Chapter 1 #3
“No, I don’t think that. But I think you like her a lot, more than anyone else,” he answered with marked certitude.
He was right: I liked Selene, and I liked what we had between the two of us, but none of that meant anything.
Romantic love was something different for me than it was for everyone else.
It had only negative connotations in my mind and I couldn’t associate the feeling with any woman other than Kimberly.
For she was love with a capital L—a diseased, shameless, perverted, filthy, immoral emotion. She had twisted my mind, creating within it an awful, distorted view of a feeling other people said was so pure, and it was a perspective I would have to live with forever.
“It’s for the best that she goes on with her life. The girl is nothing to me,” I told him bluntly, but my brother seemed determined to keep busting my balls.
“Oh yeah?” he asked archly. “In that case, I really hope she finds a guy who deserves her,” he continued in a provoking tone of voice. “A guy who spoils her.”
For a moment, I imagined Selene with some other guy. I wanted to say that the idea had no effect on me, but instead, an unfamiliar, corrosive feeling began to spread from the pit of my stomach up through my chest.
“Knock it off,” I snapped at him, trying to focus on my cigarette. But nothing was banishing the images he had conjured from my mind.
“Someone to kiss her and touch her and whisper sweet nothings in her ear while making her come so hard she’ll forget you ever existed…” He kept going, and that’s when I leaped to my feet. I stubbed out my cigarette angrily and locked eyes with him while he looked strangely amused.
“Fucking stop!” I was practically shouting like a lunatic as I stabbed a finger at him.
“Hmm… Okay. So you don’t care about her at all.
Yes, that’s all very clear.” He wore a cheeky smile as I ran my hands through my hair, lifting off the hood of my sweatshirt.
Logan knew me very well, which meant he knew exactly which buttons to push to make me blow up, to lay me bare, and to get me to talk.
Okay, so admittedly I did maybe care a little bit about the girl. After all, she was still my Tinkerbell, my Neverland, and that wasn’t going to change in just a few hours. But that didn’t mean I was going to go looking for her.
Selene wanted a fairy tale, and I was definitely not the Prince Charming who could make it happen for her.
“You’re just trying to piss me off.” I accused my brother as I paced restlessly in front of him. Logan just watched me carefully, reminding me of Dr. Lively’s annoying way of analyzing me.
“I care about you, and you know that. I just want you to be honest with yourself,” he said. He sounded so serious that I stopped to look at him.
“You were the one who told her that I was unstable and that I was going to use and discard her like I do with all the other women and that she should never get tangled up with someone like me. And now that I’ve actually let her go, suddenly you don’t accept that decision?
” I gave him a mocking smile. “At the very least, you should understand where I’m coming from and fucking support me on this! ”
I was truly furious, the kind of angry that wasn’t going to go away until I’d done a few rounds with the heavy bag.
“I do accept it, but it’s obvious that Selene means something to you.
Maybe she could have been the right person for you?
The person you could give something more to, something other than the physical stuff.
She’s not like Jennifer or the other ones who go to bed with you just because of your looks.
” He shook his head, and we both knew that he was telling the truth.
Those women didn’t want to know anything about me. They weren’t interested in my past, the way that I was, or the things I cared about. They didn’t care about anything other than my physical appearance and my sexual capability.
“I just got done fucking someone else; how could you possibly think that Selene could be ‘the one’ or whatever bullshit you’re talking about?
” I snapped back, continuing undaunted in my quest to deny the evidence that I had already noticed long ago.
Selene had always shown an interest in me, in the person I was and the things I liked—my drawing and reading.
She’d even snuck into my room to poke around in my stuff so she might understand me better.
It wasn’t enough for her to take me sexually.
It wasn’t enough for her to use me the way I let everyone else use me.
She wanted my soul, and she was determined to tear me open and expose it, despite everything I did to protect myself.
I had managed to keep her from doing that, and I had escaped her, but only in part.
Truthfully, I had shared things with Babygirl that I had never wanted to share with a woman. I couldn’t explain why I had chosen to give her those little pieces of me, pieces that transcended a merely physical relationship.
