by Faye Pierce
“I was aiming for him…that day…and then I never would have been involved in your life in the first place. If you hadn’t gotten in the way at the last minute…”
No amount of explaining will ever make this better. “You’re the one who shot me?” My face screws up in a mess of disbelief as I push away from the table myself. “It was you?”
Leo doesn’t have to answer. I can see the answer clearly on his face. Years of physical therapy, half a dozen corrective surgeries, and years in and out of the hospital...of course he was the one who accompanied me so often. It was guilt combined with pity. He never wanted me, not in the way that I wanted him. He did all of this to ease his conscience and hurt Caspian at the same time, and nothing else. I’ve been tricked by him a second time.
I don’t know if I expect him to say something else, to apologize, to have a magical turn of phrase that will make it better, but suddenly the ring on my hand feels like a weight. It might as well be a noose around my neck.
Leo takes a step toward me, as if he wants to say something but cannot phrase it right, and I take a step in the opposite direction. “Don’t.” I warn, backing toward the door, turning to leave as soon as I know he’s not going to stop me. I take off for safe haven. Any haven.
I don’t know how I end up back in my room, but I do. I run through the halls in a state of shock, tears blurring my vision as I go. When I finally find the room designated as my own, my personal prison cell, I throw myself on the bed. Despair eats me, consuming me from the inside out, and no matter how hard I cry, I cannot get my tears to push the pain out of my body.
So I cry and cry, and cry some more, until my body gives way to nothingness.
Chapter Ten
Leo
I shot her.
The guilt of that didn’t change when I shared my truth with her. If anything, I feel worse. Seeing the look on her face when she realized what I meant, that I wasn’t kidding. Of course, she has every right to be angry with me. It’s one of the worst things I’ve ever done.
I changed her life, and I continue to do so. I know that’s not something that she’s going to forgive easily. I know that she’s not going to take a minute to cry it out and then be willing to listen to me. It’s going to be difficult for her to look me in the eyes again.
Tonight is our wedding night, and instead of spending the evening tangled together, she’s in her room down the hall, alone.
The sobbing stopped about an hour ago. I didn’t dare leave her door before it went quiet, just in case. I debated going inside more than once. I never meant for her to find out, but, this portion of my plan wasn’t supposed to include a wedding, and I cannot start our union with such a huge secret. Telling her the true last name that she’s taken was the start of a new understanding between us. I am prepared to fill her in on all of the rest. I thought that we could eat, talk things out. I intended to give her space to ask any questions that she might have, and I promised myself to answer them. I knew that the news of what Caspian did to me, to my father, was going to come as a shock to her. I hadn’t meant to get so worked up, but it’s a sensitive subject.
Now I’m lying in my bed alone, and sleep refuses to come to me either.
I can’t deny that this outcome is better than what I hoped for. I didn’t have to force Midnight down the aisle kicking and screaming; she came with me willingly. She stood in my arms, and she committed to loving me forever...and my damned mouth had to go and ruin it. I didn’t think that it would hurt me this much to see her in so much pain. It’s like rehab all over again.
I always volunteered to go with her, to wait outside of the door as her chaperone. Each wince or grunt of pain that she made was like daggers in me. I had thought that was the end of her life as she knew it. Midnight was a very promising dancer, skilled. She was the sort of dancer who made the moves look so effortless it seemed like anybody would be able to simply stand up and do the same thing as natural as breathing, and I stole that from her.
Yet she thrived. The physical therapists would tell her to take it easy, not to push herself too hard, and she always refused. They were the ones that had to beg her to quit, to stop moving. She might cry, and she might shout terrible things, but she always showed up, and she never quit. I liked her before, I certainly was attracted to her, but I think I loved her then. Even when something terrible threatened everything she ever knew, she fought.
If she really hadn’t wanted to marry me, she would have fought that too.
My sheets still smell like her, like us from the night before.
I can’t take this. Enough is enough.
I throw myself out of my bed and yank my door open. My pajama pants swishing against the carpet as they pool around my ankles is the only sound in the house, definitely on this floor.
It’s a short walk from my door to her room, and I don’t knock. This is not how we are going to start our lives together. I cannot undo what I’ve done, and I just have to make her see that I’ve already done my penance for this, even if she didn’t know that’s what I was doing. If she decided on some additional punishment to make things right in her eyes, then I will happily take that as well.
I have a dozen half formed ideas in my head about how to wake her best, but she’s not asleep. The light from the bathroom is casting a strange sideways glow on her exposed skin where she sits on the end of the bed. She doesn’t look up as I close the door, doesn't acknowledge me at all as I cross the room to her, and I sink down to a knee in front of her to level our playing field.
Even with her eyes swollen from crying she’s the most breathtaking thing I’ve ever seen.
