I pressed my lips together, fighting a smile.
He barricaded a part of his garden because it reminded him of me.
Caged it where no one could see it.
“So I lived with your bleeding heart. A poisonous reminder of how much I wanted you. Not much later, I found out you were getting married.”
“You never answered my wedding invitation.” I felt color rising on my skin.
“Everyone has their limits. I draw mine at celebrating my idiocy of pushing you into another man’s arms. Time went by. I’d forgotten about you, mostly. The wheels of life kept on spinning, and no matter how fast or slow they went, I barely even remembered I was on board. Then Paxton left, I’d been appointed CEO of Royal Pipelines, and you showed up at my office, looking for a favor. My initial reaction was to put as much space between us as possible.”
“You didn’t want to feel,” I said softly. He shook his head.
“At this point, I wasn’t even concerned about the possibility of feeling. I was mainly still annoyed about the damn flowers that kept showing up out of nowhere in my backyard. Like you snuck in at night and planted them there. But then the need for a bride arose…”
“Yes, and you had multiple candidates to choose from. You canceled the engagement to Minka Gomes. Why?”
He frowned at the bed of flowers.
“She wasn’t you.”
“She could’ve been pregnant by now.”
“It was never about having an heir,” he quipped. A gorgeous, irresistible king who was misjudged and misunderstood. “Deep down, I wasn’t altruistic enough to give a fuck about the lineage.”
I glanced at my phone. We had half an hour at most before his wish was over.
“Tell me about the Tourette’s,” I pleaded. “Everything, right from the beginning. I’ve only seen a few videos, but they were enough to show me what you’ve been through.”
“It started with simple tics, right after my father fired Andrew Senior, and moved to full-blown attacks by the time I’d gotten back to England after summer break. The lonelier I felt, the worse they became. I’d been in and out of clinics, and on top of Tourette’s, I also received comorbid diagnosis of having OCD and ASD. To me, it felt like the end of the world. People think of Tourette’s as crazy people who shout out obscenities against their own will in rags on the street, OCD as compulsively obsessive maniacs who wash their hands fifteen times an hour, and ASD means I’m on the autism spectrum. Which basically makes people think I’m some sort of Rain Man. Good with numbers, dumb at everything else.
“Quickly, I’d realized I needed to rein in this condition if I wanted to become all the things I was born to be. I learned that while I couldn’t control the tics, I could control what made them happen. And what made them happen was my being overwhelmed with emotion. Any type of emotion. Whether it was sadness, distress, anger, fear, or even joy. If I was excited—if my heart raced—the pressure of an attack usually followed. As long as I didn’t allow myself to feel, I kept the tics at bay. It was very simple and worked for everyone involved.”
This explained so much.
Why Cillian was so fond of his leather gloves—he didn’t like touching strange things, due to his OCD.
Why he managed to disconnect from his feelings so efficiently when they became a complication.
Why he always cracked his knuckles—to regulate his breaths, to self-soothe. It was a tic. A reminder of what he had to live with. He couldn’t switch off who he was. Not fully. No matter how hard he tried.
Why he always kept his guard up.
Why he ignored me for years instead of caving in to temptation.
“Everyone but you. You’re the one who couldn’t feel anything.”
“I survived fine.”
“Surviving is not enough.”
“I know that now.” His sultry eyes twinkled at me. “Thanks to you.”
The air between us became thick and charged. He took my hand in his. Such a simple gesture, yet it felt as though he plucked the stars from the sky for me. He pressed my hand against his heart. It raced beneath my palm, thudding violently, desperate to smash the barrier between us and jump into my fist.
The strongest hearts have the most scars.
“Keep it here until I’m done,” he instructed, drawing a deep breath.
“I want you.” He lifted one finger. “I’ve always wanted you with a hunger that made my chest ache and my mouth dry. That’s one emotion. I am jealous and possessive of you. In case you haven’t noticed.” He erected two more fingers in the air. “I worry and fear for you. When I discovered why you’d decided to work for Andrew, I wanted to skin you alive for putting yourself at risk for me. That’s two more.” He splayed his entire hand over an invisible screen between us, stretching all five fingers.
“Five emotions down, five more to go. You’ve made me the happiest I’ve ever been. Also the saddest.” He now lifted two fingers of his other hand. “And caused me an infinite amount of pain and pleasure.”
There was only one finger left curled now.
One emotion he still hadn’t unveiled.
The watch on his wrist said it was five to five. Only five more minutes before Auntie Tilda’s wish evaporated and we ran out of time to say all the things we wanted to say.
My breath hitched.
“I love you, Persephone,” he growled. “I love you so fucking hard. Somewhere along the way, I softened. I may have saved you from a bleeding heart, but your bleeding heart saved me. Ten emotions are not twenty-seven. There’s still more to go, but I want to take this journey with you.
“We are not Hades and Persephone, Flower Girl. Never were. I didn’t drag you down a dark path. You pulled me into the light. Helpless, I followed. Blindly, I got burned. I am Icarus.” The clock hit five. Our sixty minutes were up. The alarm on my phone beeped to tell me so, but I smacked the side button to silence it. “I love you as he loved the sun. Too close. Too hard. Too fast.”
He dipped his head, his mouth closing in on mine. I went limp in his arms. He gathered me to his chest, strong and resilient, steadfast. A cold king in his poisonous garden, finally letting the sunrays touch his skin.
We sank down to the ground on our knees, and I no longer feared the earth would open its jaw and swallow me into the underworld.