Chapter 13 #3
And ever since I let Babygirl go, it had gotten worse.
Everything had fallen in on me.
When I was with her, I could see a light far in the distance.
That light gave me a sliver of hope.
Just a little hope that I might catch up to her… One day.
Now I was surrounded by total darkness.
I couldn’t see anything before me.
Just a deep tunnel.
Interminable.
Obscured.
There was nothing for me.
I was drowning.
I was losing.
My soul was dying slowly, and I was doing nothing to save myself.
“You can’t cling to your pride when it comes to your mother, Neil.
Do you understand that? You’re too rigid; you don’t give anyone a second chance.
I have been begging you for years to just let me love you, and you always deny me.
You are not okay, and if you think I’m just going to stand by and watch while you destroy yourself, you are wrong!
” She’d started to cry, but my only reaction was a mocking smile, bitter as poison.
“You don’t need permission to love your son. That was your first mistake.” I looked gravely at her and saw that she was musing on my words. I didn’t waste any time; I took advantage of her distraction and left.
I left her alone in her silent suffering and left the house entirely.
Taking classes again and actually studying was the best thing I’d done in the last year. It was the only way I had of getting my mind off things.
It wasn’t easy, though. My problems had wrapped around me like threads.
Kim, my history, my father’s violence, Scarlett, my relationship with my mother, my pride, my inability to trust, my behavioral issues, and, finally, Selene.
Each thread had dug painfully into my flesh, all except the last one, which I had just severed two weeks before.
If I had been selfish, I would have kept Babygirl with me instead of letting her go. But I didn’t want that grim future for her. I wanted the best for her. Kicking her to the curb like that had been my insane way of protecting her and making her happy.
I had realized a long time ago that I was always going to have to live with my wounds. That I would always feel the pain of them on the inside. I knew that there was no cure for me. No medicine, no escape, no light, and no salvation.
I could only ever bring darkness and evil into Selene’s life.
Sure, Babygirl might have enjoyed my body and the things I gave her in bed. She liked the kisses and touches but even she wasn’t capable of loving someone like me. I was convinced whatever feelings she thought she had were an illusion.
People like me couldn’t be loved.
Soon even Selene would have to realize that love was just a bunch of big talk without any real significance. It was a set of rote actions and pat, empty phrases.
People “loved” without really loving.
Selene had this illusion of love that would never really exist.
Lost in thought, I took the Maserati and drove to campus.
After three hours of classes, though, I felt the need to get away from everything and be by myself.
So I walked out of the lecture hall, bored as hell and desperately needing a smoke.
Walking down the hall, I pretended that everything was fine; I acted like I was my usual self, giving zero fucks.
I avoided the wicked glances from girls who would have given it up to me in the bathroom if I’d asked.
All I had to do was jerk my chin, and they’d be waiting in a stall, but I had no desire to do any of that.
I would have definitively shot down anyone who tried coming on to me.
As I headed for the exit, I took my phone out of my pocket, my thumb automatically scrolling through my contacts until I landed on one name: Tinkerbell.
That was how it always happened.
I wanted to give her a call or a text. I thought about her every moment of the day, but I wasn’t going to do anything to make up for how I’d treated her. I wasn’t going to give in. I wasn’t going to lose my mind over any woman, least of all her.
Firm in my convictions, I made it outside, where I lit up a cigarette.
“Hey, Miller. Aren’t you supposed to be in class?” A familiar female voice caught my attention. Standing before me was the last person I wanted to see—Megan Wayne.
“Aren’t you supposed to be on another campus?” I waved my smoke away and looked her up and down. She was wearing too-tight leather pants and a black T-shirt with a large silver skull printed on it, right over her bountiful tits. The rocker-chic look never got me going, but she looked good in it.
“What? You don’t like my look?” she asked when she noticed my eyes on her body. She arched an eyebrow in challenge.
“Look, Head Case, I’m not in the mood for conversation,” I told her glumly, trying to get her to stop bothering me.
“Always so taciturn, Miller.” She tucked a lock of her black hair behind her ear and looked intently at me. Her ivy-colored eyes were always trying to encroach on me, always trying to look past what I showed everyone else.
“And you’re always a pain in my ass.” I took another drag and looked around at everything but her. Her very presence bothered me.
“Wow. Such courtesy.” Megan gave me a fake-surprised look, and I cut my eyes at her.
I watched her eyes drop to my lips, where I’d stuck my cigarette.
“Makes me wonder how someone like Selene puts up with you for more than ten minutes,” she taunted, not realizing that bringing up Babygirl was a mistake.
I was trying my best not to think about her.
“What does she have to do with anything?” I snapped irritably.
“You two were cute during that game of pool.” She smiled slyly at me, and I decided I needed to nip any ideas she might have had in the bud.
“We’re not together,” I said clearly, shifting my gaze to a nearby gaggle of blonds. I studied them carefully, hoping one might pique my interest, but once again, nothing happened.
I was bored with women, and my body wasn’t reacting to them.
“Yeah, she was quick to say that too.” Megan shrugged before going back on the attack. “Alyssa told me she went back to Detroit after you acted like a total dick to her dad,” she continued, sounding curious, and I stared at her in confusion.
