“We’re watching a movie.”
“I’d rather go upstairs.”
“I don’t care what you’d rather do,” he says as Pocket Lint gallops up to me. She rears up onto my leg, expecting to get picked up, but I don’t feel like I can even do that.
Ellison steers me over to the couch and forces me to sit down before he sits beside me. Pocket Lint tries climbing up to me, but she can’t make it, and when it becomes clear I don’t have the energy to pick her up, she begins biting at my pants in frustration until Ellison leans down and puts her on my lap.
Then he reaches over, hand hovering halfway to me before he grabs my head and starts pulling it down. I’m confused by what he wants until he pushes me down so my head is on his lap. I don’t know what to do with this position. It’s uncomfortable andstrange. I want to sit up, but his hand keeps me held down. It’s such a vulnerable position and I feel like I’m frozen.
“I’m not the best person to give you advice. I’ve done things that… I can’t seem to get over myself, but… I don’t want to see you destroying yourself over something you couldn’t control.”
“She begged me for so long to save her, and I never did.”
“Why would you? You were raised to believe that what the others were doing was right. Why would you go against that? You’ve implied that you weren’t allowed to have any emotional connections to people, that you were led to believe that whatever your mission was is all that mattered. Whywouldyou go against that for a person who wasn’t a part of your community? How many people interacted with her?”
“I don’t know… probably twenty or so.”
“And none of them saved her. You were the only one who didsomething. Maybe you couldn’t save her, but how many other people did you save from ending up like her?”
I hesitate, having never once thought of that. The hand holding me down eases off as he gives my hair a gentle tug. My hand that had been on his thigh, prepared to push myself up, instead clutches him. I can’t fathom pushing myself off him now that I’m here. I don’t care that in this position I’m vulnerable to everything because it’sEllison,and there’s something about him that puts me at ease.
“I killed so many people, Ellison. I just killed whoever I was told to kill. I don’t know whether they were good or bad. I don’t know anything about them, and that haunts me. And then the day I ended it all, I killed all of the adults in my group. I killed the people who raised me, the ones who guided me, I killed my parents… What if they could have changed as well? There weren’t many children at that time, and I made sure that detective your mother spoke of found them so he could helpthem, but I destroyed everyone in their lives. I’m sure all they see me as is a monster.”
He smooths my hair back but I don’t want him to see my face, so I tuck it against his legs as I hold on desperately. “If you asked your parents or any of the other adults to change with you, what do you realistically think they’d have done?”
“They’d have killed me.” No questions asked, they would have killed me.
“And they would have continued to hurt and kill. It will never feel right, but you did what you had to in order to end the cycle. No one will ever hurt like you do again. No one will be punished for having emotions or feelings. You stopped another cycle of children raised in a world where they don’t know what love is, where they’ve never been hugged, never told that they matter. I know it hurts, but the people you killed were adults who chose that life. They could have fought to change like you did, but they didn’t. And they weren’t ever going to.”
I close my eyes and try as hard as I can to believe the words he’s saying. It feels impossible, but with his fingers trailing through my hair, I start to question if I can.
“You’re a good person, Asmodeus. Don’t let anyone ever make you think you’re not.”
“I wish I’d chosen to be a good person just one day sooner.”
“The worst thing about being human is the inability to know the consequences of our actions,” Ellison says, and the way he says it tells me he knows from experience.
His fingers trail through my hair, and I realize that I’ve never felt comfort like this. Yes, I’ve had sex, but it was always brief encounters. Nothing to it. But this… I love this sense of calmness that wraps around me. The way his fingers trail through my hair draws me into a bliss I didn’t know I could feel. It makes me ache to feel more.
“If you keep treating me like this, I’m going to get greedy,” I whisper.
“Then be greedy,” he says.
I turn to look at him before pushing myself up just enough that I can reach him. I’m waiting for him to push me away, but instead, he fixes me with his eyes. I lean forward and when he doesn’t pull away, I press a soft kiss against his lips, testing to see what he’ll do.
Ellison keeps watching me, and it makes me question if I took his actions and pushed them to a different extreme—if I took his kindness and got greedy.
“I have misread the situation,” I say.
He’s still watching me, but when I begin to draw back, his hand slides across my cheek, catching me and pulling me in. His lips find mine as he guides me back so I’m lying down on the couch with him hovering over me. His kisses are hurried like he thinks that someone is going to make him stop… or is he thinking that he should be the one to make himself stop?
My lips part and his tongue brushes against mine while his hand slides into my hair, fingers tightening. It’s like he wants to hold me down, pin me here so I can never leave, yet rush away in the same breath.
I’d been raised to want nothing, but all of that shattered once I got to know Ellison because I want him. Ineedhim. I don’t ever want to let him go. His lips move over mine while my hand slips under his shirt, fingers running up his back. I slide his shirt up as my fingers move, wanting to feel more of him. Wanting all of him… but maybe that was a mistake because he pulls back, leaving me breathless and aching for more.
I fear he’s going to pull away from me and promise to never do this again. But instead, he lays his head on my chest.
“Not today,” he whispers.
