“YOU LIED,” LENIC says. His voice is quiet, but loud and heavy with things unsaid.
How he knows I am awake or how long he has known, I can't guess. Waking up in the middle of the night at his place, I found him silhouetted against the window, leaning against the wall, staring out at the night sky. For a while now I’ve been watching him in silence.
I give up the pretence of sleep and push the sheet aside, swinging my feet over the side of the bed. Lenic glances over at me, briefly, and then returns his gaze back to the window. Rain drips down the windowpane, leaving rivers of silver behind. His arms are crossed, his expression carefully blank. I want to go to him, put my arms around him, but his words stop me, and I stay where I am.
“You’re not OK. West not turning up to your birthday upset you more than you let on.” He turns to face me. “Didn’t it?” My gaze points downwards, unable to look him in the eye. His simple, straightforward, and evidently raw question steals my voice. I stare at him, unsure what, if anything, to say to that. “It was because of me he didn’t come … I never wanted to hurt you ... I did.” He scrubs his hands over his face. “I never wanted this for us.”
“What do you want?”
“To go back to the way things were.”
Sometimes he is easy to read, like when he smiles, or when he looks at me when I wake up in his arms. Now though, as he stares out over the black inky darkness, I have no idea what he is thinking, except that it isn’t about me, or not specifically.
“With your sister?” I barely catch the faint nod of his head in the dark of the night. “You can’t. You can’t turn back the clock.” Getting out of bed, I go over to him and lace my fingers with his. “She’s gone, Lenic. I am so sorry.”
I feel his whole arm tremble and when I squeeze his hand to tell him I’m here for him, that I am not going anywhere, he squeezes back to let me know he understands.
The room goes quiet. We both stare out of the window, thinking our thoughts, the stars in the distance seeming to flicker.
“It should have been better than this,” he says, breaking the silence.
I look at him. “We need to talk about things.”
He lowers his eyes. “Yeah…”
“Lenic,” I say hesitantly. “It’s up to you what you do. It’s your life. I’m not trying to get you to do anything you don’t want to do.” I sigh, wishing I could just say what I mean instead of talking around things all the time. He glances up at the stars again. “I can’t do this on my own. You have to help me to help you. What happened to your sister—”
“It is what it is.”
“No. It’s what you make of it.”
He gives me a long look. “What do you want from me?”
“Just … tell me things. I don’t know what you’re thinking. I don’t know how you feel about what happened. I don’t know where you are.”
“Neither do I.” He sniffs. “I’ve never had to think about this before. I’ve never talked to anyone about it. Not even my parents. They’ve tried … but I always shut them down.”
I look at him for a beat, his eyes dimmed with sadness, and then I reach out and brush his cheek with my fingers. I suddenly realise he is hurting too much, and all I am doing is prolonging the pain.
It is time to ask for the impossible.
“I need to ask something of you.” I hold his gaze, my heart pounding in my chest. “Forgive West for what he did.”
He glowers at me, and I feel his hand loosen in my grip. “That’s never gonna happen,” he breathes through tight lips.
I am walking on eggshells. “You’re living a half life. It’s no way to live.” Letting go of my grasp, he shakes his head, then takes a deep breath and straightens his back. “I don’t want you to bury yourself into a hole you can never climb out from.”
The truth is, in this moment, my feelings mean nothing. They are irrelevant. This is nothing to do with me. I am just a bystander. A spectator. Someone who just happened to be here when it all came out. This is all about Lenic, his life, his sister’s death, and his choice. It is up to you, I think, staring into his tired eyes. It is down to you, Lenic.
“I don't want that for you. Not somebody like you. God, Lenic — the world needs more men like you so don't shut yourself away and let hate eat you up inside and turn you into something you’re not … You are worth so much more.”
When he closes his eyes, I watch his chest rise and fall with a heavy burden. “It was an accident,” I continue, softening my voice. “A tragic accident. No one is to blame … West … We all make mistakes. You, West … there is always something we could have done to prevent the bad things from happening.”
“An accident?” he spits, his eyes going cold. “Is that what he told you?”
“He said…” I begin, releasing an uneasy breath. “The police investigation said it was an accident.”
He laughs hollowly, rage fires in his eyes. “Did he fail to mention when Beth was fourteen — she took an overdose? That she nearly died? That she suffered from bipolar, was on medication her whole life…? Did he forget to tell you that?” His hands tighten into fists. “The day she found out he’d been cheating on her she was dead—”
He chokes on his words, his jaw clenching back the pain. Frozen like a monument, he stares out into the dark, and the coldness in his eyes is terrifying. A minute passes by. “What am I supposed to think…? I’ll never know what really happened … It’s the not knowing that’s killing me. Killing my family.” He stares emptily at the floor. “It's my fault she's gone.”
