Chapter 15 Selene #5
“She jumped from the third story, and she made it into the pool, but she hit her head on impact. And Scarlett’s life was never the same after that.
She was in the hospital for months, relearning how to walk and feed herself.
She tried to come back to school even though her brain still wasn’t right.
Unfortunately, everybody knew by then what she’d done and why she’d done it.
A few assholes even filmed it with their phones, and the video was all over campus.
People were assholes to her, making fun of her for throwing herself off a building for a guy who didn’t even love her.
Scarlett, after all, was supposed to be a good girl.
She was smart and responsible; she would never do something so crazy.
And she wouldn’t have if Neil hadn’t been putting her through emotional torture for so long.
He did everything he could to convince her that he didn’t want her; he showed her the worst parts of himself and told her she ought to get far away from him.
But Scarlett was too deep in love, so Neil had to give her the coup de grace.
A few months after she tried to go back to school, Scarlett vanished without a trace.
Just up and left her friends, her family, and even her dad,” Jennifer finished, shifting her gaze to Neil.
I was frozen, absorbing her words, which struck like lightning bolt after lightning bolt into my soul.
“Do you really believe he won’t do the same to you? Do you think he’s going to change for you? I guess you don’t know him as well as you thought you did,” she needled me with a sardonic smile.
I recoiled when I felt Neil’s hand lightly touch my shoulder. I sucked in a breath and stepped back.
“Don’t touch me,” I demanded, trying to push past him so I could get out of there.
“Selene…” He took me by the forearm and forced me to halt. Even the sorrow I saw in his face wasn’t enough to convince me to stay in that room.
“I begged her not to do it. Not to jump. She told me it was going to be her gesture of love for me, her way of showing me that she’d do anything for me.
She wasn’t in her right mind. I…I…pleaded with her not to do anything stupid, but she was wasted and blind with jealousy and so goddamn angry that she wasn’t listening to me… ” he murmured wretchedly.
His suffering eyes made my knees go weak.
But I reminded myself that those eyes were also cursed and cruel with a dangerous capacity for doing harm.
There was a darkness in them that would never fade.
“It’s burned into my mind, that moment when she stepped up on that railing.
She turned at the last second to look at me before she jumped.
She was crying, and I tried… I tried to stop her, but…
” He hung his head, his grip on me growing more possessive.
“That was another reason I wanted to push you away from me. I didn’t want you to get dragged into my shit.
I know better than anyone that I’ve made so many mistakes, just like I know I’m not the right person for you…
” He looked down at his fingers, tightened around my arm, and slowly released me.
My skin felt burned in the spot where his hand had been, and I automatically massaged the area with my other hand.
“I want to leave.” I raced toward the door, not caring that Jennifer and the rest of the Krew were watching me run away.
I waited impatiently for the elevator, and when the doors opened, I darted inside, only narrowly evading Neil, who was hot on my heels.
It was freezing when I walked out of the building, and I turned down a random sidewalk, fumbling for my phone so I could call a taxi.
The problem was, I didn’t know any numbers for a taxi service, and my new phone deliberately didn’t have any apps, so I couldn’t order a ride either.
“Motherfucker!” I blurted out. It wasn’t the kind of thing I usually said, but I was trying very hard not to cry, and anger seemed like the most effective way to hold back those tears.
“Selene…” After a few interminable moments, I heard Neil’s voice calling out from behind me. I just leaned over the curb, hoping to get lucky.
Now would be the perfect time for a taxi to just happen to be passing by so I could make my escape.
“I want to go back to Detroit,” I told him, still not turning around.
I could hear his heavy breathing, a sure sign he’d had to run to catch up with me.
Then he was grabbing my elbow and spinning me around until our eyes locked.
Perhaps for the first time, I saw in those eyes a genuine fear of losing me.
They were brilliant and so goddamned wounded that I couldn’t help but soften slightly.
“All of that is in the past,” he said. “I…”
“Are you going to hurt me like that the next time you want to push me away?” I asked challengingly, my lip trembling.
