Dangerous Love//Shawn Mendes

Chapter 34

The first thing I was aware of was the tender brushing of his lips on mine, and then delicate kisses as gentle as the wings of a butterfly making their way down my neck.

'Wake up baby.' He said into my collarbone, and I groaned as I tangled my fingers in his hair and he lightly sucked on my skin.

Drawing his lips away, he tucked a lock of my hair behind my ear, looking at me intently for a few seconds. It still surprised me how just a look could make me feel, and as we stared intently at each other, it felt like an entire conversation had taken place within our eyes.

'How are you feeling about today?' He said tentatively, and even before the words had left his mouth I felt my stomach drop. It was the day of the funeral, and if I was being honest I didn't feel close to ready to do this, to face everyone, to face the loss. It felt so impersonal, to know that almost a hundred people would soon gather to commemorate the lives of my parents, because that's what they were; my parents, the centre of my world. One thing I was certain of that morning was that nobody could even come close to feeling the way that I was; their hearts may have been bruised, but mine was broken in every sense of the word, crushed, lifeless, empty, devoid of all feeling, and nobody could pretend to understand what that was like. In my train of thought Shawn's question had eluded me, but he took my silence as answer enough. His eyes were soft as they searched my blank face, as though I was so fragile that even his gaze required gentleness, so as not to break me.

The thing about this grief was that I never seemed to be able to break through it, as least not for more than a few hours. Thinking back to the day before on the kitchen counter, when lust had buzzed around us as we became lost in each other, it had all seemed bearable. The ache was still there, it probably always would be, but right there in that corner of my world, where all that existed was him and I, I wasn't thinking about any of it.

But as nice as it was, it was a short-lived sanctuary from my own emotions, and it wasn't long before the weight came crashing down on me again. I held on to the comfort of our intimacy as the overdose of hormones levelled out and I started to feel everything at full force, and Shawn stood and held me in the middle of the kitchen as I fell apart all over again. Despite my feelings of elation just minutes earlier, it would never be enough to make me forget, and I had been naïve to think so in the first place. He didn't try to say anything as my tears dripped onto his bare chest, he just held me tightly enough that I could feel his heartbeat rippling in my veins, and his breath moving through my hair. And that was what I needed; he knew.

He did the same now as the wave of emotions washed over me yet again, as it seemed to do almost periodically. He wrapped his arms around me and gently rubbed across my cool skin, watching clouds form behind my eyes as I was pulled away, somewhere else entirely. Back to the fire, the fire that didn't need to happen. Back to the screams from the very depths of my mother's lungs, which still echoed in every corner of my mind even days later. And back to the fight, the fight where I threw it all away, never to be undone.

'Baby don't torture yourself.' He said softly, recognising my absent mind and gently easing it back to the present. I swallowed, unable to stop my tears from brimming over onto my cheeks.

'What if there was something I could have done, what if I had been down there- down there when it- I could have gotten them out, I should have saved them-' I gasped. It wouldn't have made sense to Shawn, it didn't even make much sense to me, but even those jumbled words, echoes of the thoughts in my head, hurt like knives as they stumbled from my mouth. It was something I'd been too afraid to speak, and even now it's something that I can't bear to think about. If only I had known, if only I could have done something.

'Hey hey hey, shhh' He pulled my head into his chest as he sat up, drawing me into his lap like a small child.

'Look at me, Eleanor there is nothing you could have done, with that kind of fire there's just-there's nothing anyone can do to stop it, okay? I need you to believe me.' I looked back at him with little conviction, my face crumpling as the thoughts continued to eat away at me.