The Contradiction of Solitude(87)

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.

He ran from the devil, but a monster found him. She had been searching for as long as he had been running. She wanted to set him free. She wanted to give him a story. A perfect, beautiful story that the monster had written just for him. A story of blood and bones. And a love that mattered not at all.

Sad, sweet Elian rose and he rose until he found the stars. Then he was one of them.

With Stella. Elizabeth. Rose. Jessica. Emma.

With Amelia.

They were all together.

It’s where he belonged.

“I love you.” His voice was broken and torn. His eyes bright and full.

I looked up at the beautiful man who loved me and for one blissful second I saw it. The future he wanted. The life he thought we could build. The house and the song. The laughter and the beating, beating heart that went on and on and on.

“I’m not him,” I whispered.

Liar.

“You’re not him,” Elian promised, kissing me again.

Liar.

I fell into him. Sweet and supple. Languid and gentle. Tongues and teeth and passion all tied together with the blood.

“Leave it behind, Layna,” Elian said against my lips.

Leave it behind.

I put my palm over his heart.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Now. Now. Now.

“You can’t forget about the stars, Elian,” I told him. He frowned, not understanding. I didn’t expect him to.

It was my story. My secret to keep.

And I would never tell.

Not to him.

Not to Matt.

Not to anyone.

It was mine.

And my father’s.

It was ours.

“What are you talking about, Layna?” Elian asked, his hold loosening just enough for me to pull away.

Run away…run away…

“It doesn’t matter. Not now. Not anymore,” I said, lengthening the distance between us until I had to close it once again.

But for a very different reason.

“Tell me you’ll leave with me. Tell me our lives begin here. Right now,” Elian pleaded as though seeing something in my coal black eyes that worried him.

Something that scared him.

He tried to hold onto the fantasy. It’s the only hope he had.

“My life begins right now,” I whispered, feeling the darkness ever present. Tainting me. Tainting Elian.

The unrelenting beast.

I grinned. My face radiated the happiness I felt deep inside.

A happiness I could only feel during moments like this.

I had felt it many times before Elian. And I would feel it many times after him.

He wasn’t the first.

He wasn’t the last.

He was the right now.

And he mattered.

“Layna?” Elian posed my name as a question. He was a smart man. He knew.

I didn’t say anything.

Words weren’t necessary.

“Layna,” he said again, my name sounding sad on his lips.

You could never forget the stars.

They wouldn’t let you.



I stared out over the quarry. The waters rippling from the recent disturbance, slowly, on and on. Then calming once again. Flat…unaffected.

The sky was almost light. The moon long gone.

But the stars. Always the stars. They watched over me.

Telling their stories.

And tonight there was a new story to tell.

The most important story.

The one with the only possible ending for a woman like me.

The wind began to pick up and blew across my skin, sticky and warm.

I could smell him all over me. Not his hair or his breath, but inside.

I went back into the cabin, relishing in the solitude and loathing it at the same time. Despising the contradiction.

Echoes of the people who had lived and died there pressed in, smothering me with their deceptions. With their honesty. With their memories.

Shadows of the man and woman who had died there only hours before encroached and threatened me with panic. Our lives splashed in crimson across the grass.

Because we were gone and all that was left was…this.

I stood at the kitchen sink, staring out at Elian’s perfect, blue quarry. The sun just coming up over the horizon. A beautiful start to a beautiful day.