Damn, did I want to cry. Neil could sense what I was feeling, and he looked at me like he wanted to pull all the suffering from me and take it on himself.
His voice dwindled into a plea, and the sound of it made me let go of all those tears I’d been holding back.
“You don’t have to be afraid of me, not ever.
Jennifer just wants to win. She’s jealous of you.
You know it, and I know it. Don’t let her win.
” He tried to stroke my cheek, but I jerked away from his touch.
“I hate seeing you cry,” he said in a helpless murmur.
“I can’t look at you the same…” I tilted my face down, tears running down my chin as I tried to wipe them away with the back of my hand.
“Selene, I stripped away everything for you. I bared my body and my soul. You know everything there is to know about me. There are no more secrets. And I’ve always told you the truth.
If I didn’t tell you everything about every time in my life, it was because even I was ashamed of it.
I wanted to protect you from everything.
Even from me…” He seized my face in his hands, and I went rigid.
I was afraid he’d be able to sense the love I felt for him.
Because Neil had worked his way inside me. Even knowing that we’d never be a fairy tale and never get our happily ever after, my heart would always be his.
“You care for me, Tinkerbell. Don’t let things that happened with other people cancel out your feelings for me. Not when I’ve just started to trust you…” He pressed his forehead to mine and gently rubbed the sides of my face with his thumbs.
“I should go…” I said again in low tones, fighting with myself.
“You don’t want to go. I know you don’t. I’ll give you time to process all of this, but please just stay here with me,” he whispered against my lips.
“I don’t know. Every time I turn around, I’m finding out something new about you, Neil, and…” And my heart was shattered into a thousand pieces. I could see them, falling at my feet once again. I was being ground down by him, by the mysteries that surrounded him and by all the things I didn’t know.
“You don’t fucking get it!” There it was, that thing he did best. He pulled away from me and looked at me with so much disdain, like I was no longer Selene.
Like I was just an enemy to him. “You grew up in a glass bubble, in a normal family with normal parents. You hate your father so much just because he stepped out on your mom, just because he was away at work a lot… While I was raped and subjugated and humiliated by a psychopath years older than me. William beat me basically from birth because he thought I was a bad seed, no son of his. He never wanted me, and he took out all his rage and disgust on me. That tattoo you like so much,” he gestured to his right arm.
“I got it to cover the scars from where he would use me as a human ashtray. I’ve got the same ones on my left arm; you’ve seen them.
I left those uncovered because I need to see them and remember what kind of man raised me.
I told you right from the start that I’m not like other people, that I’ve got issues I’m working on, and that I’m not perfect.
And I did that because I wasn’t just fucking you, Selene.
I told you about myself, I confided in you, and I trusted you implicitly.
All of my wrongs are a direct result of the things that happened to me.
It’s sheer luck that I’m not locked up in fucking prison or hooked on drugs because people like me, people with the kind of history I’ve got?
They don’t get to live real lives. You have no idea how many times I’ve thought about ending it all for good.
You have no idea how many times I’ve hoped that goddamned stalker would just take me out already; then we’d both have fulfilled our purposes!
” He vented all the sickness that was inside him, and he did it with the rage of a man who had been suppressing his hurt for far too long and had reached the limits of what a man could endure.
Neil wobbled, almost collapsing in on himself, and he looked so tired. Tired of everything.
His strength was dwindling; he’d been fighting his whole life to no avail.
“If you’re so sure, just do it. Go away and disappear.
I won’t chase you—I don’t chase anyone, Selene.
You know that better than anyone. I won’t even accept any change of heart from you.
God may forgive, but I don’t…remember that.
” He turned his back to me, rubbing his temples.
His right hand had started to shake, and I realized how on edge he actually was.
After everything I’d gone through for him, I couldn’t allow something that happened in his past to scare me away. I couldn’t let fear destroy me, not after Neil had actually opened all of himself to me.