Tell Me Ariel, Are You Mine?

Chapter 22 - Choices

I never would have imagined he could say such openly mind-shattering things to me. Only moments ago in this very room he'd spoken as if pulling his thoughts straight from his core in a way I never thought I'd ever see from him. Coloured by both rage and passion, they were his truth.

I closed my eyes, remembering the heart of his words, but the ashen smell in the room lingered stubborn against my senses, triggering the image of an innocent man killed and a soul taken by the man who was anxiously holding me right now. That was his demon. I finally saw it. Everything he was.

The truth was I was scared.

But not of Dante. Maybe I should have been? Even after what he'd done...? But the thing is, I'd seen so much more of him before this that made me feel as though I had no reason to be. There was just too much pain in his actions for him to have revelled in it.

It's just...

Greco doesn't belong in this world, Ariel. He was never meant to stay this long... And you...well, you complicate things.

I was a complication.

Nathaniel was not the person I wanted to give any credit to. I didn't want his words to have anything to do with us. I wasn't one to give him any clout over this situation because he would no doubt revel in our destruction if Dante and I were to ever fall apart. But this was different to the usual. This wasn't one of Nate's malicious little rants, bitter retorts or hate-filled onslaughts of vicious abuse. This was one of the honest things he'd told me, the one thing nobody had. Not even Dante. And after what just happened here, I suddenly knew it was true because it was real now.

Dante really was not of this world.

I wondered just how much longer I would have of him in it.

That's what scared me. That I could fall so deeply for someone I might just have to let go of simply because he couldn't control that part of his circumstance.

And there was me having bleated on about how it didn't matter, how we were in this world together and we could make it if we tried. I'm not sure he believed me then, now I wasn't sure I believed myself.

And all I wanted to hear him tell me was that he loved me. But despite wanting to hear him say those words, tonight was the night I suddenly no longer needed him to say it. He'd just told me that his heart belongs to me. His heart for crying out loud... your heart is the centre of you, the core of your being, the reason you breathe, the cage in which your love exists, where it belongs. Where it lives.

You hold everything of love in your heart; your friends, your family, your hobbies, your passions, your dreams, your memories, your joy, sometimes even your sadness. And if someone gives you that part of themselves, how do you dare drop it? It felt like he'd given it to me to hold for him, as if he trusted me with it.  That said more than any three words could ever say. The desperation in his tone when telling me how he felt about me was so compelling, I could feel it in me, and I could feel his pain for us.

Every part of me reacted to his admission. There were a lot of held back tears in that moment, from both of us. A lot of fighting not to fall apart. That was the most open I'd seen him. He was completely laid bare and exposed and as I listened to him, every nuance in his voice, every touch of an expression, it all felt as though his words were being scoured from his very heart, and I felt every word, so much so it was breaking my own.

That one guy who claimed one half of my soul? That one guy in my life I loved but should probably not be with? That was Dante. I knew that now.

But I still wanted him with everything that made my heart beat.