Midnight brings her legs up to her chest, turning her head away from me as her chin rests on her knee. We sit in silence for a long moment, her steady breathing making me nervous.
“I keep expecting you to kick me or to find any number of things to throw at my head,” I tell her.
“I can if you like.” I hate how hollow she sounds.
“I think your rage would be easier to handle.”
“I’m not interested in what you think is easier to handle.”
I glance down at my ring on her finger. She didn’t take it off, so she’s not leaving. “You didn’t run.” I don’t phrase it like it’s a question, but it is one. I keep expecting the worst, certainly now.
“What’s the point? Your goons would just drag me back in here. I wouldn’t make it far anyway.” She turns to look at me, her eyes daggers. “I have a bum leg and all; some asshole shot me, you know.”
Slowly, I reach my hand for her foot, and she doesn’t pull away. I brush my thumb against the top of her foot, my mouth dry. I didn’t think it was going to be this hard to have this conversation. “That asshole never would have hurt you on purpose.”
“No, he just likes to kidnap me, tie me to beds, steal all my privacy, among other things.”
“You like those other things.” My brow lifts in innuendo, but she doesn’t take the bait, attempting to pull her foot away from me finally. I grab her by the ankle instead, keeping her rooted where she is.
“I did what I had to do, Midnight.”
Midnight chews on her bottom lip, glancing off at some random spot in the room again. It appears that she’s done speaking to me about this, or anything else.
I can’t have that. My thumb brushes against the skin of her ankle. I loosen my grip, sliding my fingers up the curve of her calf. I dip my head to the inside of her calf and kiss her softly. It’s not a verbal apology, but I know that she will hear it for what it is. I cup the back of her knee and kiss the inside of the joint there chastely. She’s not parting her legs or unfolding her arms any further than my movements are forcing her to move, but she still isn’t kicking me away.
I lower her leg to the floor on the outside of my body, and shuffle forward on my knees to close that space, lifting her hand from her knee and kissing the back of her palm, then the inside of her wrist, her inner forearm, and then drape her arm around my neck, al
lowing me to be closer to her still. If I can get through to her this way, then it will be enough. She just has to look at me. She just needs to allow herself to feel how sorry I am.
Slowly, not unlike one would approach a dangerous but wounded animal, I kiss the inside of her bicep, her shoulder, her clavicle with the same testing, cautious kisses, attempting to evoke a reaction from her. Any reaction would be better than this. Anything at all. She could bite or hit me, something that would show a spark of life, but she doesn’t even seem angry with me. She seems like she’s all but left her body.
I’ll just have to bring her back.
She has to face this with me, she has to.
I reach a hand around her to the back of her wedding dress, finding the laces that tighten the corseted top, cleverly hiding the zipper beneath. I loosen them. I lower the zipper, but I don’t undress her, not yet. I push up from the floor slowly, easing her backward on the bed and positioning myself on top of her. I kiss her neck, and she rolls her head away from me. Pulling one strap down her shoulder, I cover the space in kisses, trailing my course with my tongue as my hand finds her breast and kneads her soft skin. And she gasps.
The relief that floods me is immediate, palpable.
Just a small little intake of breath, but it’s the permission that I need to touch her more. I explore her body with my hands. It doesn’t matter that I had her last night, or the night before that. I don’t think that even if I’ve had her in every room of our house starting now and stretching onto forever that it will ever be enough. So many nights when we lived with Caspian, I imagined myself finding my way into her rooms late at night, or her being bold enough to come find me. I’ve imagined every sort of fantasy, and now I get to take my time indulging in each one of them. When I’ve done them all, we will have to dream up new ones together.
I can hear her breath quicken, even if she doesn’t turn to me. That’s fine. She doesn’t have to look at me. I massage her breasts and squeeze her thighs, kissing any bit of skin I desire.
“You can be angry. You have every right to be.” I mutter between kisses.
Midnight might wish it wasn’t, but her body is responding to me. There’s the tell-tale flush of desire across her chest, and I want so badly to pull her dress from her and bury myself inside of her. I want to show her physically all of the words that I’ve been unable to piece together verbally. I could apologize with my skin on hers, my tongue worshiping her.
“I didn’t get to finish my narration earlier,” I say.
If I cover her with love bites, staking my claim and allowing her to do the same, would that be enough? Does she have a price in mind for her penance? Can such a thing be forgiven? It has to be. I will not accept any other answer.
“You can be angry all you like, but I can’t let you shut down. I cannot be the reason you give up.” My hand finds her knee and pushes her legs open with soft suggestion, and she allows it to fall to the side, protesting only a second. “I can’t say that I would do anything differently if I was given the chance to do it all over again, Midnight.”
She’s wet and ready for my fingers as they find her center, my middle finger running along her slit, teasing, so I know she’ll pay attention. I cup her in my hand possessively. I’m still not over how responsive she is.