His face is tight. He looks terrible. Everything about him is pained. “How is it your fault, Lenic?”
When he speaks, his voice is still frail, but not so breathless as before. “She'd be alive if I'd been here. I could have helped her through it ... How...?” He takes a ragged breath in, glances over in my direction, but he still won’t look at me. “How can I make that alright?” He finally finds the courage to look me in the eye. “It kills me that I wasn’t there for her. I was fighting in a war, not fighting for what really mattered. Not protecting my little sister … I didn’t protect her.”
“Sometimes bad things just happen. It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t on you.”
“No. It was on him.” His eyes are spiked with hatred.
“You and West — you are one and the same.”
“We're nothing alike,” he hisses, his neck muscles stiff, anger written in every tensed muscle in his body.
I shake my head from side to side. “You're both hiding in denial and guilt, and it is stopping you from living. You've got me, but West — whatever punishment you deal him, it's got nothing on what he's doing to himself.”
He twists his head to me, fury igniting in his eyes. It only spurs me on. “You both need to stop punishing yourselves for something you both had no control over. You need this as much as he does, otherwise this will haunt you for the rest of your lives. There was nothing you could have done.”
I remember feeling once like I was trapped in a glass bell jar, peering out but not able to hear or feel anything outside. I would be having a great day. All was well. The very next day I would get up and this tidal wave would hit me so fast that I acted out on it.
I consider — as horrifying as it is — that some of us have a bad day. One solitary day when all hope is vanquished. Simply a bad day, that in an instant, turns horrific. Trapped inside this glass bell jar. Yet it should be nothing to define a person’s life by.
“Your sister loved you. No matter what, you have to hold on to the happy memories. Remember her when she was laughing and smiling — just that. Let go of everything else. Let go of the hate. Let go of your guilt.”
“I can’t…”
“You can’t just give in to it—”
“No?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because…”
“Because what?” he spits, turning to face me. I watch his vein pulse in his neck. “Because it makes me feel better punishing him? Because it makes me feel better to blame myself for not being there for her when she needed me the most?” His voice is icy and cruel.
“Because I know my grandpa died with guilt for not protecting me earlier and it kills me to have put that on him.” I shake my head, my gut clenching. My aunt was clever, cunning. Even the cruelest of people can wear the face of an angel. There was nothing Grandpa Joe could have done more to help me. He did his best. No, he did more than his best. “Your sister wouldn’t have wanted this life for you. She wouldn’t have wanted you to stop living.”
His chest moves up and down in shallow breaths, the anger coming off of him in waves. I am no longer walking on eggshells.
I am walking on cut glass.
“You’re right. Beth never wished harm on anyone. She was selfless, kind, caring — and we’d still have her in our lives if it wasn’t for him!” he roars. He curls his hand into a fist and slams it into the wall with a ferocity that suggests his state of mind, more than words, more than a scream. His fist breaks right through the wood panelling, crushing it under his wrath. The bruising force against knuckles isn’t good enough. Nowhere near good enough. And it doesn’t calm him down, at all.
I make those Superman comments still, as some kind of private joke — that Lenic is always going to be utterly infallible. So when I feel his falter, his stumbling, his fall … it feels so wrong. It doesn’t feel like him. Not even a little.
I need to take hold of him. I need to drag him out of the dark.
I grab his arm. “Listen to me! Somewhere, deep down, you know the truth … You know what’s right.”
“If I forgive him, what does that mean? That he’s off the hook? That my sister killed herself — died — and we all forget it ever happened? That he isn’t responsible in some way for her death?” He runs his hands over his head. “My family broke apart. My parents couldn’t cope living in the home we grew up in. They moved to the other side of the goddamn world to get away. We lost everything because of him. Because of him she got into that car and...”
I quietly watch over him, telling myself that Lenic is fighting himself right now. If I speak some words of comfort it might make him feel a little better, but emotional anguish should not be relieved with platitudes the way physical pain is blunted with drugs. Because when people take the easy way out to alleviate emotional pain, I think they lose something special.
I wait a moment, giving us a chance to catch our breaths and give me time to think carefully about my next words.
“This isn't about what he did. This is about you facing up to what happened.” I look at him, trying to see beyond the hatred. “Forgive him.” His whole body tenses. I place a gentle hand on top of his fist. His knuckles are red, the force of impact enough to break skin, but he doesn’t flinch at my touch.
