“And you were with him too?” Xavier asked Alexia with the same look of dismay that I wore. Apparently he, too, was not aware that the three of them had spent a night together. When Alexia didn’t answer him and just lowered her eyes, Xavier stood up and hurled his glass to the floor. “Guess you haven’t stopped slutting around then!” he shouted at her, and in a flash, Luke was up and in between them, putting a hand on Xavier’s chest to settle him down.
“Xavier, take a walk, man,” he told him quietly.
“Go fuck yourselves, you assholes!” he lashed out at them, and then he left in a huff, vanishing into the crowd.
I’d known for a while that the men of the Krew liked to share women, especially Jennifer and Alexia, but Xavier had reacted with real jealousy. I probably should have been storming out like him, but instead my body remained motionless, frozen by the misery that spread all throughout me. I was afraid that if I tried to stand up, my legs wouldn’t have held me.
“Are you okay, Selene?” Luke asked in concern, and it was then that something inside me shifted. I stood up and took in a deep breath, tryingnot to cry, trying not to give in to the weakness of emotions. Though I didn’t show it as openly, I could completely understand what Xavier was going through. I had pinned a lot of my hopes on Neil. I had given him every part of me, and I knew that if he continued to withhold his soul from me, it would destroy me. Neil stepped toward me as though sensing that I intended to leave, but I ignored him. Then I turned my back on him and his little band of maniacs.
“Selene!” he called after me, but I didn’t care. In that moment, the only thing I wanted to do was get away from him, spend the rest of the night in a hotel, and in the morning go home. Back to Detroit. I plowed angrily through the crowd, pushing people aside in my attempt to get to an exit.
I had put up with enough of his indifference, callousness, and cruelty for one night.
How could he act like that? How could he ask me to come spend time with him in New York and then be so completely dismissive?
I walked out of the club and pulled my coat around me to shield me from the cold.
I was a mess, but I needed to stand up for myself and get out of there.
But how? I’d have to take a taxi.
I walked over to the curb and leaned into the street in the hopes of seeing a passing cab that I might hail, but several minutes went by with no sign of one.
“Babydoll, you don’t wanna hang out here for too long.”
I whirled around with a gasp, only to find Xavier standing there. I looked him right in the eye, wary.
His cold stare now appeared to be hiding a silent pain that he worked hard to suppress. Was he actually in love with Alexia? I recalled how she had tried several times to get closer to him while he had turned his attention to other women.
Maybe she’d gotten sick of it? Had she turned the tables on him?
That still didn’t excuse her sleeping with Neil, though. On the contrary, I was beginning to hate her as much as I did Jennifer.
“I’m about to leave right now.” I made to turn away from him, but Xavier kept talking.
“We both have good reason to get out of here. I’ll give you a lift, if you want.” He threw the cigarette he’d been smoking onto the pavement as he waited for my answer. I stared at the piercing that stood out starkly against his lower lip and the other one in his eyebrow before looking him up and down. He was definitely not the kind of guy who screamed “safety.”
He was the worst of the Krew; I knew that perfectly well.
“No,” I blurted out. “I haven’t forgotten all the times you were happy to humiliate me, Xavier. You’re just like them…” I gestured at the club’s entrance, referring to his friends inside. I had no idea why he was trying to be nice to me now. “So don’t get any weird ideas,” I told him bluntly. Xavier cocked an eyebrow and barely held himself back from laughing at me outright.
“Trust me, Babydoll, no matter how cute you are, you couldn’t satisfy someone like me,” he sneered before taking a step toward me. I stepped back automatically. “I do wonder how someone like you can be with someone like Neil, though.” He frowned inquisitively at me.
I didn’t understand it either. I didn’t want to save Neil from his past or even change who he was; I wanted more than that: I wanted him to understand that the world wasn’t just darkness, that it wasn’t only full of monsters like Kimberly, that he didn’t have to be ashamed of what he’d been through, and that I would never judge him.
Often, society marginalized people who demonstrated psychological problems as a result of trauma they’d experienced. But some people, like me, looked beyond that prejudice and tried to see the human inside.
I was certain that there was something good inside Neil; I knew he had the capacity for love. He could be soft with his siblings and even with me sometimes. A man without a heart or feelings wouldn’t be able to treat others with that kind of care.
“Somehow, our differences unite us,” I murmured.
What a fool I was! Despite what I’d just heard from Jennifer, I couldn’t bring myself to run Neil down and give up my faith in him.
“And you can accept the…way he is?” Xavier tilted his head slightly. He looked like he was observing me, like a specimen from another planet.
“What do you mean?” I asked with a frown.
A faint smile moved over his face as he approached me. “I’ve seen how he fucks. Fucks for real, Selene, with all that rage he’s got in him. When he shares a woman with me, he becomes an animal, and not just in the way he touches them. It’s in the way he talks to them and looks at them…” His disturbed tone chilled me. I looked at him in shock. Why was he telling me something like this? “But I think that he’s gotta be different with you, or else you wouldn’t be here right now,” he frowned thoughtfully, sticking a hand into the pocket of his black jeans.
