Chapter 35 #2
“Then why do I feel as though I have known you my whole life? Why do you consume my every thought? Why can’t I breathe when you are not with me?
How do I always find you, even when I am not looking?
You can’t deny you feel the same, despite your desperate attempts to block it out.
Do not think I’ve missed the way your heartbeat races as soon as I enter the room.
Even you cannot deny the way your body reacts to my touch, as if it’s been missing it for all of eternity.
“Do you wonder why I Shadowwalk away every time we get close? Because your touch has ruined me. With barely a graze, you have touched me so deeply, I will never fit into my own skin again. I want to leave my fingerprints on your soul, messing up the perfectly folded sheets of your control, pressing my palms into your past to pull out your dreams of a future you never dared you could believe in.”
My heart bludgeons my chest with its screams to listen to him, but my mind begs to shut him out. I meet him somewhere in between with a trembling whisper. “You don’t know me.”
He places the glass on the table as he stands up, taking a step closer to me, while I take a step back.
“Then let me.”
He takes another step. I tumble another step back, attempting not to crumple under the weight of his request as he continues.
“Tell me every dreadful thing you have ever done, and let me love you in spite of them. Let me unravel your walls and glimpse inside your velvet soul. Let yourself feel the reckless emotion I know you have tried to hide in a maze of boxes.”
S?las reaches out a hand slowly. Hesitantly.
“We are cosmic constants, you and I. Where you see darkness, I see nothing but light. Let your soul dare to dream and wonder with me, for I have heard it calling to me in the endless pitch of night. I have been listening to it every twilight, as you continue to fail to listen. You are so brave, yet so afraid. My heart sinks as I watch you in all your strength let your fears win, not logic. Despite what I know you tell yourself.”
His eyes pool with longing and sorrow. His hand trying to catch me, but just like water, I keep slipping through his fingers. Always too impossible to hold, forever a glimpse of what can never be.
A warm wetness carves down my cheeks. My soul knows he’s right. If only I was as small as a tear, he could hold me tight. Instead, I’m a jagged glacier, carving up and grinding out anyone who gets close. Even if he could melt me into something soft to hold, I’d drown him in all of me.
Anger bristles along my skin, summoning my invisible dragon-scale armor.
I cannot possibly be the beautiful, wretched thing he sees.
I do not deserve to love nor be loved as greatly as he claims for me.
He couldn’t know me. He’s just a flirt. Yet his words stitch their way between my ribs, slinging golden light around my limping heart in ways that are far beyond flirting now.
Part of me craves to explore the mystery of the male before me, to accept the challenge he lays at my feet.
In a fleeting moment of bravery or stupidity, I shed my invisible armor and let my mental shields slip.
My heart swells, beaming to life, each beat stronger than the last, empowered by the unyielding vows of his words and arctic eyes, who will gladly drown in every melted icy bit of me.
Suddenly, I am wildly unsure and unwaveringly certain of the male standing before me. My body strides a step towards him, and he closes the distance without hesitation.
Gently, he tucks a loose strand of hair behind my ear.
“When I look at you, I see colors I have never seen. The scent of you consumes me. Your touch is an echo of something ancient, trying to remember itself, conjured by the stars themselves. What if my fingertips along your skin are just your borrowed stardust, trying to find their way home?” His smoky voice, like a kiss upon my skin.
The hurricane in my chest begs me to take another step closer while my mind screeches to run.
My gaze collides to meet his. I sink as his stare deepens, caught in the undertow of realizing how badly my soul has longed for someone to look at me the way he does.
To see every piece of me as worthy of love. Broken, jagged bits and all.
Yet that little voice of fear creeps along the edges of my thoughts, slithering its way around my mind. Constricting around my throat, suffocating me with the agony of loss. Fear’s vicious venom courses through my blood, intoxicating me with dread.
What if one day that look on his face changes? What if all my worries come true? What if letting out the darkness inside me to be loved destroys us both? Or worse, consumes only him, and I’m left alone and broken with no one but myself to blame?
Heat slashes through my spiraling terrors, my vision refocusing to reveal S?las a breath away from me. A shuttered breath whooshes from my lungs as he bends down onto his knees before me. Never breaking our tethered gaze as he peers up at me.
The tempest in his eyes matches the one in my chest, darkness ripping through a background of icy blue, speckled with bloodshed.
