Chapter 15 #2
“I didn’t mean to say a damned thing! It was the spur of the moment, the whole situation.
I didn’t think it through,” she said, clumsily coming to her own defense.
And she was lying. I knew her very well by then, and she was an open book to me.
I knew she was just trying to shield herself from me, to make up for the serious error she’d made.
“So you weren’t about to tell me that you’ve fallen in love with me?
” I asked with a sadistic smile. “Except you clearly would have said just that if I hadn’t stopped you.
And you’re not the kind of person who’d say that to just anyone, Selene.
You’ve got your own sickness, you know. Lovesickness.
But I’m not your cure, and I am not your medicine!
” I explained, my words knife-sharp as I cut carelessly into her heart.
“I was not born for love, Selene. I make simple things complicated and complicated things impossible. That’s just how I am.
It is not my purpose in this life to love anyone.
I don’t even understand this fucking love thing.
Am I making this clear to you or not?” I twisted the tip of my invisible knife deep in the wound I’d already inflicted, feeding off her pain.
There was so much anger in me that I had become a slave to it. I was so disillusioned with life that I’d grown numb.
I was the fruit of this cruel world. I didn’t have a heart because it had been ripped out of me when I was just a kid.
I had nothing to give Selene, whom I both wanted and did not want—so passionately.
Sure, I didn’t want a relationship with her, but I did want to throw her down on that bed and fuck her, to stop up her mouth with my tongue.
I was the king of chaos, or maybe chaos was the king of me. I didn’t know anything anymore.
“It’s very clear to me, but this is not my fault. And you are a lunatic! Up until half an hour ago, you were kissing me, and now you’re yelling at me for no reason!” Her voice dropped lower with each word, and she pressed a hand over her eyes. She was crying but trying to hide it from me.
Selene couldn’t understand me because she didn’t know the truth about me. She didn’t know what Kim told me—what she was always telling me. That she only used me because she loved me and that our relationship was the special kind of love that no one else would understand.
“But there is a reason!” I snapped at her. “I hate that word ‘love.’ I don’t want to hear it, especially not from you,” I said. I knew that Selene wasn’t like Kimberly; I knew that my Babygirl would never violate me like I had been violated in that sick relationship with my babysitter.
If only I had the guts to tell her everything.
“You are nuts!” Selene fought back, finally, staring at me with anger and disappointment. I felt relieved. Maybe if she yelled that I was a bastard who didn’t deserve her—that I was fucked in the head—it would have made everything feel more right again.
“Yeah, that’s right, I am.” I sagged against her desk, defeated by my own admission and rubbed my forehead, which had begun to throb.
Selene sighed heavily, and her shoulders slumped. I looked at her, taking note of how her sweater adhered perfectly to her firm breasts, and I considered just shoving her back on the bed and making her submit to me. We could work this all out without ever “talking.”
“You should stop being so afraid; stop running away from me and closing in on yourself. I might be the only person who—” Again, I refused to let her finish. Selene simply refused to face facts: I was too remote and too troubled to even think about making a life with any woman.
“Enough, goddammit!” I burst out, then put my head in my hands, an intense burst of pain in my head forcing my eyes shut.
Please stop, I thought. Don’t tell me that I need to open myself up to you.
Don’t tell me that you might be the one for me or that you could accept me the way I am because I might actually believe you.
And then I’d end up believing in the other beautiful things too.
You are a beautiful thing, Tinkerbell, much too beautiful.
If I opened my heart to you and you decided to leave or someone took you away from me, I would break.
If I don’t want to crumble to dust, I need to not depend on anyone, least of all you.
You can hurt me; you can break me, and I can’t allow that.
I can’t let you consume me.
I’m already wounded. But if Kimberly was able to demolish me, you would be able to annihilate me.
And I can’t let you do that.
Instead of revealing any of those thoughts to her, however, I kept silent.
“What do you plan to do now?” she asked, and I did not answer. “Was this evening we spent together worthless to you?” Another question I ignored. “Was that kiss meaningless?” Although she clearly hoped I’d answer, I said nothing. “Neil…”
I slowly rubbed my forehead with my thumb and forefinger, trying for a relief that did not come.
