Chapter 8
I blamed it on his eyes.
Selene
I couldn’t stop thinking about Neil.
Ever since I’d gotten back from the shore, I’d been reliving that moment against the door when he touched me, when he’d reawakened my lust with his burning gaze. I recalled his hot breath creeping between my lips, making me crave his mouth.
If he’d tried to kiss me then, I would have let him. Because I wanted him.
This was a new sensation for me—I’d never been so attracted to anyone before.
When Bailey or Janel had talked to me about “chemistry” I’d always thought it didn’t really exist. But that was only because I’d never experienced it for myself.
Now, though, I knew exactly what they were talking about. Even just a brush of his fingertips sent chills down my body.
I blamed it on his eyes and how they shone like oxidized gold and his deep, manly voice, all to avoid thinking about the fact that Neil was becoming a genuine addiction for me.
Something had changed inside me after Logan told me about Kimberly. I couldn’t judge Neil or his behavior (though it was often unacceptable). Instead, I wanted to be on his side. I wanted to be with him and make him understand that love meant total acceptance.
Did I say love?
Yeah, I did.
I didn’t have the first clue what love really was, but it was the only word I could use to describe this calamity. I was confident, though, that something had changed in him as well when it came to me. I’d never seen him so confused.
Usually, Neil always seemed so self-assured, with a casually dominating presence that would have made another man falter.
But he hadn’t been like that on the beach that night.
He’d seemed lost then. Unstable, struggling with all the conflicting emotions trying to burst out of him. I’d seen it in his eyes.
I had learned how to read him a little bit, how to look deeper. Now, even when he refused to talk to me, his actions, his facial expressions, even the different tones of his voice told me how he was feeling.
“You are my beyond.”
I didn’t know exactly how to take a confession like that. He’d said the words angrily, but I had the feeling that, in his own way, he was trying to tell me something important. But what was it that made him run away from me all the time? Why was he so afraid of me?
Sure, Neil wasn’t in love with me—he didn’t even believe in love—but there was a fine thread linking us together.
It was undeniable.
But he was very good at closing himself off to others and keeping all his fears inside so he didn’t have to expose them. Usually, a woman wouldn’t even notice them, but I did because I was the one he had permitted to peek into his soul.
And, ever since then, I could do nothing but wonder about what Kimberly had put him through. How much shame had she inflicted upon him? How many colors had she snuffed out of a child’s life—a child who was never allowed to have a childhood? My heart wept every time I thought about it.
But there was another problem on top of all of that: Mr. Disaster was the son of my dad’s girlfriend. What would happen if Matt and Mia found out about us?
“Hey, earth to Selene.” Janel waved a hand in front of my face as I stared, lost in grim thoughts.
I hadn’t said a word since we walked into our favorite café near my neighborhood.
“You’ve been spacey ever since you got back from your vacation,” Bailey tutted, sitting beside me. I hadn’t told them anything about what had happened.
For some reason, I felt the inexplicable need to protect Neil, to safeguard those moments we had shared in that room and on the beach and to honor Logan’s confidences.
When it came to Neil, I felt like a butterfly.
A little butterfly that, despite having the entire sky through which to roam, always chose to land on one particularly damaged flower because that’s where her heart was.
“She’s right. You’re different; you seem…” Janel paused to suck some orange juice through her straw. “…thoughtful,” she finished.
I moved the spoon around slowly in my coffee and watched the dark liquid, considering.
“What is love to you?” I asked abruptly and looked at both of my friends, who both wore unsettled expressions. They probably weren’t expecting a question like that from me. I was the one, after all, who always tried to dodge that kind of conversation.
“There are so many ways to define love. The only thing I know for sure is that none of us will ever really understand it.” Janel answered first.
“Love is like lightning. You never know when it’s going to strike until it hits you right here.” Bailey touched her chest and smiled as I looked back to my coffee cup. I ran an index finger around the rim as I pondered their answers.
“What do you think love is?” Janel asked me, and I turned my eyes back to her. She was frowning in concentration with her chin balanced on her palm. I’d never seen her look so focused, not even in class.
