Chapter 13 #2
“What you could do to me? Alfie, you’re barely even holding me.” To prove my point, I pulled my wrists out of his easy grip. He let me go without a fight, trying to hide his defeat.
“I’ve hurt you before, violated you before.” He was trying so, so hard to convince me he was an evil, worthless man.
“Yes and you paid the price for that too.” I gazed up at him, feeling weak at his close proximity.
“I’m telling you that I’ve heard the worst of what you’ve done and I don’t hate you for it.
It’s alright and it’s time to let it go.
” Before my words were out of my mouth he shoved away from me and headed for the door.
He’d done this before, the night he’d burned himself.
I’d pushed him and he’d shut down and shut me out, sinking into his pity spiral.
But not tonight. I was done with this shit. I raced him to the door and beat him.
“Get out of the way. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t hurt me, Alfie.” I faced him down, and his eyes flashed like a caged tiger. He reached for the door handle but once again I blocked it. I couldn’t let him go. I had to see this through. I was so close to freeing him. He struggled for the handle but barely.
“It’s alright, Alfie.” I kept my voice calm as if I was trying to soothe a wild animal. He slumped against the door, his breathing laboured.
“I see their faces. How can it be alright when I see their faces every night?” he whispered, sounding every bit the haunted man.
“I’m here. It’s alright, Alfie.”
“Don’t…” He tried to pull away, but this time I didn’t let him go.
“Don’t forgive me.” His head fell into his hands as he struggled with himself, unable to look at me.
He warred with himself on all sides, the side that was a young boy desperate to be loved, the side that hated himself for what he had done, the side that needed me.
The side that hated me for what I was forcing him to face, the side that wanted to run, the side that was borne of anger and violence that wanted to rage and fight.
The side that wanted to control me, to bend me and fuck me to make me stop, to rob me of my power over him, to keep himself safe.
He wanted me to go. He needed me to stay.
I reached up and cupped his face as tenderly as I could and he whimpered. “You can’t forgive me, you can’t. Please. Please don’t.” His tears spilled over my hands and my heart broke too. “I can’t be forgiven.”
In the face of all of his pain, I did the only thing I could think of. I pushed up on tiptoe, pressing my forehead to his. “Go to the Evergarden.”
Almost instantly, he seemed to calm. Like a soothing wave washed over his body, his warring stopped and all that remained was an exhausted man. He slid down the wall, his head in his hands, tears falling on his shirt.
Without thinking, without stopping to question myself, I crawled into his lap.
He clung to me like a life raft and I held him, his cheek pressed to my chest, his tears falling in shuddering silence accompanied by darkness and the crackling fire as he cried out over a decade of guilt and a lifetime of pain and neglect.
The sun rose, shining a light on his sins. I saw them all. Finally, after all of this time, I saw Alfie Tell and here, crying in my arms, he was the strongest person I had ever known.
His tears stopped long before the fire went out. From our slumped spot by the door, we watched the flames die down together, like two lost souls watching an hourglass run out. When that last grain of sand fell through, when that last flame flickered out, we would have to come back to the world.
We watched as it crackled, sputtered, and died.
Just like that, this temporary tenderness between us snapped.
Slowly, with regret, I crawled out of his lap and stood.
I hugged my arms around my torso, watching as he rose too.
He shrugged out of his jacket and folded it over the back of the chair by the fire.
He ran his hands through his hair and turned to me.
No one looking at him now would have ever known what a broken man he’d been a few hours ago.
“Alfie, you need help. I mean, real help. Not just crying on the floor with your ex at 6am. I know you don’t want to but?—”
“I have a therapist,” he cut me off and I stopped short, stunned.
“Seriously? Since when?”
“Since a while ago,” he answered, his gaze wary, waiting for me to judge him. I didn’t know what to think.
“Is that why you’ve been so different?”
“Partly, yes. I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t make the same mistakes again if I ever got another chance with you.
She’s helped me a great deal but she can’t help me with this.
I talk to her about the club, I give her a watered down version of my family, and I talk to her about you.
I tell her everything about you. But I can’t tell her about what I did to my father and Charles.
She would be obligated to report it. This is something I need to deal with alone. ”
“Yeah,” I huffed out a laugh, “because you’ve been doing so great with that.”
He held my gaze for a moment, unflinching and steady.
“I agree, the last twelve years I’ve done a shitty job of dealing with everything.
But, something has changed tonight, Lola.
I feel different.” His brow furrowed and I wondered what was happening in that beautiful mind of his.
“I need to sit with it for a while. Then we’ll talk.
” Talk? No, no, no. I couldn’t get dragged into this again.
“Alfie, you and I, we aren’t getting back to?—”
“We’ll talk.” His tone left no room for argument.
He fixed me with those steel grey eyes, and my insides turned to liquid.
There was the Alfie I’d known. I could have argued with him, sure, but I decided to let it go, for now anyway.
Exhaustion hit me in a wave. My feet hurt from still wearing Keira’s high heels and I smelled like a bar.