“Don’t you and your sister have shit to do? Besides gossiping about me, I mean,” I said carelessly. Megan always seemed inexplicably up-to-date on what was going on in my life, which annoyed me.
“Logan told her everything, and she told me,” she said casually.
“One of these days I’ll have to tell Logan to shut his trap,” I answered, annoyed. I hated people who tried to stick their nose in my business or analyze me the way Megan did.
“You like Selene,” Head Case said abruptly, sitting down on a low wall nearby. I looked at her as blank as ever, and she gave me a sarcastic smile in return.
“What do you know about that?” I stood up straight and continued staring her down. I wasn’t about to let her get inside my head.
“I could tell by the way you looked at her.”
“Oh, yeah? And how did I look at her?” I brought the cigarette up to my lips, and again her eyes seemed to get caught on my mouth.
“Like you were in the middle of the best dream you’d ever had,” she answered, and my impenetrable affect disappeared. My Winston dangled from my mouth, and I breathed the smoke out my nose, having no response.
“Bullshit,” I managed finally, watching a girl walk past us. Her auburn hair was the first thing I noticed. Her eyes were just a regular shade of blue, though. A color just like any other. There was no sea, no ocean in those eyes.
Nothing like Selene’s.
Still, the girl in question returned my glance avidly in the vain hope of catching my eye.
My awful reputation preceded me—I’d fucked so many women that I couldn’t be bothered by girls looking for exactly what I’d always given them.
But this time, I had no ulterior motive.
There was no lust, no perversion. The only thing I really wanted was to see Selene magically appear in front of me.
To see her cock a hip as she yelled at me to quit smoking so much and stop being such a dick.
I wanted her to pounce on me and give me one of her awkward, unpracticed kisses.
All at once, I had the urge to taste her full lips, which always had a hint of coconut, and her tongue that filled my mouth with sweetness.
“You got all riled up about Luke Parker being there. You can lie to other people, Miller, but never to me.” Megan spoke again, and I mourned the few seconds when she’d been silent. I scrubbed a hand over my face, swearing under my breath.
“Why does it fucking matter to you? What, are you studying me?” I had begun to lose my patience with her nonsense, and she just laughed. Like always, she made light of my dominating nature and wasn’t afraid of me in the slightest. I hated that about her.
“Chill out. I like aggressive dudes only in bed.” She splayed her legs wider, making herself more comfortable on the little wall.
“If I took someone like you to bed, you wouldn’t be walking for a week after. You deserve to get punished for real,” I burst out, thinking about how satisfying it would be to tie her ass up and leave her alone in some hotel for a few days. Maybe then she’d learn not to push me.
“You have all the charm of a caveman. Has anyone ever told you that, Miller?” She bit her lip to keep from bursting out into laughter.
At me. I advanced on her, and Megan didn’t stop laughing, not even when she could clearly see that my control was slipping.
So I pushed my way between her legs and took her by the throat.
“You’re fucking with the wrong person, Head Case.
” I dragged her close until she was just a breath away from my lips.
I stared hard into her eyes and realized that there were little brown spots among the emerald green.
I paused to evaluate them, and while I was, I noted that Megan did not blush, bite her lip, tremble, or appear to fear me at all. She wasn’t like Selene.
“Is this any way to treat the woman who gave you your first real kiss?” She batted her long eyelashes and pretended to pout.
“That was a game,” I answered calmly, using the tone of voice I always adopted when I was trying to talk some woman into bed. In this particular case, however, I had no intention of sleeping with her.
And yet…
“But you liked it,” she whispered, plush lips moving slow. Suddenly, I was launched into the past.
Megan and I were fourteen years old, sitting on the floor at a birthday party.
We were playing a game called “Seven Minutes in Heaven.” We all wrote our names down on slips of paper and put them in a hat.
As fate would have it, Megan and I were picked together, and moments later we found ourselves shut in the birthday boy’s room, alone.
After some initial awkwardness and nerves, we’d kissed and kept kissing for ten minutes, overshooting the limits of the game because neither of us wanted to stop.
It had been the first kiss for both of us since the violence we’d experienced at Ryan’s and Kimberly’s hands.
In fact, up until that moment, neither of us had ever kissed someone without being forced.
It had left both of us nauseous at the idea of putting our lips on someone else’s.
We felt so in sync—and so completely not nauseous—that it surprised both of us.
We’d chalked it up to our similar histories. Megan never needed to be told anything.
She already knew all about me.
“You liked it too,” I answered seductively. I tried not to grip or maneuver her throat too roughly—I didn’t want to actually hurt her, just intimidate her. But Megan seemed perfectly comfortable in spite of my tight hold on her.
“I’ve never forgotten it, actually,” she admitted before giving me a gentle shove backward.
She hopped off the wall, dusting off her pants.
“Call Selene, Miller. Tell her you’re sorry, give her one of your head-spinning kisses, and stop being such a dick.
She doesn’t deserve it.” She smiled at me one last time and walked toward the entrance of the building, swaying her hips confidently.
I shook my head and licked my lips, reflecting on what she’d said.
I wasn’t going to look for Babygirl.
I was just going to keep protecting her…
From myself.