I pounded on the door, upset, as I waited for Neil to answer. As soon as he did, I swept inside, dragging a hand through my hair.
I wanted to pretend like I’d sorted everything out with Matt, but I was no good at hiding what I was feeling. And, in that moment, I was visibly shaken.
“Let me guess…” Neil let the door close with a thud. He was dressed now in a gray sweater, and I could see from the raised veins on the backs of his hands that he was uncomfortable. “He told you I’m a whack job. Some kind of psychopath who needs treatment and that you ought to get far away from me, right?” A cruel smile twisted his lips. They were still pink and swollen from the passionate kissing we’d indulged in all night long.
Neil truly was addictive, and what if…
What if Matt was right?
What if I was so addicted to him that I couldn’t see the truth?
“Chill out, we’re just playing,”he had told me during one of our first encounters.
“How are we playing? What does this game consist of?”I had asked him in return.
“If I told you, what fun would that be?”he’d answered cryptically.
Every sentence of that conversation seemed to bore into my temples. All the little certainties I’d built up in the last few days began to crumble in the face of questions that required answers.
“You’re thinking too hard,” Neil noted, stepping toward me. I took one step back. I knew I couldn’t think straight when he got too close to me. Maintaining a reasonable distance from him was the only way I could keep my thoughts in order. But the brief flicker of hurt on his face when he saw my hesitation killed me. I didn’t want to push him away or treat him like a monster the way almost everyone else did, but I needed to process what Matt had just told me.
“We need to talk about Scarlett. You were with her for a long time, right? I need to know everything that happened with you two,” I told him firmly. Neil wrinkled up his forehead and turned inward for a moment, staring at the open air behind me before eventually turning his attention back to me with a sigh.
“This again?” His lips curled into a sneer.
“You’ve never actually told me about her. You always dodge my questions,” I retorted.
“What did your dad say to you? Fucker…instead of fixing his issues with you, he just talks shit about me. Incredible.” He gave a scornful shake of his head at Matt’s audacity. I remained impassive, waiting for him to actually respond to me. Neil took note of that and ran his tongue nervously over his lips before touching his hair. It was difficult, ignoring that destabilizing charm of his.
“I need to know, Neil. I was all yours last night, so now I want something in return,” I insisted, clinging to our old deal. He shot me a glance, lightning quick, like he wasn’t sure whether to kick me out of the pool house or finally spill everything. Eventually, his shoulders slumped and he relented.
“What exactly do you want to know?” he asked, his face turning as unmovable as ever.
“All of it. Start from the beginning,” I said. I followed him with my eyesas he moved toward the kitchen island and leaned against it. He narrowed his eyes at me, assessing whether I was actually ready to listen.
I gave him a look of certainty, and he began to speak.
“I met Scarlett at a club. I was there with the Krew; she was there with some friend of hers. I took note of her right away. It would have been hard not to, a girl like that—tall, blond, sexy. I went up to her and started a conversation with the sole purpose of getting her into bed. I made it clear to her that I wasn’t the type to make any commitments, and she accepted my conditions. So we started seeing each other, but I never talked about myself with her. I just took what I wanted from her. I enjoyed it at first. I enjoyed being with her, and I found her extremely physically attractive. But I didn’t change my mind. I still didn’t want a relationship.” He looked attentively at me, searching my face for some emotion. I tried to remain cool and conceal the jealousy that devoured my insides at the thought of him with someone else.
“And then?” I cleared my throat, prompting him.
