Chapter 15 Selene #6
I didn’t know Scarlett. I didn’t know the Neil of three years before.
I didn’t know what they actually experienced in their relationship.
I didn’t know if she’d become overinvested in something that, right from the start, never involved love.
Neil had made that clear to her, but Scarlett, determined and in love, decided to risk it all.
She’d jumped off that balcony of her own accord, not because Neil forced her, though it was clear to me that he was hardly blameless.
He could have chosen not to hurt her, not to choose others over her, or not to flaunt his most twisted impulses on that vacation. He could have chosen not to use his typical dominating methods, the kind that could make anyone a stranger to themselves.
But the most serious mistake was now mine. I was judging him the way everyone else did.
So how could I expect Neil to open up and tell me everything about himself?
“I’m sorry…” I whispered. I advanced on him slowly and embraced him from behind, resting my cheek against his rigid back.
“I didn’t mean to judge you. I would never do that,” I murmured.
He held still and let me get it all out.
I wept like a child in the depths of despair, making us both shake with my sobs.
After what felt like forever, Neil turned around to wipe the tears from my cheeks.
I looked up at him through wet, clinging eyelashes, and he bent to drop a comforting kiss on the tip of my nose.
“Shh…that’s enough now, Babygirl. You know I don’t know what to do when you start bawling,” he said softly, with a hint of irony that made me smile sadly.
Then he stroked my face with both hands and bent down toward my lips.
I immediately stretched up to seize that kiss, which tasted of bitterness, suffering, and words unspoken.
Neil kissed me softly, as though seeking permission.
The same man who always took whatever he wanted with perfect confidence was now attempting to reassure me in his own way.
It was a delicate kiss, yet so powerful that it unleashed a ferocious storm of feeling between us.
So kiss me now.
Now, when it’s possible.
Now, when it’s our life and our time.
Now, when it’s just the two of us.
Kiss me always.
Build a delirium inside me.
Pass your madness on to me.
Invent a new kind of kiss just for me.
Give me the gift of your fiery passion.
Destroy me and then create me once again.
Hold me and crush me against you.
Put your arms around me and never let go.
I grinned against his mouth.
When I realized that he had no intention of stopping, however, I went back to following the languid movements of his tongue and shut my eyes as the taste of him flooded me.
He tasted good, like man and strength, protection and chaos. Like him.
Just him.
I groaned as he sucked my lips between his playfully. He was trying to soothe the storm inside and restore some harmony between the two of us. Goosebumps rose up uncontrollably all over my skin beneath my clothes, and I trembled against his chest.
“Want to go?” he whispered before pulling back slightly, and I panted like I’d just run a marathon. I gripped his coat and nodded, too overwhelmed to speak.
Neil stared intensely at me before draping his arm around my shoulders and guiding me toward the car with him.
* * *
Half an hour later we were back at the house.
Neither of us said anything in the car.
Neil had gone silent again, and I took the time to reflect on everything that had happened.
Player was a woman, or so we believed, and we had no idea what else she might have in store for us or who her next target would be.
We also still didn’t know her true identity.
Maybe it was Scarlett, or maybe it was someone else.
As for me, I still needed to stay away from anything online because Player might still be trying to monitor or record me.
That threat, however, felt a bit distant compared to the knowledge that, for all I knew, she could be lurking in my basement right now, waiting to hurt me.
If Player really was one of Neil’s former flames, she would see me as a threat and might be acting out against me due to jealousy or some sick obsessive compulsion.
The more I thought about it, the worse my headache became, so I made a concerted effort to clear my mind as we got out of the car and walked up the driveway in silence.
The air was freezing cold, and I paused for a moment to watch my breath condense in the air with each exhalation.
Meanwhile, Neil had lit another cigarette—he’d already smoked three on the drive back—and was staring into the middle distance.
I waited for him to unlock the pool house’s door, wanting nothing more than to shower and rest a little bit. But he just stood there, breathing in the smoke from his Winston and keeping his eyes fixed on me.
“What now?” I asked him. I didn’t like the look on his face one bit. He was uncomfortable and agitated again, almost like my very presence irritated him.
“I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing with you either,” he scowled, still sucking down his nicotine to soothe the turmoil within.
“What are you talking about?” I asked with a frown.
“I…” he said in an uncomfortable murmur.
“I want to be straight with you…” He took another drag, and the cigarette trembled between the fingers of his right hand.
“I’m not in love with you, Selene,” he said softly, his ice-cold eyes boring into me.
There was nothing in those eyes. “But…” He moved closer to me, and with the same hand that held the Winston, he tucked a bit of hair behind my ear.
He tracked the movement with his eyes. I tilted my head back to get a better look at him, lingering on the short scruff that had so often grazed my cheek, giving me goosebumps when he kissed me.
“It was never just sex with you,” he continued.
Those words hit me right in the pit of my stomach; I felt them carve themselves into my heart, the place Neil had wounded most of all.
