28
Juliet
I crawled into bed, Tack following me. My emotions were conflicted, and I was exhausted. Our love making had been passionate as always, but I struggled to stay focused. I shivered with the thought of Rory touching me, my mind racing with evil memories, seeing Tack in my memories. His eyes over me then. Each time I scrambled back to the past, my heart pulled me forward. His eyes under me in the present, looking at me, like he did tonight. Lost. Confused. Hesitant. I couldn’t look at him. In my head, I blamed him. In my heart, I didn’t.
I didn’t understand all that happened, but I wanted to. I understood wanting parental approval, even without having parents for years, but he didn’t need it. Not when they couldn’t see he’d atoned. He was changed. He was better. Tack was a success in his own right. He didn’t need them, but I still understood he wanted their acceptance all the same.
My mind raced, and I just wanted it to stop running. My eyes finally closed but I couldn’t sleep. Tack was a demon in my head, but he was also the man who chased away those monsters as he held me, reassuring me with his love, his touch, his words, it would never happen again. He’d protect me. He’d cherish me. But what did I give to him?
“Will I be enough for you?” I asked. I felt him shift behind me, rising up on an elbow and resting his chin on my shoulder. I spun to bury my face in his chest.
“I used to think I imagined you. I believed in what I wrote in my dissertation. You were a vision provided for me to control, conquer, and take back who I was. But I’d never be the same again because of you…and them. I’d also never be restored without you. I didn’t want you to be a vision and then I didn’t want you to be real, when Lillian told me you were. I just wanted you to be mine, only for me. Someone to call my own. The island was the only place for that to happen. I can’t join you here, on the other side of the water.”
“Don’t say that,” he pleaded, stroking back my hair. “Don’t sound like it’s over,” his voice lowered. My eyes searched his without knowing what I was looking for. I wanted to believe in him, in us, but tonight proved we could not be us with them. He continued his path over my ear and down my neck as he spoke.
“I used to think I imagined you, too. On the island, Garvey had me convinced you couldn’t possibly be there, but you seemed so real to me. Then we had that fight and you disappeared. One whole week I hadn’t seen you and decided you’d been a vision, one I tried to conjure again. Each day I came to the tree house, willing the vision to be true. I didn’t deserve you, but I wanted you. I missed you, and it wasn’t just because we were the only two people on the island. It was because you looked at me. You saw who I was. You saw that I was flawed, and you didn’t let me forget it. I wasn’t just getting away with something like I typically would. I was being drawn to something. And then you forgave me. I saw it happening. Your eyes shifted, and you softened toward me. You looked at me in a different way. And I liked it. I liked it so much, I began to think you were my redemption. After all that had happened, I was on course to have you as mine, only in a different way, a better way.” He rolled his head to look at the ceiling. “I can’t merge the two together, Juliet. The me that I was and the me that I’ve become.”
He took a deep breath.
“I’m sorry I took you on this path again. I should have asked you if you even wanted to go there. I won’t go to Consequence again. I’ll sell it. All the profits for The Mouse Trap. I don’t want to look back, but I’m suddenly having trouble going forward like I promised.”
A tear slipped from my eyes as I nodded my head. There he was. The man I knew speaking his heart and breaking mine at the same time. His arms wrapped around me, and I pressed my lips to the bare skin of his chest. His breath hitched, and I wondered if he remembered when I did this the first time.
I love you wildly, I whispered in my heart, willing the words into his. I knew it back then when I made the same motion. I knew it now, and I knew when he left me, I’d still feel the same way forever.
+ +
Was I surprised that he was gone in the morning? I wanted to think I was, but I wasn’t. My heart felt it happening. Before we went to the new club, he had slipped away from me. He gave me last night after our world crashed to clear the memory. But it wouldn’t be enough. There was no way to erase all that had happened. I’d only have to live with it, as I once had.
I stood slowly, my body abused from the rapid sex in my living room and then the slow lovemaking we had during the late night. His powerful body took its time to enter me, drawing out each ripple of pleasure like a slow dance. Hips gyrated in a melodic rhythm. A vixen tempting her hunter. A snake charming its prey. We were one, but we were different. Things were not the same. He’d never been so gentle. His hands seemed to memorize me. A slow drive on a backroad, taking the curves with care and admiring the view. His mouth traced over me, leaving no part of me unkissed, undiscovered. I tingled, every fiber of my being alert as he touched me and entered me and dragged out two slow, sweet orgasms. That would be my memory of him. Of us.
I stared at the bed as I stood beside it. He’d taken over my world again, marking me in my own bed. Entering my living room, I realized he’d done it here as well. Couch. Counter. No room was sacred except my bathroom. I entered it and showered, washing away his touch along with the tears.
I returned to my kitchen area in search of a glass of water to quench my throat parched from the sobs. On the counter, a piece of paper caught my attention.
I’ll find you.
Tears sprang again. An image of him returned to my mind. His cut jaw. His green eyes alight with flecks of gold, the sunlight haloed behind his head. A crooked smile, curling at the corner of his lips.
Look at me, I said in my head to him.
I want you to see me, he replied without words.
He was looking at me. He saw me. And I saw him. Clutching the note to my chest, I knew what this meant. Goodbye, island. Goodbye.