Chapter 14 #3
“I guess you could call it that…” I sigh at my naivety.
“Our bond may have officially started that night, the deal may have cemented it, but he’d been laying the groundwork for it all along.
” My anger rises at the memories. Inch by fucking inch, he pushed himself into my life.
Night after night, he wound our connection tighter and tighter.
Pulling me closer and closer, and he never stopped.
“Now, there’s barely any separation between me and him.
” My eyes sting as I mourn the girl I was.
The one who wanted someone to see her, but not like that.
The one who had found happiness in a boy who loved every single thing about her, who’d become her home, only for it to become haunted by a jealous and possessive spirit who wanted her however he could have her—even miserably.
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this when it started?” Thorne asks.
“What? Tell you that I was so desperate for male validation that I let a dead man give it to me? So unfamiliar with feeling desired that I didn’t know the difference between genuine affection and manipulation.
” My insides crawl with embarrassment. “What awkward, insecure girl doesn’t want to hear she’s beautiful.
I allowed him to linger around me, to dole out his compliments and touches because I was lonely and self-conscious.
I wanted to feel special.” I scoff at the foolishness.
“And it turns out, I wasn’t even special.
I was just like all the other young girls who eat up the attention of older men who spot their vulnerabilities from a mile away.
The ones who get exploited and used up, hollowed out, and spend the rest of their lives trying to replace what was stolen from them.
But I handed those pieces of myself over to him.
There’s no getting them back. Deal or no deal, I was always damned, and it’s my fault. ”
“You were a victim, Sol. You are.”
“What are you not understanding? I allowed him to prey on me. I welcomed it. And then I led him to you. If I’d never fed him exactly what he was looking for from the palm of my hand, if I’d never let him get such a foothold in our lives, you never would’ve had to go through all of this.”
“You can’t convince me that you deserved it.
That you deserve any of this. He’s a predator, period.
He manipulated you, Sol. That’s not your fault.
He exploited your big heart, your love for me, to hurt you.
I wouldn’t change a thing if it meant having you in my life.
The only thing I’d change is ever letting you walk out the door. ”
“I didn’t want to leave, but I had to. Don’t you know that?
It was the only way to protect you.” Taking a deep breath, I attempt to steady myself as the echoes of that bleak time awaken inside me.
“He wasn’t willing to wait for me to die, not with our love on full display in front of him.
It was driving him mad with jealousy—it was driving me mad.
” Tapping my forehead, I try to calm some of the chaos that’s been unleashed as I go back down this path, but even stimming doesn’t help as I feel myself becoming untethered from this moment and thrust back into that time where I felt I was being ripped in two.
“He was always there. Always whispering in my ear. Always plotting, always scheming.”
“Sol…” He reaches for me, but I shake my head and tuck my arms across my waist. I could beg him to just let me finish, but instead, I rush the words out, hoping to get ahead of whatever questions or reassurances he might try to interrupt with.
“It became too much, all the poison he was feeding me, all the threats he was more than ready to act on. He suffocated me to the point that I had no choice but to either crumble under the weight or do the only thing I could think of that would save at least one of us.”
“And that was leaving?”
“Yes.” The singular word is as desperate as I felt that night I snuck away.
“I wish you’d told me all of this before you ran.”
“I didn’t run.” The defensiveness in my voice is brittle.
“Didn’t you? You flew right away, Nightingale.”
“Like I said, there was no other way.”
“Wasn’t there?” A few beats pass as he chews the inside of his cheek, heavily debating what he wants to say. “Why didn’t you tell me?” His own frustration matches mine, cutting recklessly into the tension mounting between us.
In that grating static, there’s a truth that I haven’t been ready to admit and Hawthorne isn’t ready to accept, and yet it grows louder and louder as we go around and around. Any moment, it’ll break free and drown everything else out.
“Why didn’t you notice?” I explode under the weight I’ve placed on myself for so many years. Putrid tears I’ve been holding back burn acid-like as they finally break free. “Why couldn’t you see what he was doing to me?”