“Which means…?” I prompted him, staring at his velvet lips clamped around the cigarette’s filter.
“Almost everything I have in this life has been taken from me at one point or another, but there was always one precious thing that I held on to. One thing I guarded jealously. Something I don’t give away to anyone, especially not to women because too many of them are cruel, and I would never give them another weapon to use against me…
” He exhaled his smoke upward for my sake before returning his gaze to me.
“I don’t understand,” I admitted.
“You were the first person—the only person—to ever see all of my soul, and it’ll probably stay that way,” he said softly, putting out the cigarette after one last drag.
I smiled because I heard the encouraging truth beneath his words, but he remained grave, like he still considered it a misstep, giving himself to me.
I moved closer to him and slid my hands underneath his coat to wrap around his warm, sweater-clad waist.
He didn’t pull away; he allowed himself to be touched without complaint.
“So what?” I looked up at him—if I’d been a bit taller, I could have reached his lips and shut him up with a kiss.
“Do you know why I’ve always thought of you as my Neverland?” he asked, tucking both hands into the pockets of his coat as my arms continued to encircle him. I leaned against him fully, and the feeling of his hard body pressing up against mine was thrilling.
“Why?” I answered. He smiled, but then his stare turned cold. Neil was emotionally withdrawing to cope with the things he felt when we were together.
“Because you’re someplace far away…far away from the world that we live in. Pure, free, untainted. You are the most beautiful…refuge I’ve ever had.” He smiled tragically at me. The tone of his voice was so soothing that I relaxed against him, feeling protected.
“That’s a good thing,” I murmured affectionately.
“Not when it’s happening to someone like me. Someone who can only watch the moon rise high in the sky, admiring it there amongst the stars, without ever being able to reach for it…” he stroked my hair, taking a deep breath.
“But I’ll keep on admiring you from down here on the ground.
Your light will make it through the rubble in little slivers, and I’ll still get to see it.
Even if I can’t follow it. When I see that light, I’ll think of you.
It will remind me that you were here, that I once met you and experienced you.
” His knuckles were rough as he stroked my cheek.
“You are just like the moon. The most I could aspire to is to dream of wandering amongst the stars while you remain fixed there, resolute against the darkness… You’re like an untouchable queen, Babygirl.
And I am not your king.” He pressed a kiss to my forehead and another to my lips.
“Not your prince, not your savior, not your man…” he murmured against my mouth, his smoke-scented breath rolling over me.
In his lightless eyes, I saw regret, disillusionment, and broken dreams. I saw loneliness and fear so powerful that I couldn’t fight back against them.
The true monster inside him wasn’t Kimberly but the fallout from her abuse. It had been with him so long that he didn’t even believe it was possible to live without it.
And, in all likelihood, he never would.
What could I do, in that case, to salvage our relationship?
I had to leave it up to chance.
“How about a trade?” I suggested, apropos of nothing, and he frowned.
I slipped a hand into my coat and extracted two hard candies.
One was coconut flavored, the other honey.
I’d picked them up for later snacking at the clinic’s café a few days ago while Neil was talking to John.
“Pick one. Consider it an invitation to pass into my kingdom amongst the stars,” I continued in a tone of reverence that made his lips creep up into an amused smile.
“A candy?” he asked skeptically.
“Yup. Which one do you want?”
Inside my head, I played a silly little game with myself: If he chose the coconut candy, then that would mean that there might be a chance for us, that Neil might agree to continue to walk by the light of the moon, even if he never changed otherwise.
If he chose the honey candy, it would mean that he was going to remain alone, fighting endlessly against the past without ever finding a way forward.
Neil raised his hand to pick a candy, and I closed one eye in anticipation, afraid to see what choice he’d make. My heart raced, and when I saw the one he’d taken, it was as though a swarm of butterflies took flight inside me.
Neil had chosen the coconut candy.
The broad smile that spread across my face made him blink in bewilderment.
“Good job! Excellent choice!” I enthused, closing my fist around the remaining honey candy—the one that symbolized Neil as he was—Kimberly, the wounds left open, the hurt, the shame, everything I wanted to sweep away to give him a second chance.
“What now?” he asked, turning the candy over in his fingers, examining it like a curious child.
“Now you fly with me, Peter Pan,” I said, and then I stole a kiss from his lips.
All I wanted was him and me.
A couple packets of pistachios.
Two candies.
Our mess.
All I wanted was something simple.
No love stories.
No changes.
No Prince Charming.
All I wanted was this undefined “us.”
Any kind of story as long as he was in it with me.
I knew we didn’t have a future together.
I knew that Neil wouldn’t stick around.
That one day he would leave for who knew where…
My common sense screamed it to me constantly.
But I didn’t care what was going to happen in the future.
I wanted our relationship to be meaningful.
To leave a mark on his soul.
And, right then, all I wanted to do was fly…