“If I could have a magic wand that would ensure you were locked away in your room somewhere, then I would have kept you away, but I still would have tried to shoot him, Midnight. I only joined Caspian to avenge my father. I deserve my revenge, and my father deserves to be avenged. I deserved to have a shot at that life.”
She nods. It’s a small jerk of a movement, but I don’t miss it. I would give anything to know what she’s thinking right now. Midnight won’t ever fully understand the depths of what is between myself and Caspian, but she doesn’t have to. I know her loyalty to her brother is deep and unshakable. If she can just see things from my perspective, I think she’ll understand. Maybe.
“After the accident...I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t believe that you were now tangled up in the middle of everything, when were only just getting to know one another before…I think I was starting to fall for you even then. I had never been in a serious relationship, and I’m not the sort of man to sit and watch romantic movies. I certainly didn’t have a good example of love in my life, Midnight. I think I learned how to love by watching you, by seeing the way that you care for everybody around you.”
My words trail off. I did not even realize that was how I really felt until I said the words out loud. I never bothered dating seriously in my younger years. The life I was raised in didn’t lend itself easily to things like that. Casual flings, but nothing I ever wanted to keep. Not until Midnight.
“I didn’t mean to develop feelings for you, and I knew that if I ever acted on them, I could lose everything. Everything that I worked years for. Everything that I’ve been building toward since I was seventeen. I couldn’t allow my possible affections for you to blind me toward that, but the more time that we spent together, the harder it was to deny it to myself. I knew Caspian would kill me if he ever found out. Yet, I also knew that I had gotten close to Caspian. I wanted nothing more than to destroy him and the empire that he’s built from the inside. If I could get close to him, then somebody else could too. I couldn’t allow that; I couldn’t risk it.”
It was a double job to watch those around Caspian, protecting him and Midnight from any outside force that wasn't myself. Caspian has no shortage of enemies; everybody in our lifestyle does. Caspian has blind sides that are only too easy to exploit, so in order to ensure that I was the only one to get close, I had to actually do the job he thought I did. If it hadn’t been for me Caspian would have long-mourned his wife.
I pause, and when I look up, Midnight’s looking right at me, intently focused.
“If somebody else were to get close to Caspian they might hurt you in order to get to him. So I had to stay close to him; I had to protect you no matter what. I couldn’t allow somebody like me to hurt you, even if I had already done it. I tried to keep you away from everything that Caspian was involved in, and I hate that it meant keeping you away from me too. I don’t ever want to be away from you, Midnight.”
My chest tightens, and a vulnerable ache that I’ve never felt before stabs like lightning through my chest. “Not ever, Midnight. I love you.”
Chapter Eleven
Midnight
I love you.
The three words rattle around in my head and ring true. There’s something fragile about the way that Leo says the words so softly. I don’t think they are words he’s said often before in his life, perhaps ever. There’s not a hint of a lie on his face. He looks so open, almost scared that I might reject him. As if I could ever do that.
My heart hurts for him, for the life that he lived. My childhood wasn’t the easiest either, growing up in a toxic household with a severely alcoholic father and a mother who hadn’t ever grown a spine. Yet through it all, I had Caspian. I had him for everything and anything that I ever needed. I could turn to him and there it was. I wouldn’t have made it out of there, out of that house or the miserable existence we lived, without him. I owe my brother so much, and Leo knows that. There’s no way that he spent that many years with us without forming an attachment of some kind to my brother, but he hasn’t mentioned that at all. If he thought that Caspian really was nothing more than a father murdering fiend, he would have done something more, love for me or not.
How lonely Leo’s life must have been, to have nobody to rely on but himself. How hard he had to become to simply exist. I don’t know what I would be like If I had my family ripped from me like that. I might feel the same if somebody stole Caspian from me...probably something similar to how Caspian is feeling right now as he frantically tries everything in his power to get me back where he can keep an eye on me.
After my accident, the guilt nearly crippled him as well. He took the blame, even when I told him not to. I tried to explain tha
t I never blamed him, but he wouldn’t hear of it. It was like my accident shattered the illusion that I was some untouchable, impervious thing that nobody could harm, like a conduit of his own fragility. That with the power he gained, he did have things to lose that he wouldn’t recover from. I understand.
Just like I understand what my husband is telling me now.
Leo brushes a tear from the apple of my cheek that I didn’t know fell.
“I wish you had talked to me about all of this. I don’t like feeling like some pawn to be traded back and forth in this game of power between you and my brother.”
“I didn’t mean to make you feel like a pawn, Midnight.” Leo nods, his forehead dropping to my sternum. “For so long, my revenge has been the only thing keeping me on my feet. It’s the only reason I have to get up in the morning and not simply lay down and give up. It was my goal, my mission, my everything...”