“Neil, it’s—”
“I don’t give a fuck about the goddamn pen. I care about the woman I love. The woman I know is the love of my life. My soul mate. The one I am meant to spend the rest of my life with. Who I’m not going to wake up beside one day and decide she’s not good enough for me.” His voice is low, even, and some of the rage has gone out of his expression, but his eyes are still just as intense. “It’s been twenty-four years since my last relationship. Since the only other relationship I ever had in my life. She was the one I thought I was supposed to be with,” he says, and my heart sinks as jealousy screams inside me.
I’ve never asked about this woman in his past. I never dug deeper when he mentioned her before. But now, hearing him say he’d thought she was The One, I need to know what happened. I need to know why she left, how she could’ve given up this dreamlike hero of a man, what she did to break his heart so thoroughly that he hasn’t had a relationship since, until he met me over two decades later.
My eyes flit to the ink once more, seeing its descent along his pinkie, knowing it’s about to drip on his carpet, and I can’t let that happen. I can’t let him ruin something in his home because of the self-deprecating shit I spewed, knowing he can’t fucking stand it when I do that, but I had to get it out. That’s what therapy is, right? A safe place to voice the bad shit inside your head? Even so, it would be my fault for pushing him like that. And since he’s ordered me not to leave, and I can’t run get a towel to catch it in, I do the first thing that pops into my head.
Right as the ink builds at the bottom of his fist, looking like a droplet of dark blood about to fall to the cream carpet below, I grasp hold of the bottom hem of my new sky-blue baby doll shirt, whip it over my head, and fall to my knees at his feet, catching the ink as I wrap his hand in the soft fabric.
I feel his fist between my hands and glance at the rug below, seeing no blackness touched its flawless cream fibers and sighing in relief. When I look back up at him, his eyes hold a new emotion, one I can’t clearly read, and it’s not until he lowers his gaze to my chest that I remember I hadn’t been wearing anything beneath my shirt. So now I kneel before him, my breasts naked as I clutch at his hand like a peasant begging her king on his throne.
And I am, aren’t I? This home is his castle, and I was the beggar he took in and made me fall in love with him. And now I’m waiting to hear a story I know will break my heart. I’m sure he’s going to tell me something about the one he loved and who dumped him, and how he’s now settling for me just so he doesn’t have to be lonely in this big fortress anymore.
“She was the one I thought I was meant to be with,” he reiterates, digging the knife in my heart a little deeper, “until I met you, Astrid.”
I close my eyes, not believing him. There’s no way that’s true.
“I need to tell you something. Something no one else in this entire world knows—not even my team,” he says, and my eyes shoot to his. He wants to confide in me? He wants to tell me something that he’s never divulged to people he calls his family, people he’s known for a decade or more?
I’m suddenly nervous. What secret could he possibly have that he’s never told a single soul?
“But you have to promise me, goddess, you have to promise never to tell anyone, no matter what, and I pray to God you’ll still see me as your hero when I’m through.” His voice is serious but ends on a note of hope. It’s worrisome, wondering what he needs to tell me, but at the same time I know there’s nothing in the world that could possibly make me look at him any differently.
I nod shallowly. “Okay,” I whisper, as if someone might hear our conversation, this big secret he’s held onto for who knows how long.
He closes his eyes and begins to talk, and I stay there, holding his fist between my hands, watching the emotions play over his face.
He tells me about the girl he fell in love with in the second grade. Shelly. Who brought light into the shy and serious, young Neil’s life like he’d never known before. They were inseparable. Together from elementary school all the way up through high school. And then something terrible happened. Shelly was assaulted at a party while Neil was at home sick.