Chapter 9
He punished himself not just because he had suffered,
but because he thought that suffering was his fault.
Selene
The next morning came all too quickly.
Matt was as good as his word: He picked me up from the airport, and we drove to his house.
Returning to that place brought back the same familiar feelings: anxiety, awe, and curiosity.
When I went inside, rolling my suitcase along behind me, I breathed in the vanilla smell that spoke to how well-kept the house was. The crystal chandeliers glittered, light bouncing off the silvery marble of the walls and floors and turning it almost golden.
“Miss Selene, it’s so nice to see you again. How are you doing? I heard about your accident.” Anna, the housekeeper, gave me a hug and immediately grabbed my suitcase to carry it upstairs.
“I’m doing well, Miss Anna, thank you.” I smiled at her, and she pressed a tender kiss to my cheek.
Her eyes lingered on my forehead. Even though I’d gotten bangs to cover the scar, it was still there—a constant reminder of what had happened.
Anna was discreet, though, so she didn’t ask me about it.
“Anna, please take Selene to her room and let the kids know she’s here.” My father rested a hand on my shoulder, urging me to follow the older woman up the stairs.
I climbed the enormous marble staircase with bated breath.
I hadn’t heard anything more from Neil after our brief exchange of text messages, so my opportunity to convince him to look at the situation in a new way had come to nothing.
Once again, I found myself thinking how awfully pigheaded and generally exasperating the man was.
It wouldn’t be easy to get him to understand that I wanted more than just his body.
Plus, I had to be careful never to let on that I knew about Kimberly.
If he found out, I’d not only lose all the trust Logan had placed in me, but I also risked alienating Neil entirely.
I needed to wait until Neil was ready to tell me about his past himself.
Maybe he’d never be ready, but a part of me still hoped he would one day decide to confide in me and open himself up without any reticence.
It would be a huge turning point for him, and it would give me the opportunity to chip away at the ice around his soul and maybe even transfer some human warmth to him.
The kind of warmth that had little to do with sex.
The kind that, perhaps, no one else had ever offered him.
Or maybe Neil had always refused to receive it out of a desire to punish himself.
He punished himself not just because he had suffered, but because he thought that the suffering was his fault.
“Thank you, Anna.” I smiled at her as she left me alone in front of the door to my room, where I could wash up and change my clothes after my trip. I watched her go, and then my eyes instinctively slid to the room next door: Neil’s room. His door was open.
With just a few steps, I was standing in front of it with a trembling hand on the doorknob. His bed was made. The sheets were clean and so strongly scented that I could smell them even at a distance.
Everything was in perfect order—impersonal, cold, like a room no one used anymore.
I frowned.
Had he stayed out all night?
He preferred to send his lovers home and never spent the night with them. In fact, in the period right before I left, he’d stopped bringing them into his room at all.
“Look! She’s here!” someone yelled, interrupting my train of thought.
I didn’t even have time to turn around before a superexcited Alyssa threw herself at me, making me sway on my feet.
“She’s been asking me constantly when you’d get here. I might actually be a little jealous.” Logan appeared behind his girlfriend, ruffling his curly hair with an ironic smile.
Alyssa, meanwhile, had wrapped herself around me so tightly that I was having trouble breathing.
“Oh my God! You look amazing!” She grabbed me by the shoulders to get a better look at me. “What did you do to your hair? And that bod! It’s different, but you look so good. Wow!” She hugged me again, and I grinned at Logan, who was rolling his eyes.
“Give it a rest, Alyssa,” he groused, grabbing her by the arm as he approached to scrutinize me more closely. “Though I completely agree with my girlfriend, you’re a knockout.” He gave me an affectionate hug and kissed my cheek.
Logan had always been very brotherly toward me, and I’d never felt uncomfortable or embarrassed with him. After the talk we’d had at the beach house, I felt like the understanding between us had only grown deeper. I was honored that he’d trusted me with something so important.
I wasn’t going to let him down.
After saying our hellos, we went downstairs for lunch, all of us sitting in our customary places from when I’d lived there.
I took a seat next to Chloe and was surprised by how natural it felt to do so.
