For him, love was not salvation but ruination and that was why an actual relationship between us would have been impossible.
“I don’t love,” he’d told me once in one of our first conversations, and now I understood why. Neil would have to learn how to accept himself, to understand that he had so much more to offer than just his body. Then and only then would he—possibly—be able to be with someone.
“I’m worried about him, Logan,” I said for the thousandth time.
I’d been so self-absorbed, thinking about myself all the time, about the attention I wanted and wasn’t getting from Neil. I never stopped to think about why he was so afraid to feel human emotions. “I got it all wrong, right from the start.” Now more than ever, I knew that by pressuring him, I’d only pushed him further away from me.
“You didn’t know,” Logan answered with his characteristic kindness, just trying to make me feel better.
“I did, though. I saw all the signs, but I refused to put it together…” I swallowed hard as I recalled how Neil had manhandled me in my bedroom the night Jared visited. The way he’d grabbed me by the hair, his brutal, ferocious thrusts, how he couldn’t stop staring at the place where we were conjoined. The way he chased his orgasm as though I weren’t pinned underneath him, taking every harsh stroke. His eyes had been so cold and vacant then; I had known that there was some kind of war going on inside him. A war that he’d been fighting for who knew how many years.
Even when I’d caught him with Jennifer and Alexia, I’d never seen him look engaged. He was always impersonal, unflappable, and serious, with no look of pleasure or sexual satisfaction on his face.
“No one is ever ready to face that kind of truth,” Logan said, staring outinto space.
It occurred to me then why Neil was so attached to Logan. He had such a strong bond with his siblings because what he felt for them was the only real form of love he knew.
“Who else knows about it?” I ventured.
“Just us and now you. Neil’s very private; he never talks about it with anyone. He barely talks about it with me,” he said, and other, sharper questions began to form in my mind.
Where was his abuser?
She was a psychopath. A demon. A monster.
“And she is…?” I wanted to say “dead” and hoped with all my heart that was the case. Looking into Logan’s eyes, I knew he could see the rage I was feeling.
“She was committed to a psychiatric facility in South Carolina,” Logan said, intuiting the information I needed.
As he spoke, a frosty wind whipped through the air, and the water grew restless. It was as though by speaking of the devil, we had summoned him, and even the natural world moved at his command.
“What’s her name?” I pushed a little harder, chewing on my lower lip. I was afraid that Logan would tell me to quit sticking my nose in at any moment, but he didn’t.
“Kimberly Bennett,” he said softly, and I immediately committed the name to memory.
I had no idea what to do now that I had some of the answers I’d sought, but I was pretty sure that remembering that woman’s name was going to be useful at some point.
I was probably going to spend hours thinking about Neil and about what Logan had told me, but one thing I already knew for sure: What I felt for him wasn’t sympathy or pity.
In fact, knowing his nature and how strong he was, I was positive that the last thing he wanted was pity. Neil would never have accepted a woman feeling sorry for him. He would have pushed her away immediately.
What I did feel, however, was a profound anger toward Kimberly and a new understanding of Neil. But my opinion of him had not changed at all.If anything, I found him even more remote than before. If I’d imagined it would be hard to wriggle my way into his soul before, this new knowledge just made it more complicated. Neil wasn’t simply some gorgeous, mysterious bad boy, gifted with a volatile charisma that drew women like flies. He was, above all else, untouchable.
I feared I wasn’t up to the challenge he presented, but, at the same time, the thought of abandoning him never even crossed my mind.
“He likes you. You know that, right?” Logan cut off my train of thought, drawing my gaze back to him.
Me? He liked me?
My palms began to sweat, and I felt a strange sort of unrest inside me. I wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or afraid.
“And you really like him too,” Logan added, a knowing look on his face.
I didn’t answer him but just looked away, trying to hide the sudden flush in my cheeks. Neil was the only one who could shatter me and then put all my pieces back together. All I had to do was look into his honey-colored eyes, and I felt the earth move beneath me. Indisputably, he was the sort of man who got into one’s soul, fusing sex and longing together and creating the most depraved ideas in even the purest of hearts.
Still, I didn’t have the wherewithal to confirm Logan’s assertion.
***