“And then Scarlett convinced herself that she could have some grand love story with me, that I could change. She started acting like a girlfriend. She’d follow me everywhere. She’d throw a jealous fit every time she found me with someone else…” His voice was low and measured, like he was flashing back on all those memories in his mind. “She’d do anything to get my attention. She’d go on these intense crying jags to show me how desperate she was, and she had insane overreactions to everything. She thought she could make me pity her enough, or maybe be so afraid of her hurting herself, that I’d do anything she wanted. And she was partially right. I didn’t want her to do anything crazy, so I tried to let her have her way. When we’d go out or she’d come over, I tried my best to feel the old attraction to her, but that attraction had been fading for a while. I’d fuck her and think about Kim the whole time, but in her mind, we were making love, and that was enough for her to consider us in a relationship.” He sighed nervously, looking both genuine and tortured. It was a tremendous effort for him to tell me about her, and I appreciated him for that, though I still had my doubts about his story.
“Is that why it lasted a year, then? You couldn’t figure out how to extricate yourself? And you never gave her any reason to believe she might havesomething more with you? Was this poor girl just building castles in the air all by herself?” I took a deliberately accusatory tone; something about all this just didn’t sit right with me. I really wanted to nail down his culpability in all of this because it seemed patently ridiculous to me that Scarlett had just turned into a lunatic obsessed with him out of nowhere.
“Are you suggesting that I led her on?” he asked immediately, stiffening. “Was it leading her on to make it clear from the jump that there would only ever be sex between us? Was it leading her on to tell her straight out that I wasn’t a relationship guy? Was it leading her on to tell her bluntly that I was fucking other people? Then, sure. If all that is leading her on, then I led her on big time.” He spread his arms wide before letting them fall back to his sides.
“Then why was she so convinced? Why did she refuse to give up? Is it really possible that you bear no responsibility?” I took a step toward him as he swallowed thickly. I decided not to mention what Xavier had told me about Officer Scott’s vendetta. The man hated Neil so much he was constantly looking for a reason to throw him in jail.
But why?
“I have no idea what the fuck was going on in her head. I became a kind of fixation for her. The only thing I did wrong was trying to manipulate her. I started messing with her head when I realized that my threats couldn’t keep her away from me. I tried every way I could think of to show her that she wasn’t going to get any love or affection from me, but the only thing that ever worked was pretending to go along with it, playing her game…” he said in exasperation, scrubbing a hand over his face as I continued staring at him.
“And with me?” I whispered, pulling his eyes to mine like a magnet. “Is it like that with me? Am I just the latest Scarlett?” I echoed my father’s words. The corners of my eyes were tingling, but I held myself back. Neil could sense how discouraged I was, and he drew himself up straighter. His long legs would bear the burden of our conversation, while I could see in the set of his shoulders the same intransigence that he brought to every situation. He moved toward me one step at a time, and my heart skipped a beat.
“There is no comparison between you and her,” he said irritably, and then he touched my cheek while I stared stupidly into his golden eyes. Theylooked even brighter, reflecting the sunlight that filtered in through the big windows. “You’re not a Scarlett, and you never will be because you are something entirely different. You aremore,Tinkerbell,” he answered mysteriously, looking me right in the eye as he traversed the edge of my lower lip with his thumb. I tried to look down to escape his gaze, but he didn’t appreciate the coy gesture and tilted my chin back up until I was forced to look at him.
“Are you afraid of me?” he murmured, sounding disappointed. “You are. I can see it in your eyes…” He shook his head and sighed. “I never slept all night next to Scarlett. I never shared my personal space with her. I never touched her and thought about how she was mine alone. I never broke any of my numerous rules with her. I never thought of her as a precious pearl that I needed to protect. I never wanted to feel her body with no condom between us. I never told her about what happened to me or Kimberly. Is that enough to convince you that you are not her?” He smiled, brushing the tip of his nose against mine. I felt his breath against my mouth as he stroked my stomach before flattening his palm over my breast and giving it a squeeze. “Is that enough for you?” He grazed my lips with a brief, chaste kiss. He didn’t wait for me to answer but instead dipped down to my neck and got to work seducing me. My skin burned, immediately recognizing the touch of the man I loved, and a blistering desire bloomed between my thighs. I put my hands on his waist and tried to push him away, but my attempt was so feeble that Neil just gave a self-satisfied chuckle.