Hawthorne staggers back. There’s the fine torment of betrayal and failure painted in the pained expression on his face. “I didnt—”
“I know,” I can’t help but say, because I know that he wouldn’t have let me suffer alone if he knew of the torture I was enduring all that time. But I can’t help how the question is always there in the back of my mind.
“I should have known, but I didn’t.” His confusion matches mine. “How did I not know?”
I shrug because it’s all I have. I’ve asked myself a million times.
I have no answer. In my most tormented moments, caught up in the fumes of Ivan’s disdain for him, I told myself that maybe he did and he didn’t care.
But that reasoning never stuck, because of course he did.
I know without a doubt that he would have intervened if he knew.
But why didn’t he know? How is that possible when he straddles the line between the living and the dead?
“I’m so fucking sorry.” He drops his head in his hands, shame darkening his usually bright aura. “Fuck. How could I have missed it?”
“I don’t understand it either.”
“That fucking coward.” Anger darkens his tone, but it’s not directed at me. “I don’t know how he did it, but he must have hidden himself from me or something…”
“But don’t you just see everything. Living and dead? Isn’t it just all around you?”
“Technically, yes. But also no. Could I theoretically do that, yeah, but it’d be hella overwhelming.
And my willingness to see is only part of the equation.
Whether we see the dead has a lot to do with their own intentions.
And someone who’s been dead as long as Ivan, he has more control than I even fully understand. ”
“I didn’t realize it was so complicated,” I admit, shocked that I’m the one who’s learning from him now.
I might have had a head start, but his submersion into this world, by no choice of his own, has reversed our roles.
“Regardless of how it works, that wasn’t fair of me.
None of the blame is on you. I shouldn’t have said that, it’s just something that used to creep in the back of my mind when I was feeling helpless. ”
“As if I wasn’t already thinking it,” he sighs.
“The how and why doesn’t really matter. What happened is in the past.”
“Like hell it doesn’t matter. Before I end that piece of shit, I fully intend to extort whatever little value he has to offer.”
“Good luck with that.” I don’t mean it condescendingly, but I know Ivan. I would consider myself the most stubborn person I know, and even he has me beat. And worse, he’s spiteful to the core.
“You keep underestimating me, Sol. I suppose I can’t blame you.
But once you meet the rest of Veiled Coast, once you see what we do, you’ll realize just how far I’ve come from back then.
” He huffs a laugh, and it startles me, such a simple thing that he gives life to despite the heaviness surrounding us.
“I used to be so afraid, so uncertain. But now, this feels like it was always supposed to be part of my life. As if I was the one born with this gift and not the other way around.”
My face twists with confusion. When I left, Hawthorne hated the existence he’d been forced into by Ivan. He’d felt trapped and overwhelmed by the new world around him. Could so much have really changed in those years apart?
“I know you think that you’re responsible for ruining my life.
I can’t say that things wouldn’t be easier, more peaceful, if I’d never died.
But I’ve come to accept it, embrace it. I don’t begrudge you for it, so I need you to stop punishing yourself if we’re ever going to move forward with our lives. Can you do that?”
“What about everything I just told you? What about me ushering him into our lives and letting him come between us? You can’t tell me that doesn’t change anything.”
“Oh, it does. It’s why I’m going to torment him by claiming what he can’t every chance I have.”
“How exactly will you do that?”
“I consider myself a very creative person. I’m sure I can come up with more than a few ways.”
“I’m very interested in hearing your ideas.” Eager to connect with him physically after processing all of that emotional turmoil, I peel off my clothes slowly, appreciating the way his tongue wets his lip as he devours me with his roaming eyes.
“Why don’t you get on your knees, and I’ll show you?”
“Please, teach me your ways,” I implore him as I sink to my knees on the plush rug, positioning myself between his legs.
Running my hands up his muscular thighs, I head straight for his belt, quickly undoing the buckle and tearing down his zipper.
His dick springs free, hard and weeping pre-cum for me.
I chase my fist that rubs long strokes along his length with my tongue, tasting him from shaft to tip, eagerly sucking at the head as my other hand massages him.
“Tell me how you want it. Instruct me, Mr. Addams.” He groans at the formal title.