It made me feel like I’d never left. Apparently, even here in New York, among Matt’s new family, I had carved out a little place for myself.
“Are you still having frequent headaches?” Mia looked at me with concern as she sipped her water. Anna moved around the table, making sure we were all content with our meals, while Logan and Alyssa bickered about something I didn’t understand.
“Yeah. My doctor says it will just take time to fully recover from the trauma I experienced.” I smiled reassuringly at her and glanced around, waiting for Neil to make an appearance.
Where the hell was he?
On one hand, I wanted to push our meeting off for as long as possible. On the other, I had an enormous desire to see him again.
For a fleeting moment, my brain played a trick on me, making me think I could sense his musky scent in the air. I knew it was only a bizarre hallucination, though. A figment of my own imagination.
“Did they prescribe you any medications?” Chloe asked. I snapped out of my musings and turned to look at her.
“Only on an as-needed basis.” I only used the painkillers when my headaches got particularly bad.
“It was an incredible stroke of luck that the hematoma was completely reabsorbed. The brain is one of the most delicate parts of the human body and—” Matt stopped when he heard the front door slam.
We all jumped.
Decisive footfalls told me exactly who had just arrived.
Neil burst into the dining room, and the moment I saw him, I stopped breathing.
He looked furious.
His black sweater only highlighted how his chest was heaving in time with his labored breath.
His light-wash jeans, on the other hand, clung to his stiff, solid legs.
Neil was capable of communicating so much with his body and, as he loomed over the room with every inch of his more than six-foot frame, he radiated anger without ever saying a single word.
We all stopped what we were doing. All eyes were fixed on him, and it was only then that I noticed the purple bruises that punctuated his face around his lower lip and one eyebrow.
They looked like souvenirs from a fistfight.
What had happened to him?
Despite his beaten-up appearance, I felt an untamable yearning inside me, a fire that consumed my skin.
He was beautiful, even like this: angry, exhausted, and all in disarray.
Especially his mind.
In fact, the disarray was mostly in his mind.
He approached us in a few strides, and I felt the urge to flee like a coward because I knew something bad was about to happen.
Neil stopped and went still, just watching us. Then he held up a notebook in one hand.
“Who fucking ripped up my drawings?” His powerful, livid tone made us all flinch.
With a grunt of rage, he ran a hand over his face and through his chestnut hair. He looked confused, pained, and unstable.
Extremely unstable.
“Neil, what are you talking about?” Mia was the first to get up the guts to talk back to him. None of the rest of us could because, just then, Neil seemed capable of anything.
“Who fucking ripped up my goddamned drawings?” He repeated the question with such a frightening anger that it made my blood run cold.
I could see the tension in his body, and so could everyone else.
None of us knew how to handle this. Neil, meanwhile, looked at each of us in turn, then at the table generally, not focused on anything in particular.
It seemed like his brain was somehow unable to process the things his eyes saw.
This whole time, I had kept still, determined not to move a muscle.
“Chloe,” he said. “Was it you?”
His sister clutched my hand under the table, and I looked at her.
She was trembling. Her eyes were huge, and her breath came in pants.
She shook her head slowly, and Neil turned his attention to Logan.
Alyssa had gone white as a sheet next to him while Logan had wrapped a comforting arm around her shoulders.
“Neil, why would any of us rip up your drawings?” Logan slowly got to his feet; every one of his small movements was carefully measured. Neil watched his hands warily.
He looked like a wild animal put on the defensive, ready to tear apart anything that made a false move in his direction.
Logan raised his hands in surrender, a gesture I’d seen him make in the past. He’d done it outside of Blanco to get Neil to throw away a shard of glass that was cutting into his palm.
“You can’t touch my things,” Neil hissed, lowering the arm holding the pad of paper. Logan nodded and moved away from his seat to stand closer to Neil.
“Neil, you’re the only one with access to the pool house right now.
Your drawings have been in there lately.
And none of us would do something like that.
” Logan continued to approach him slowly.
Mia tried not to cry, but she let out a small sob, catching Neil’s attention.
As he looked at her, a cruel expression came over his face, and she looked down, unable to bear the chilling gravity of her son’s stare.