Because Neil had worked his way inside me. Even knowing that we’d never be a fairy tale and never get our happily ever after, my heart would always be his.
“You care for me, Tinkerbell. Don’t let things that happened with other people cancel out your feelings for me. Not when I’ve just started to trust you…” He pressed his forehead to mine and gently rubbed the sides of my face with his thumbs.
“I should go…” I said again in low tones, fighting with myself.
“You don’t want to go. I know you don’t. I’ll give you time to process all of this, but please just stay here with me,” he whispered against my lips.
“I don’t know. Every time I turn around, I’m finding out something new about you, Neil, and…” And my heart was shattered into a thousand pieces. I could see them, falling at my feet once again. I was being ground down by him, by the mysteries that surrounded him and by all the things I didn’t know.
“You don’t fucking get it!” There it was, that thing he did best. He pulled away from me and looked at me with so much disdain, like I was no longer Selene. Like I was just an enemy to him. “You grew up in a glass bubble, in a normal family with normal parents. You hate your father so much just because he stepped out on your mom, just because he was away at work a lot… While I was raped and subjugated and humiliated by a psychopath years older than me. William beat me basically from birth because he thought I was a bad seed, no son of his. He never wanted me, and he took out all his rage and disgust on me. That tattoo you like so much,” he gestured to his right arm. “I got it to cover the scars from where he would use me as a human ashtray. I’ve got the same ones on my left arm; you’ve seen them. I left those uncovered because I need to see them and remember what kind of man raised me. I told you right from the start that I’m not like other people, that I’ve got issues I’m working on, and that I’m not perfect. And I did that because I wasn’t just fucking you, Selene. I told you about myself, I confided in you, and I trusted you implicitly. All of my wrongs are a direct result of the things that happened to me. It’s sheer luck that I’m not locked up in fucking prison or hooked on drugs because people like me, people with the kind of history I’ve got? They don’t get to live real lives. You have no idea how many times I’ve thought about ending it all forgood. You have no idea how many times I’ve hoped that goddamned stalker would just take me out already; then we’d both have fulfilled our purposes!” He vented all the sickness that was inside him, and he did it with the rage of a man who had been suppressing his hurt for far too long and had reached the limits of what a man could endure.
Neil wobbled, almost collapsing in on himself, and he looked so tired. Tired of everything.
His strength was dwindling; he’d been fighting his whole life to no avail.
“If you’re so sure, just do it. Go away and disappear. I won’t chase you—I don’t chase anyone, Selene. You know that better than anyone. I won’t even accept any change of heart from you. God may forgive, but I don’t…remember that.” He turned his back to me, rubbing his temples. His right hand had started to shake, and I realized how on edge he actually was.
After everything I’d gone through for him, I couldn’t allow something that happened in his past to scare me away. I couldn’t let fear destroy me, not after Neil had actually opened all of himself to me.
I didn’t know Scarlett. I didn’t know the Neil of three years before. I didn’t know what they actually experienced in their relationship. I didn’t know if she’d become overinvested in something that, right from the start, never involved love. Neil had made that clear to her, but Scarlett, determined and in love, decided to risk it all.
She’d jumped off that balcony of her own accord, not because Neil forced her, though it was clear to me that he was hardly blameless.
He could have chosen not to hurt her, not to choose others over her, or not to flaunt his most twisted impulses on that vacation. He could have chosen not to use his typical dominating methods, the kind that could make anyone a stranger to themselves.
But the most serious mistake was now mine. I was judging him the way everyone else did.
So how could I expect Neil to open up and tell me everything about himself?
“I’m sorry…” I whispered. I advanced on him slowly and embraced him from behind, resting my cheek against his rigid back. “I didn’t mean to judge you. I would never do that,” I murmured. He held still and let me get it allout. I wept like a child in the depths of despair, making us both shake with my sobs. After what felt like forever, Neil turned around to wipe the tears from my cheeks.
I looked up at him through wet, clinging eyelashes, and he bent to drop a comforting kiss on the tip of my nose.
“Shh…that’s enough now, Babygirl. You know I don’t know what to do when you start bawling,” he said softly, with a hint of irony that made me smile sadly. Then he stroked my face with both hands and bent down toward my lips. I immediately stretched up to seize that kiss, which tasted of bitterness, suffering, and words unspoken. Neil kissed me softly, as though seeking permission. The same man who always took whatever he wanted with perfect confidence was now attempting to reassure me in his own way.
It was a delicate kiss, yet so powerful that it unleashed a ferocious storm of feeling between us.
So kiss me now.
Now, when it’s possible.
Now, when it’s our life and our time.
Now, when it’s just the two of us.
Kiss me always.
Build a delirium inside me.
Pass your madness on to me.
Invent a new kind of kiss just for me.
Give me the gift of your fiery passion.
Destroy me and then create me once again.
Hold me and crush me against you.
