The Villain (Boston Belles, #2)(118)

Kill crouched down, hands-on-thighs, squinting. There was something about his body language that jarred me. A certain stiffness that was gone. His composure was an inch less than perfect. I liked it.

“What are we looking at?” I came to stand beside him, leaning forward. He caught me by the waist, tugging softly at my dress to keep me from getting too close to the flowers.

To the sea of flowers.

I just realized this section of the house was jam-packed with wildflowers. And not just any flowers. The pink and white flowers were shaped as little sad hearts. I swallowed, taking a step back.

“How long have you had those?”

“Almost four years.” He turned to me with a slight frown. “About a month after Hunter and Sailor’s wedding, my landscaper called me outside, insisting I had to see this. He said it was peculiar. That he didn’t plant the bleeding heart, so he had no idea how the flower had gotten here. His best guess was seeds from a nearby garden blew in the wind and settled here. But I remembered that after I took the flowers from your hair, I put them in a napkin. Later that night, when I arrived home, I went out to the garden to smoke a cigar, found the napkin, and tossed it. It was just the one flower, and my landscaper asked if I wanted to keep it. I immediately thought about your curse—wish,” he amended, “and said no. He yanked the bleeding heart out from its root the same day. A month later, another bleeding heart grew in the same spot. I had him wrench it out again. This time he went as far as poisoning the soil. On the fourth time, I gave up. A part of me wanted to see how damn stubborn you were. And look at it now. My garden’s full of them.”

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.”