He squeezes his eyes shut, but not before I see the turmoil wreaking havoc behind his lids.
“It’s not your fault. It’s not even mine,” I murmur, lifting on my toes to brush my lips against his soft yet firm ones. I linger there for a moment longer, and his grip on my neck intensifies as if he struggles too, fighting with himself.
He brought me so much happiness today; I don’t want to torment him for a second longer when I know my presence alone is the biggest torture. Maybe he’s a masochist, too, because he can’t stay away either. He wants to push me away, build a wall between us, but I either climb it or slip through the cracks. That’s the reality. One that nothing can change.
My time is running out. Once my brother returns, we’ll have to go back to nothing but a platonic, sister and brother relationship we have pretended to have.
I will set him free by going away. I will even if I die trying, but he owes me a few days to indulge in the bittersweet fantasy. Even if it hurts him, the need to please me overpowers everything else. Maybe I am an awful person for forcing him, but I can’t find it in me to fight this all-encompassing love. My forlorn heart chokes on longing, suffocating me slowly.
His chest vibrates under my palm, the ripple of anguish clear.
I fucked his life over.
But damn it, so did he.
“Dahlia, baby girl…” His voice is uncharacteristically soft and pleading.
He’s not strong enough to withstand me, which is ironic, asking me to put a stop to the one thing I desire most.
Don’t push him over before you get your wish. With a force that is beyond me, I take a step back. But something tells me I lost.
I climb into the passenger seat. Leaning my cheek against the window, I look at the landscape passing by, returning to familiar surroundings. I drove for a hundred miles.
Plucking out his phone, he connects to the stereo, and my music blares through it. This is a playlist of the compositions I haven’t released.
They are ours—sacred. Pain brings out the best music because it makes you bleed for it. I wonder if he feels that it’s not only a haunting pain and pitch darkness of not knowing if I would make it, the loss of innocence. After every heart-wrenching movement comes one with more pep, a joyous high because even in my darkest hours, he was there. He didn’t have to say a thing. His eyes did it for him. He’d die and kill for me. And he did.
Every composition has a meaning for us. His favorite title is Regret. It fits because he’s the king of regret.
His phone hasn’t stopped ringing, but he ignores it, solely focused on the road. Driving as if one slight distraction would crash the car.
“I’m sorry I am keeping you from work,” I say in time for the melody to hit another low note that has him clenching his hands around the wheel.
He’s back in that headspace made of threads of barbed wire, keeping me out.
“I want to talk about those three days,” I insist, needing to get through to him.
I wish for nothing else than to rewrite our story, but that’s impossible.
In my head, if we just talked about that horrific experience, he would see himself as someone other than my rapist. I hate that he thinks that. Because if he raped me, I raped him too. He didn’t have another choice, and the stubborn idiot knows it, but he hates himself, nonetheless.
“No.” His voice is clipped.
He wants to be the villain so badly, but all my life, he has been the hero. He could slaughter anyone before my eyes, and I would see him as nothing less.
“I’m a Mafia princess, Mika. Something you so conveniently forget. A fairy-tale life, a sunny boyfriend, were never in my cards.”
“Dahlia,” he grits out.
“You can say my name a thousand times. It won’t change my reality,” I snap.
“I want the fucking best for you. I won’t accept anything less,” he snaps back.
I raise my arms in the air, shouting. “You are that for me, you stubborn idiot.”
A ripple goes through him as if he were electrocuted. “Stop saying shit like that.”
“If you stop thinking you raped me,” I mumble, crossing my arms over my chest.