“Dwelling in anger and hate is like drinking poison. It will slowly destroy you inside out. I know. I know how it feels to want someone dead. But all that hate buries you six-feet-under and it will suffocate you. Getting beaten in the ring will never bring you peace. It will never bring you redemption if that’s what you’re looking for.” I tighten my hold, the blood on his hands staining my own. But I don’t care.
He closes his eyes. “I love you, Felicity, but don’t push it. I can’t do what you’re asking me to do.”
“And I can't choose between you both.”
“I never asked you to,” he snarls. He closes his eyes again, and in a softer tone he says, “I will never ask or expect you to choose. Despite hating him for all he’s worth, I will never put you in that position. I will never put myself first. I only want to make you happy. You are the only thing that matters.”
I feel my heart break, and more than just a little. I can't lose either of them. “West is the only family I have left, Lenic. He knows me. He is a part of me like you are. I don’t let many people in. Delphine’s still in the dark about my aunt … I don't know what to do … Is this my future? Lying to you when I’m not OK? Will I have to choose between you two? I can’t. I can’t do that. You two are the most important people in my life. I want West to walk me down the isle. I want him there when I have my first child…”
With you, I want to say, but don’t have the heart to say it in this moment. Heartache tears through me like a serrated blade.
“How can any of that happen if you want to kill him when you’re in the same room?” He remains silent, hanging his head with a torn expression. I close my eyes briefly. In the heat of the moment, I allowed my emotions to run wild and lost my train of thought. “I’m sorry ... I shouldn’t have said that. This isn’t about me. This is about you. You need to do this for yourself.”
Silence.
I ignore the churning in my stomach, and exhale a deep breath. He eventually raises his head and glances at me. “Do you know what you’re asking of me?”
“The impossible, I think … There is only one way out of this, Lenic. Forgive him.”
“I can’t.” He doesn’t say anything for a while. I can see him thinking about it, picturing things, weighing up the consequences of leaving his hate and blame behind. If the look in his eyes is anything to go by, it is a bigger struggle than I could even imagine. It is as if there are two separate people inside his head — the bitter, miserable man I first met and the carefree one I’ve grown to love — fighting each other for what they want. “I can’t do it.”
He stares at nothing in front of him. It doesn't look like nothing, not when I look in his eyes.
“Look at me, Lenic.” I hold his gaze, letting him see my determination. I am not giving up. He can shut the door to his heart if he wants to. He can lock it, bolt it, nail it shut. He can do whatever he needs to. But I am not going anywhere.
“In the ring, when you fight, when you win and reign as champion … isn’t it all to do with getting up each time you’re knocked down? Punching back harder, each time you’re hit? You don’t just ‘brush it off’ or ‘block it until it can’t hurt you no more’.” I pause for a moment. “Are you really prepared to fall back and do nothing and let life kick you down? Or do you want to fight back and be so much more than the man you are now?”
He rubs his wrist, casting his eyes downwards. “What kind of man is that?” He sounds tired, defeated.
“A lonely one.”
He is a broken man, and I am not gold. I don’t know if I can fix the cracks. But damn if I don’t try. “You can’t live what’s gone … When are you going to allow yourself to live — really live again?”
“I am living … with you.”
I shut my eyes, and release a sigh that seems to come from the depths of my soul. “As much as I want to be your whole world, it isn’t healthy. We're all responsible for our own happiness. I can't and I don’t want to be the only thing in your life that makes you smile. If my experiences have taught me anything, it's that you need to be at peace with yourself first before you look to others for happiness. It starts with you.”
I cup his cheek and look up at him. “I know forgiving him will be the hardest thing you will ever have to do, but you're strong. And I promise, it will be worth it.”
“I told you — I can't forget what he did.”
I lower my hand away. “Are you that scared of letting go that you'd rather lose everything?”
Those who do not know the pain might not understand. But I do. And sometimes you hit a wall. A wall of pain. And sometimes that wall tries to kill you.
But only if you give up and let it.
“I could’ve done what you’re doing. Stayed angry and bitter. I didn’t. I didn’t let my aunt or this town break me. You can make a choice. Losing someone is tough and it rips a piece of you away, but don’t make it the end of your world. You won’t survive if you keep this way.”
I wish I had a magic wand and could just vanish his trapped existence. I can see him closing in on himself. I am fighting a losing battle. I love West and maybe my feelings are biased, but life is all about choices and learning to live with them.
“Just ask yourself this one question: do you want to die being remembered for something you’re not, or for the man you were born to be?” He doesn’t say anything; he doesn’t even look at me. My heart sinks with a sudden realisation.
