Tomorrow would be a new page. Fresh words. New characters.
Elian kept his heart in an iron cage. He surrounded it with barbed wire and poisonous thorns. He had been hurt. Ravaged. His mind violated by memories he could never erase.
But he tried. He ran away. He left everything behind.
He learned to tuck his feelings inside and pretend they weren’t there. He just needed someone to claim him. To make him theirs.
To send him to the stars.
I bit down on my bottom lip, my teeth piercing soft, pliable flesh. Copper bitterness filled my mouth.
I remained silent and Elian wasn’t bothered by it. He never was.
He accepted me.
The parts he knew.
The parts he loved.
“Where’s my phone? It’s ringing, ” Elian said, looking around, patting his pockets. I smiled. Relieved that this made it easier. For him.
For me it was already easy.
“They can leave a message,” I murmured, kissing his downturned mouth. Tasting his delusions that were so ingrained in who had become.
“I can’t live in death’s shadow anymore, Layna. I need to move on. I have to. Her death has become the single focus of my life. I just can’t—” He shook his head, a little distressed. He ran his hands down his face, nails scraping and digging. Red marks left where frantic fingers had been.
I kissed the signs of his anguish. One by one.
“Death is inevitable, Elian,” I whispered. Not raising my voice. I kept it low.
Secret.
“Life is inevitable, Layna! Life! Just move on from your father! Help me move on from Amelia!” I felt his cry in the pit of my stomach. Rolling and turning, chewing me up and spitting me out.
He was trying so hard to be sure. To be confident. But his mask had been destroyed. He was left with only the bloody pulp of shame and guilt that was the foundation of who he was.
The parts that made me, in my own way, love him.
Truly, absolutely love him.
He kissed my cheeks. Longing tinged each one.
I felt it. It was impossible not to.
“Life is a lie,” I said weakly, feeling my resolve fluttering wildly in my chest. For just a second the beast’s roar quieted. Mute. Silent.
Elian’s green eyes, no longer dancing, snuffed out the fire. The fear. The desperation.
And then he closed his eyes. And I was pulled out of his restraining sun. Back into the shadows.
Elian pulled me against his chest. His arms ever tight around me. He didn’t want to let me go.
He would have to let me go.
“I love you, Layna Whitaker. I don’t care who your father is. I don’t care about all the horrible ways our lives were intertwined before we ever met. You and me coming together was fate. It was a divine intervention. How can you look at where we are, who we are, and think anything else?”
I wished I could laugh. I wished I could chide him for his foolishness.
I wished I could be angry at his naivety.
Fate was an ignorant delusion.
We were together, here, because I wanted us to be. Nothing more. Nothing less.
I felt a margin of disgust at his gullibility.
How could he not see what was right in front of him?
How could he not feel the evil in his arms?
He pressed his kiss to my mouth. I tasted what he offered. And I took it. It was mine.
Always.
“Fate had nothing to do with us finding each other,” I found myself saying. I couldn’t help it.
With Elian, I always revealed more than I should.
Either he ignored my words or simply didn’t hear me, lost in his desire. His fingers clenched almost painfully around my waist. His tongue invaded. His teeth bit and pulled. He was frantic.
He knew…
Elian was a boy who ate life with both hands until the devil came and gobbled him up. He was wet and shaken, happiness gone. He was a sad, sad boy with no past and no future.