“I need to go.” That was all I could give her.
“Again? You’re going to run away again?” she asked, sounding both incredulous and resigned.
I looked up at her then and saw that her eyes were glittering and her lip quivering. I wanted nothing more than to kiss her and end all this heartache, but she kept talking. “Neil, you have to stop hurting me. Is that why you came here to see me? So you could hurt me again?”
No, that wasn’t the reason I’d come. In fact, I had told Logan that I was never going to Detroit and had been firmly convinced it was the truth until my brother said, “If you let someone like Selene go, she won’t come back to you so easily.
” And so I got on the first plane to Detroit to be with my Tinkerbell, which turned out to be an enormous fuck-up.
“You should have been expecting this,” I answered cynically as she sat down on the bed, shoulders drawn in around her.
Her hands sat limp on her thighs, and her auburn hair tumbled over her breasts.
I shook my head, shaking off the idea of consoling her, and headed for the bedroom door.
But then, sudden sobbing made me stop in my tracks.
How many times had I disrespected her? How many times had I let her down?
How long could she last, my fairy, before her wings snapped?
I turned around to see her curled up on the bed.
I sighed and walked over to her, sitting down on the edge of the bed without bothering to ask for permission.
She ignored me while I stared at her little nose with its upward curve.
I liked to put a kiss right there now and again, especially when she wrinkled it up, making one of her faces.
“I don’t want…” I cleared my throat and stroked her hair. “I don’t want you to cry,” I managed finally, but she just shook my hand off and wiped away a tear.
“Leave me alone,” she whispered, staring out into nothingness. Meanwhile, I examined her long hair, the color of bronze with reddish highlights, falling all around her drawn face. Yes, God had really done a good job with her, and her beauty had been my downfall.
“Haven’t you ever wondered what it would be like?
” Her blue eyes penetrated mine as she sighed gently.
Those ocean eyes were making love to me, but my golden ones were fucking her, giving her a clue about how much I wanted her.
I touched her hip, and she flinched, tucking her knees in tighter against her chest.
“You should get some rest,” I said, deflecting the question. Or trying to at least. She turned sulky.
“I asked you a question, and I want an answer.” She sat up and brushed her bangs to one side, revealing her noticeable scar. Despite all the certainty she tried to demonstrate, she couldn’t win against my arrogant disregard.
“What was the question?” I taunted her, and she flushed with anger. She leaned back against her headboard and stretched her legs out in front of her. Her lips pursed in an involuntary pout, and I stared hungrily at her. I could have bitten her all over.
“You’re such a dick,” she said sharply.
“Fairies aren’t supposed to say bad words.” I smirked, looking at her thighs. It was a tremendous effort not to simply tear those jeans off her.
“That’s your problem—you think I’m some kind of magical being, some princess out of a fairy tale, but you’re wrong.
I’m not living in a castle in the air. I also have shitty things in my past; I’ve got a messed-up family, a father I don’t get along with, and this guy who spits in my face and tells me I don’t mean anything to him whenever I try to show him how much he means to me.
” She said it all in one bitter breath. Then she inhaled furiously and kept going.
“If that’s what being a princess means, then I have seriously misunderstood all those fairy tales!
” She shook her head, disillusioned, and clenched her fists.
I couldn’t understand why Selene didn’t just spread those fairy wings and soar away from a no-good devil like me or why she kept impressing me, stunning me. When she was so strong and tenacious, intelligent and gentle, attractive and…
Fucking beautiful.
“I’ve thought many times about what it would be like.”
We’d bounce off each other every moment of the day.
I would be on you and in you every minute.
You would be my angelic adversary, who I’d battle for all my days.
I would bite your sharp tongue, kiss your little pout, stroke your sweet-smelling hair, and lick my way around your every curve.
I would have you open countless fortune cookies in ordinary Detroit restaurants, and we would chase our fortunes together.
I would ask you to kiss me like you loved me a thousand more times but never to say the words “I love you.” Then, I would make you get on your knees before me and make you my soulmate.
I’d push you away a million times and go get you back a million and one.
Yeah, I had the occasional thought about you and me together.