It is down to Lenic whether we reach forever, or break apart somewhere in the middle.
“If you don't let go of your hatred, it won’t be him tearing us apart,” I say simply. He glances across at me, eyes torn, the look of a man who knows what is to come. It kills me to say this to him, but sometimes the cold, harsh truth is the only thing that can set us free. “It will be you.”
As we keep looking at each other, breathing in the silence, I see something fade from his eyes, and I feel as if he is pulling himself back from a place where he doesn’t really want to be. The hate and the tension gradually eases from his body, and his eyes come slowly back to life.
He strokes a gentle hand across my cheek. “When I went after West … every time I looked in the mirror I couldn’t see a good man. I hated the face looking back at me.”
I couldn't deal if he ever shut down, go deep inside himself and close off. I couldn't deal with him like that. I lay my hand over his. “Don’t let one action define who you are.”
“What I did to him … it wasn’t right … It can’t be forgiven...”
I run the pad of my thumb over his jaw, and lock my heart around the only one thing I know to be true. “I would forgive you for anything.” It scares me how easily I could. But love makes you do crazy things. “I love you.”
He raises his hands to my face, fingers cupping both my cheeks, his thumbs under my chin, lifting my gaze directly to his. “I love you more.” I feel heat radiating from my body, as if I am burning up with some inner flame. “It scares me how far I’d go to love you.” He trails blistering kisses down my neck, and across my shoulders. “I’ll always love you. No matter what.”
I can only impress one way to Lenic how I feel and that I don’t hate him for what he did. “I need you,” I beg him in a small voice. “Lenic, I don’t want you to hold back tonight.” The first time we had sex, he told me he had desires to take me in a way that he was afraid would hurt me. But I want to feel him tonight.
All of him.
He tenderly pulls off my white camisole, and pushes me back. My back falls to meet the bed and it almost feels like it bows under his strength. It feels very different than ever before. His hands hold me hard against the bed, his tongue is deep inside my mouth, his head tilted, gripping me tight, but not in violence, not with intent to harm, but instead with a need, a possessiveness, as if he needs to reassert something. Here. Now. With me. Burn away it all. And I bend to his need.
It is an intense version of Lenic that alarms me a little, but right now, I ride the intensity, thrusting my hips up against his, friction and heat, and his pulsing swelling cock meeting my naked skin.
My body shakes as an ineffable emotion pours through me. As much as Lenic wants my hate tonight, he needs my love the most. I can feel it. Being inside me will salve his hurt spirit better than any words I could possibly speak. This won’t heal him, and neither will it fill in the deep crack in our relationship. But tomorrow can wait.
For now, I will only love him.
His kisses become more passionate as he opens up more and more of himself to me. I reciprocate, my hands playing up and down his sides with a gentle kind of roughness. I can feel my touch burning into him, bringing him back, grounding him in the knowledge that there is something here for him still. He could still feel. He could still have a life of happiness if he would just forgive himself and let it all go.
I trace the outline of a black lion tattoo on his ribcage, and then across the two thin scars on his biceps. We both have scars, physically and mentally, but we are stronger for them. I want him to know this. I want him to know how strong he could be. I want him to realise all of this, in this precious shared moment, while he makes love to me, while he fucks me. I’ll give him whatever he wants.
Whatever it takes.
I don’t have time to dwell on his scars as he runs teasing fingers up my thighs, just narrowly skirting across all my sensitive spots, but missing the crux of my arousal, causing me to inhale sharply and bury my fingers into his back.
He grabs me by the back of my neck and locks our lips together, dragging his whole body down against me before he finally releases me, both of us panting for breath.
“Whatever you need … take it,” I whisper. “I want it just as bad.”
I want him to know that it’s OK to kiss me until it hurts … as long as he tightens his hold on me so I can’t feel the pain anymore. I need to feel him, need to erase all the dark thoughts in our minds. And Lenic understands. He doesn’t say a word, but I know he gets that I want to give him what he needs from me. He damn well knows the power his touch has over me. He needs this. He needs to remember who he once was and is. He needs to know that he is in control of himself, and that his anger has no power over him.
Pinning both my arms above my head, with a strength I didn’t know he had, he slams his slickened engorged cock into me with so much force, I nearly see stars. I scream out his name and Lenic’s darkened eyes lock on mine, like a heated missile, daring me to look away, and if I do, he will break me.
Unable to dig my nails into his back to relieve myself from the pleasurable pain, all I can cling on to is the sensation overwhelming my starving body. I feel helpless against the tidal wave of feeling and emotion and need crashing down on me, and I almost lose myself to the brutal hard thrusts of his huge and powerful cock as though I am drowning.