The depth of which I could easily get lost exploring for the rest of this life, and the next, and every other one after that.
Shadows cascade off his shoulders, spilling down his chest and pooling beneath my feet.
He takes my hand with the softest touch.
I slip beneath the current of his caress.
Drowning. I’ve forgotten how to swim. I flail, but my strength fails to escape his riptide, plunging me into the depths of him.
Wet and all too desperate to let him consume me wholly, caught beneath his feral tide I can never quite resist the pull of.
He tugs my hand, eddying it against his chiseled cheek. His thick lashes flutter shut, sipping and savoring the feeling of my roughness across his velvet skin.
He’s kneeling before me, defenseless, chest cleaved wide open, baring his soul to me. He’s giving me all of him. I cradle his bleeding heart in my hands, unwilling to close myself off from him for good.
My heart eddies into the irresistible tug drawing us together. No longer caring how to swim, unable to recall how to breathe.
I let go. Prepared to drown in everything, felt and unfelt, for him.
“You are the only being I will ever kneel before to worship. To me, you are sacred. And if you let me, I will surrender to you in ways that would make even prophecies weep.”
The thought of fate wriggles the distorted words from the second trial back to life. I step away from his touch, stumbling over thorny threats that slash at my exposed heart.
Never love. Ripping. Never be loved. Gashing. Darkness will consume everything I hold dear. Shredding.
He tugs me back for a second before letting me go. Pure agony mars his face, head bowing in defeat.
My eyes slam shut, unable to bear the sight of him lashed raw by my fear. I turn my back to him. This is too much. We don’t know each other. This is just supposed to be a simple fuck and done. I am not meant for some romantic love story.
“I’ll wait,” he whispers.
I muster the strength to face him, only to find he’s gone once more.
I raise my mental shields, rage coating my skin in invisible dragon armor as I attempt to slash everything that just transpired into manageable chunks to chuck out the mosaic window in my mind.
Yet with each hack, another tidal wave pours out, slamming me with an onslaught of overwhelming emotion I cannot seem to numb away.
I wipe the tears from my face, boiling with how I’ve managed to cry more times around him than ever before in my life. What is he doing to me?
I need to ground myself before I lose all control. Instead of a hot bath, I opt for soaking on the terrace. I lean against the pool wall, head cradled on the edge as I listen to whispering wind through the palm leaves cloaking the border of the water.
Echoes of S?las’ words dance on the breeze. I want to hold the parts of you that you believe are unworthy. I want to press my lips not against your neck, but to the wounds you swore you’d never let anyone love.
To me, you are sacred.
Is that what love is? Loving someone so much, all their broken pieces seem to meld back together into a work of art?
Would I be able to offer him the same vow he’s offering me?
Perhaps he’s just consumed by lust for me like I am for him.
Fuck. Who am I kidding? His words sledge far deeper than physical attraction.
Pummeling through the well-laid walls of my protection, uncovering my most fiercely guarded treasure: my fragile, unbroken bits hidden in a sea of shattered ice.
Speaking to my very soul. What we share is definitely something different.
Something more.
I watch you in all your strength let your fears win, not logic.
I can’t argue with him there. He’s absolutely right. At this point, it’s no longer just logic that keeps me building walls between us, but fear itself.
I hate fear.
Fear is the architect of paralysis.
I will not be paralyzed by my own fear.
I will not be held hostage by it.
So, I rise from the pool. Gold glistens along my skin, beaded kisses dripping down like dew. I thank the Celestials to have the privacy of my room, even if some irrational part wishes he were still here.
I open the starry midnight armoire next to mine; sure enough, inside hang black fighting leathers I’ve seen S?las wear for sparring. The scent of amber and spruce lick up my lungs as I slam the doors shut.
The weight of his words twists with the pressure of failure, constricting like a vice around my heart. My knuckles go white as I fist through the fear, suffocating in the ruin of myself.
I collapse on the heavenly down mattress as chiffon drapes twirl in the morning wind. I watch them dance, weightless and free.
How I long to be like them. Not shackled by the fear of just surviving, but with the grace to learn how to live.
As sleep claims me, I wonder, if—with him—I can finally let myself dare to dream.
Dare to love and be loved. Recklessly wild and untamed.