“For me, love is…” I mumbled awkwardly. I was always embarrassed when I had to talk about my thoughts on such personal subjects, but I was the one who had started this conversation, and talking to my friends could only help me.
“It’s when you see the one you love and your hands start to sweat and your legs get weak and your heart starts beating.
You like everything about him, even the little things.
Even the flaws. Love is when you can see a whole universe in his eyes.
It’s when you can smell his scent even when you’re sitting on a park bench and you look up from your book because it suddenly feels like he’s right there, all around you.
Love is when his face is constantly sneaking into your thoughts.
Love is when he makes himself at home in your head with no intention of ever leaving it and, for the microscopic bit of time, you get to go somewhere else.
Love is when the days pass slower because he’s not there.
When you look for his eyes in other people’s faces, but his color is too special, too rare, so it could never belong to anyone else.
Love is when, for better or for worse, you can let go of all the bitterness and hate.
Love is when you’re willing to shoulder your beloved’s baggage from the past and ease some of the burden as he moves into a better future.
It’s when you accept him unconditionally because you just… love him.”
I opened up and gave voice to everything I was feeling in that moment.
The emotions were so powerful, so intense, that I couldn’t control them.
Talking them out should have felt like a weight off, but instead it did nothing but confirm something I’d been suspecting for a long time: I didn’t just have chemistry with Neil; my feelings for him were strong and inevitable.
“Wow,” Janel whispered as though she’d just witnessed some dazzling spectacle.
“If that’s the Neil Miller effect, I’ve got to meet this guy,” Bailey put in. What neither of them knew, however, was that there were a lot of Neil Miller effects, and most of them weren’t positive.
Like the bonfire, for example, where he’d made me feel two inches tall with his condescension and cutting “jokes” that would have made anyone lose their cool.
We’d gotten into a heated argument and then I’d cried in front of him because I realized that Neil was struggling. He was struggling with himself.
It had taken me too long to really understand, but, now that I did, I couldn’t really get angry at him.
Even if it did make me look like a girl devoid of pride or dignity to outsiders.
I had finally figured out that if I wanted to break through the shadows that surrounded Neil, I couldn’t use rage or distance from him to do it.
We needed to take to the skies together, united against adversity, just like Peter Pan and Tinkerbell.
Quickly, before I could overthink it, I got out my phone and typed a text to him.
I figured out the answer.
That night in the bedroom of the beach house, Neil had asked where I would be if I could be anywhere I wanted, and I had finally, if belatedly, understood what he’d been getting at.
Neil was unusually deep as well as complex and he always hid a part of himself in the things he said.
That was why he never wasted words. I often felt inadequate, unable to keep up with him or immediately intuit his meaning.
I stared uncertainly into the darkened screen of my phone.
Neil might not even reply. On the beach he had rejected the possibility of any sort of relationship between us, after all.
But I knew I wasn’t the only one who felt certain things when we got too close, when our eyes communicated wordlessly in a way others couldn’t understand.
Janel and Bailey had started talking again by then, and I heard Tyler’s name. Apparently Bailey was still obsessed with him. I just kept checking my phone and imagining Neil getting that text and thinking it was from some crazy person or, even worse, from a girl who had a crush on him.
When my phone vibrated against my thigh, I jumped. Then I immediately unlocked the screen to read his text.
And what’s that, Babygirl?
He had responded to me with the nickname that I loved. He usually called me that when he was in a good mood or when he was trying to seduce me. So maybe he wasn’t mad at me? Had his meltdown on the beach simply been a moment of…weakness? Confusion?
Mr. Disaster was a mess of contradictions, and I was getting to be the same way.
A faint yearning made me clench my legs at the memory of all the times I’d given in to lust with him, but the guilt that usually followed was gone.
Gone completely.
Neverland. I would want to be there with you, and I know that you would too.
I smiled slightly because I loved to tease him.
Aren’t you mad about the things I said to you?
There he was—the childish version of Neil who tried every trick he knew to get away from me. But now I knew his game.