“Do you miss her?” Logan said, completely out of nowhere like it was a normal thing to ask. I stared at him for what felt like endless seconds. There was just one answer on the tip of my tongue—a no—but I couldn’t get it out because I knew that it would be an enormous lie.
Did I miss her?
It hadn’t even been a full day since she left, and, to me, it already felt like an eternity had gone by.
Like when she was gone, I was gone too. Ever since she left, I had felt her presence around me like a lingering perfume.
But I also felt this void, and it was useless trying to fill it because it could only be made whole by slotting in the one perfect piece, and that piece was her.
I had continually rejected her, but I wanted her just as much as if I’d never had her. Or rather, like we had always been together and now, suddenly, they’d taken her away from me.
We were like two speeding cars, chasing each other and then colliding.
We threw off a lot of sparks but left a lot of wreckage behind.
We always took the wrong way; we were good at screwing up and getting hurt.
But we were also unbeatable. Despite everything, we were the most imperfect, beautiful thing in the world.
“No,” I answered steadily and complimented myself internally. I was a very good actor.
Logan gave me an irritated look. Maybe he realized that I was lying, but before he could start lecturing me again, I spotted Matt, who was tugging his coat on in a hurry as he ran anxiously in our direction.
I immediately got to my feet. I could see from the worry and exhaustion on his face that something bad had happened.
“Matt!” I called out, and my brother also turned in his direction, frowning.
My mother’s boyfriend, who had for the last four years been nothing but pleasant and ordinary, looked manic with his unkempt hair, shoddily buttoned shirt, and panting breaths.
“Guys, we need to get to the hospital,” he said. My mother appeared just then, the same shell-shocked look on her face. I began to get truly concerned, a strange foreboding winding up my body like a deadly serpent.
“What happened, Matt?” Logan grabbed his crutches and slowly got up, staring at a visibly distressed Matt and Mia. Then, in a broken voice, Matt spoke.
“It’s Selene. She never made it to the airport. There was an accident; the car went off the road and…” He kept explaining, but I stopped listening to him because the words were just bouncing around inside my head: accident, car, Selene…
I stumbled back a few paces, suddenly catapulted into the deepest part of my nightmares. I felt breath scraping at my lungs, my heart pumping faster and faster, and the familiar surge of adrenaline coursing through every inch of my body.
A bomb had just detonated in my brain and blew it into a thousand pieces. I was incensed, and if anything serious had happened to her, I was going to be insane. And I had no doubts about who was behind it all: Player 2511.
“Go. I’ll stay here with Chloe. I’d just be in the way right now.” Logan gestured to his crutches and pasted on a reassuring smile. I immediately dug the car keys out of my jeans. I followed Matt’s Range Rover to the hospital where Selene had been taken.
I drove like a maniac while guilt began to bubble up in my brain.
If I hadn’t encouraged Babygirl to run away, the accident never would have happened.
If I hadn’t acted the way I did at that fucking Halloween party, she probably would have stayed here with us.
With me. And she would still be the Tinkerbell that the Boy liked so much.
I passed a hand over my face and then put it back on the steering wheel. I was trembling because, for the second time in my adult life, I was afraid.
I was truly afraid that the consequences of the accident would be grave. All at once, anxiety had insinuated itself into every part of me, digging a trench where all my other thoughts were firmly buried.
Is she okay?
Is she alive?
Of course she is.
She has to be.
I caught a glimpse of the enormous hospital complex in the distance, and memories of my brother’s stay in one of those sterile rooms echoed in my mind.
And now that nightmare seemed set to repeat itself.
I pulled over abruptly, not even bothering to park the car correctly. I grabbed the keys and got out, heading for the entrance. My nerves only increased with each step, and I knew I wouldn’t have any peace until I had learned the particulars of Selene’s condition.
I hurried through the automatic doors, followed by Matt and my mother. Once inside, I wrinkled my nose at the strong scent of disinfectant and looked around.
Matt gave me a forced smile, and we checked in at the front desk. A few minutes later, we were finally able to head for Selene’s room.
I was anxious and on edge; my breath caught in my throat at the idea of something really serious happening to her. The idea that I might never see her again.