I wanted my bed with a deep ache I felt in my bones.
“Alright.” I nodded, letting him have this one. Another conversation wasn’t going to kill me. I picked up my bag where I’d left it on the coffee table. “Can Elliot drive me home now, please? I’m really tired.”
“Of course. Or you can stay here.” I narrowed my eyes. Did he really think I was going to fall for that? “I meant you could stay in your own room.”
His words made me pause. “You expect me to believe that you’ll let me sleep in the guest room and that you won’t bother me?”
“It’s not a guest room. It’s yours.” He pushed his hands into his pockets. He looked tired yet strangely nervous. I felt like he was giving me that red dress all over again. “And no, I won’t bother you.”
“What do you mean it’s mine?”
“Let me show you. If you like it, you stay. If you don’t, Elliot will drive you home. Will you let me show you?”
“Alright,” I said, uncertainty ringing in my voice.
Looking relieved, he extended a hand to me and I stared at his offering.
I couldn’t take it. A moment ago I’d held him in my arms because he’d needed me, but touching him now said a whole different thing that I didn’t want to say.
Sadness crossed his features as he withdrew his hand.
“Follow me.”
I followed him down the hallway. Floor to ceiling windows framed the blaring sunrise.
It felt strange to be going to bed now, as if I was seeing the sunrise the wrong way round.
There was a narrow staircase at the end of the hall that I almost didn’t see.
I followed him up, feeling the close quarters.
At the top was a small landing, a round, high window ahead of me, and two doors either side. He nodded at the door to my right.
“That’s a small sitting room. You can work, read, watch television, whatever you’d like.
” He turned to the door on our left. “This is your bedroom.” He felt along the top of the door frame and produced a key.
He twisted the key in the lock and opened the door but didn’t go in.
He turned to me, giving me a go ahead look.
I twisted my hands as I stepped inside, unable to make out much in the dark.
I heard Alfie flick a switch behind me and my eyes went wide as I took in my surroundings.
I was in a whole new world. A far cry from his monochrome mansion, this bedroom was alive with colour.
I turned, taking everything in. The walls were accented with a light floral wallpaper, and the bed had a blush pink canopy.
On the wall was framed art that seemed vaguely familiar.
“Are those…?”
“Your original sketches of our Evergarden,” he said softly. My breath stole away as I stared at them, the memories they evoked swarming me. He’d saved them.
“You did this? When?”
“I’ve been working on it for the last couple of years.” The last couple of years? I turned to look at him, and he gave a tiny shrug. “Just in case.”
He’d been doing a lot of things ‘ just in case.’ My chest ached to go to him but I stayed put, wrapping my arms around myself.
“It’s beautiful.” After the cool elegance of the rest of the house, this room radiated warmth.
He’d done this for me. The house was his cool, grey heart, and this room was me, the only part of that vital organ that was warm and alive.
He watched me carefully from the doorway, taking in my every reaction.
“Why are you standing by the door like that?”
“Because this is your room. I want you to have a space here that’s only yours.
” He pulled the key out of the door and handed it to me without stepping inside.
I took it, pleasure shuddering through my body as our fingertips touched.
“You’re the only one with a key now. I promise I won’t ever come in here unless you invite me.
” He looked thoughtful. “The next few weeks and months, maybe years, are going to be difficult as we fix things between us. You’re going to need space from me sometimes. ”
His words turned my stomach over. This is what I‘d been so afraid of. I’d opened the door a crack and now he was throwing it wide open and forcing his way in. “Alfie, we aren’t?—”
“We’ll talk when we’ve both rested. I need to think, and so do you.
” Why did that sound like a threat? He must have seen my fear because his expression softened a little.
“One day you won’t be so distrustful of me.
” He reached out a gentle hand but paused, inches away from my face. “Can I touch you?”
I swallowed, my heart thudding in my chest. My sanity screamed no but I gave him the smallest nod.
Carefully, as if approaching a wounded animal, he reached out and gently stroked his fingers over my cheek.
I shivered at the contact, closing my eyes.
My reaction was a reminder of the devastating effect he could have on my body.
“I feel it too, Lo. I touch you and I feel you everywhere. Look at me.” I lifted my gaze to his. “I’m going to fix this. I’m going to become the man you need. I swear it.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I know. I’m going to prove it to you.” He cupped my face. “Sleep, O’Connell.” He pulled away and closed the door behind him. My knees trembled, my hands shook.
Alfie…
He was saying all the right things, making all the right moves.
My body sang for him, yearning to take him to my bed.
Luckily, my sanity was a well-honed muscle now, a boss bitch that she hadn’t been before.
Alfie Tell had screwed her over once already, and she wasn’t about to be taken advantage of again.
I’d chosen to comfort him, I’d chosen to stay the night, but that didn’t mean I’d forgotten who he was and what he was capable of.
The room was beautiful, his confessions tonight had moved mountains, and all his words echoed what I’d dreamt of, but that didn’t stop me turning the key in the lock and twisting the handle to make sure that door wasn’t opening while I slept.