His touch is beyond all of my senses. It’s not the kind of rough ministrations of fucking, but somewhere in between of making love and him showing me his dominance. His strength. His power. I relish in the new feeling of all that is him, and I feel a sense of completion I never realised I’ve been missing.
I am here for him, now. And I will take care of him. And Lenic will take care of me.
No matter what.
He kisses me again with force, but when I shut my eyes he commands me to keep them open, wanting to see every single dilation of pleasure as he slams himself into me with alpha dominance. I am panting so much, and the sound of his thighs clapping against mine, and the heat of our sweat, and the smell of sex, sends a bolt of arousal through my body like electricity.
I try to move a hand to touch him, but I am forbidden, his hands pushing down harder above my head. He growls low against my lips.
He runs his tongue unconsciously along his lips in a way that is so hot without him realising. I can see the look in his eyes, the way those dark eyes look so hard at me, as my breathing becomes shallow, my eyes fluttering as his cock drills barbarously hard into me, and each deliberate quick thrust brings me closer to the edge.
It isn’t just his cock that is bringing me close to cumming. More than anything, it’s the way Lenic maintains eye contact, watching every reaction, as though trying to imprint something in me. And I try to meet that gaze, but hell if I can, as I feel that familiar rush. And I don’t say anything. I don’t moan his name like I usually do, thinking it will break whatever this moment is between us.
My trembling body and my hot aching pussy have never felt so stimulated, so pleasured. His violent thrusts are brutal and fast, and it is almost more than I can bear. My moans turn into loud and uncontrollable cries, trying to find release from somewhere.
My head snaps to the side as Lenic drills in harder and faster, like a machine, completing me in a way I’ve never experienced, sharing with me the essence of primordial humanity. Showing me a piece of him that he reins in daily. Showing me that any weakness he possesses is strength, and this feeling is good and right and — oh god, it feels so good.
Lenic’s rhythm becomes painfully steady all of a sudden, each thrust slow and deliberate, each thrust a contraction of his thighs that I feel against my quaking flesh, driving me mad with the anticipation of each fluid movement. His kisses feel like rain against my shoulders, my lips, as he applies more pressure to my wrists over my head.
I surrender completely to my prone captivity, no will to fight the man who is showing me what real love can feel like. He fills me up with a love I’ve never felt before, a heavy weight upon my heart that is no burden to me.
He starts to slam into me again, with hard force, and loud moans escape me as he hits the small ball of hard flesh inside my warmth, over and over, his cock twitching and swelling with each hit, and my eyes slam shut as my vision whites out against the onslaught.
And then I hear the telltale gasp that Lenic is close … he feels it too.
My hands are begging to grip both of his shoulders, but his strength and dominance deny me permission. His strong, solid frame pushing down on me is the only anchor against the consuming rush inside me. My eyes scream to him that I need him, that I love him.
Everything within me speeds tightly out of control, until I am over the edge with an alarming scream of his name. And suddenly this incredible feeling is washing over me, something that is reaching out to me, begging for me to catch it, grasp it and never let go.
His hands still chaining me down to the bed, he is still in control of me, in so many ways.
Loud and wild groans escape my lips, his tongue taking over mine forcefully, as I feel his white-hot cum explode inside of me.
This was so much more than a quick hard fuck. It felt like a fire ignited between us again, and we were both hard and hot, bodies demanding release in a collision of sweat-soaked skin and lips and teeth.
This, what he just did to me, has given Lenic the one thing he wants more than any other thing in the whole damn world: confirmation that I am his, that I still want him. That despite his fears, his mistakes, there is still a chance for us. And that is why I forgive him, why I would make such passionate love to him despite his transgressions.
In this bursting moment of clarity, I understand him better — so much better. He is hiding, hiding from the things he can’t deal with, hiding from the rest of the world that affection he only shares with me, in little moments like this.
I hate the idea that his pain is unreachable. Lenic is going to fall apart. The only way I can see us surviving, for us to touch forever ... is to catch his fall.
I know. I know too damn well that if I don’t drag him out from his rotting hole, I will lose him one day. And this is why I will do whatever it takes to bring him back to himself.
“I love you,” he whispers, pressing a shaky hand against my face, and it feels hot, our bodies feel so hot.
“I love you so much.” He has sparked an inferno within me, a flame that will take a long time to put out.
We don’t speak another word. The dark of the night is ever silent as we lie down together and close our eyes, everything drained away into nowhere. We fall asleep, holding each other in the darkness.
And never let go.