Didn’t he promise not to hurt you again?” His rage is barely concealed.
I nod to myself. “Silas is not a man of his word,” I say. “I finally came face-to-face with it this weekend.” My eyes start watering. “He doesn’t care about me. I know why I’m marrying him—but I have no idea why he’s marrying me.”
There’s silence.
Tears slide down the sides of my face. I stretch my hand out, putting a hand on the cool stone that bears Vivienne’s name. “And the only two people in the world I can talk to about it are out of my life.”
I choke on the last word, a wail falling from my lips before I even realize what’s happening.
All the tears I didn’t cry this weekend start pouring out.
The ones I wanted to cry when Silas fucked me in the bathroom during dinner, when he choked me until I passed out in the hotel room, and when he forced my head down on him while he drove recklessly back to school.
I cry and cry and cry.
I don’t know how long I’m there for, but when I finally open my eyes—Lucian is peering down at me. The next thing I know, I’m being hoisted into his arms. He leans against Vivienne’s gravestone with me in his lap, my neck in the crook of his shoulder.
A deep breath of him centers me.
“You’ll always have me, Edie,” I feel him whisper. The stubble on his face tickles my cheeks. “I just…” He takes a deep, shuddering sigh. “I care about you too much to just listen. If you involve me in this anymore, I am going to kill him.”
I don’t need to look at his face to know that he’s not joking.
For a moment, that thought comforts me. But then I’m pulled back to reality by the truth of my situation. I need to get married. “In another life, Lucian, I would have chosen you.”
His shoulders shake. “It’s funny you’d say that,” he whispers. “Because I’ve chosen you in this one.” Another heavy breath. “I care about you so much more than you think, Edie.”
I chuckle lightly.
“Right.” My tears are soaking into his sweater.
“You’re always saving me. I don’t even think you know what you’re saying because I am me, and I hate me.
There’s nothing about me to like.” I take a deep breath.
“You’ll find out once you get to know me.
Everyone who knows me ends up hating me eventually. ”
Lucian is silent for a long while—long enough for me to feel his hand around my waist tense, for me to hear the crickets chirping in the night, for me to smell the earthy breeze wafting through the cemetery.
“I hope you don’t take this the wrong way…” he begins. My heart starts hammering in my chest—I can’t think of the last time I didn’t take something the wrong way. But I hold my breath, hoping that Lucian will be the exception. “Do you have BPD?”
He is my exception.
“Is it that obvious?” Something between a sob and a chuckle leaves me.
Lucian’s grip on me tightens. “No, it isn’t.” I feel one of his fingers on my temple. “Well, it’s only obvious at night?”
“I don’t get what you mean.”
“You’re different at night…” his voice trails off, swallowed by a gust of wind. “Like you’re so tired of holding yourself together during the day that your mask slips.”
His words settle on my chest.
I know he’s right, but to admit it would be admitting that I’m doing a terrible job at existing, at living. “I don’t let it define me.”
Lucian adjusts me in his lap, enough for us to make eye contact. His green eyes are as warm as a cup of matcha. What do my eyes look like to him? A muddy brown probably—like a dirt road after rain.
“I don’t think borderline personality disorder works like that, Edie.” His gaze is so intense my stomach flips, and I have to fight the urge to look away. “It’s a part of you, but ignoring it doesn’t help much.”
“You talk like you know.”
“I don’t have it. My mother does.”
My thoughts grind to a halt.
This is the first time I’ve ever spoken about my diagnosis to someone who was willing to listen.
When I had my first mental breakdown and got diagnosed, my mother dismissed it as dramatics—sending me away to a psychiatric hospital where the psychologists and psychiatrists weren’t much better.
They treated me like I was some sort of monster.
Since then, I’ve never spoken about it.
Yet it’s always been there, like a shadow. Wrapping its fingers around my throat, infecting my heart with venom that makes me feel like a double-edged sword. Eleanor has an idea—she’s seen the medication, been on the receiving end of my splits—but I’ve never explicitly told her.
She’s never asked.
Nobody’s ever asked.
I’ve just always been the sensitive child. The one who cries at the drop of a hat, who can’t control her emotions until it’s too late, who is always begging for forgiveness because I’ve never been able to live up to the expectations of those around me.
It’s almost as if Lucian knows that I want to run away. He holds me just a bit tighter, staring at me—forcing me to confront the feelings I try so hard to keep locked away. Tears streak down my face…again.
I’m tired of myself.
“Night time has always been when my episodes are the worst,” I whisper, more to myself than him.
“When I was a kid, my mother used to wake me out of my sleep in the middle of the night to complain about how I’d behaved in the day.
” A shaky breath. “The two times I was sent away, the walls were so thin that at night I could hear all the terrible things the staff would say about us, I could hear how they mistreated the other patients…and they mistreated me too.”
Mistreated is a light word.
Before Silas, I never had bruises—but my soul was cracked and shattered in more places than I could count. Now, what’s on the inside is just finally coming to the surface.
“You talk like you deserve it.”
“I do.”
Lucian’s whole body goes rigid. “My mother was in an abusive relationship as a teenager that wrecked her. Her mother died when she was young, her father was an absolute wanker.” The anger rolls off him like steam after a hot iron is plunged into cold water.
“Her diagnosis was taboo. When she met my father, things didn’t change much at first. But now, she calls him her buoy. ”
“Buoy?”
“He’s always there for her to hold on to when she’s drowning.”
The silence is thick with words unsaid.
I know what he means, he knows what he’s trying to say.
But we’re both too scared to say it.
My heart pounds in my ears, I can feel his pulse where his skin meets mine. There’s electricity in the air. Guilt makes my eyelids heavy when I realize that my heartbeat has dropped lower, settling between my legs.
Thoughts swirl in my head, bringing me back to the one night where I felt truly free and happy. I close my eyes, looking up at him. If I kissed him, I would feel better.
I want to kiss him.
Tilting my head, I try to move closer.
“I’m proud of you for standing up to him,” Lucian mutters, turning his head away. He’s averting my kiss, it’s clear. “But a boy like Silas? He’s not going to just leave you alone.” His eyes grow sharp when they fall to the ring on my finger.
He picks up the hand, the diamond glinting even in the dull light.
“He asked you to be his for the rest of your life, and you said yes.”
It looks more like a shackle than a ring to me. “I already told you, Lucian. I didn’t have a choice. I need to get married or else—”
“You don’t have to do anything, Eden.” He takes a deep breath. “You just need to say no to him. I’ll take care of the rest, I promise.”
There’s something glinting in eyes, something I can’t place, but it’s comforting. Lucian cares for me more than anyone else in my life—but between my family and Silas’? He doesn’t have a chance if I break off this engagement.
“I can’t, Lucian. You know that—”
Before I can realize what’s happening, he sets me down on the damp grass. He rises to his full height, like a dark sentinel. His hair flops over his eyes, his massive body blending into the surroundings like a shadow.
“There’s no such thing as can’t, Eden. You always have a choice.” He rakes a hand through his hair, anger suddenly coloring his features. “Whatever else you have to say,” he says, already turning on his heel. “Say it to Vivienne. She’s always had more patience than I ever did.”
Grass crunches under his boots as he walks away.
Tears bead in the corner of my eyes as I lean against Vivienne’s gravestone.
“I always mess things up.”