Hey all. To anyone who has wanted to read this update,sorry about the time its taken to post this. I couldn't get the ending right. I have literally written the ending NOW. There may be a typo somewhere in it, but i'm off to bed now (as I always am after an update). There's no instant gratification with this chapter (sorry). They need to talk. You'll either like it or not (obviously), can't please you all but I know where i'm going with it so that's the way it is. Sticking to my guns. And Thank You to everyone for every comment and vote on the last chapter. Wonderful stuff! I'm sure you're used to my chappy lengths by now. ..anyways, onwards...
Chapter 22 – Choices
I was once told there was a certain kind of boy in every girl's life that she will always love but she should never be with. The kind of boy who claimed her soul, but could never really be her future. He's the one you love with every piece of the heart he so desperately claims, but he's not the one you settle with. You settle with the good guy, the one you can rely on, the one who is a part of your world and will be there in your world with you.
The one who can be.
If Dante was anything else, he'd be a comet; completely strikes you, is rare and so very extraordinary, enters your life in a seeming flash and is so immense an experience it leaves an impression. An impression on your mind, in your heart, through your soul, against your skin, and all over every inch of your body as though claiming ownership, as if I were his property and I'd just signed over the deeds to me. That fast, but that incredible.
Dante was one of these wonders, these physically magnificent men who almost seemed as though they were conjured from a dream, a fantasy, as if he were the stuff of reverie. I could literally stare at him all day wondering how a demon could be so beautiful...He was it; fire, spirit, passion, rapture. He bordered on obsession. Honestly, how could I let go of such a man?
To look at him, he looked like any one of us, in form anyway. To see us walk down the street together we were just two regular people. You wouldn't think anything of it. In fact I longed for the day when we could simply hold hands down the street with not a care between us other than what we were going to prepare for dinner that night. Normal was heaven with him. Normal never felt so good when that little piece of normal was us. That little piece of the regular world. But he wasn't a regular person. He was about as regular as that flash-across-the-sky comet. A man like no other.
Sometimes I thought he would be that comet in my life. That he would appear out of nowhere and catapult himself into my existence. That he would light up my ever static world, ignite me and set me ablaze, and then just as quickly, fizzle away, fade into nothing. As if the beauty of what I'd just seen was too good to be true.
As if good things don't last.
I lay over him having been rolled over by his arms secure around me, moulded by my body against his but propped up on his chest. I put my hand against his chest touching the blood-stained front; a clear reminder of what had taken place between him and Nate earlier. The burnt singe against the base of his sleeve a nod to his power. The heat through his skin, a sign of the rage brought on by the demon inside. In more ways than one, he was a demon fighting his demons.
I could feel the weight of his breath against me, an awaiting breath, the kind of loaded inhale that held the deepest of burdens, as if it carried a thousand thoughts, a thousand worries, a thousand questions and a thousand hopes. A reminder of what he'd said to me only moments ago. The look in his eyes was telling me so much, I just knew he wanted to ask me; was he worth enough for me to want to fight for? Or was I leaving him? There was no in between.
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.
I still had faith in him.
And I wanted to fight for him.
"What are you thinking?" he asked me softly, looking down his nose to catch my bleak eyes. He was surprisingly tender considering, but his next words were touched by fear. "Do I even want to know?" he said in a solemn tone.
His breath still layering over my skin, I involuntarily flexed my fingers over his arm hard as if I was kneading it in my hand, trying to hold onto him as an unwelcome uncertainty came over me. I had stiffened with the deepest of drawn breaths and tried to push away distressing tangled thoughts.
"Hey," he said softly as he felt my fingers tauten over his arm, his brows furrowed as he searched my face, "Baby...?" he paused for a second as he looked between my flickering eyes, his held both a look of concern and a tender affection, "Soften for me. I can feel how tense you are."
Really? Could he really feel me like that?
"Don't be so surprised." He said of my questioning eyes. "You're talking to a man who knows your body now. Every inch of you. I can feel everything from you."
There was no hiding parts of myself from him. As I lay there over him on the long, firm cushioned seating, I took the oppurtunity as I'd done so many times before to look at him. He indeed held tenderness in his deep but beautiful eyes right now—something uncharacteristic for his kind apparently—but there was apprehension in them also.
I knew why.
It was clear that he had us on his mind but that my momentary tension had distracted him. It just hadn't distracted him quite enough to hide what I could clearly still see in his eyes. Looking into those eyes had me remembering our first encounter on the street that day, our first kiss, our first night spent together, every first we'd ever had so far. Admittedly, there weren't many, but I longed for more of them with him. I momentarily wondered why I was thinking about the firsts, scared to admit that actually, I feared our lasts.
"You know," I thought out loud, a soft linger in my quiet tone, "I remember when I first saw you," I told him. I looked at him and then my eyes lowered down his chest, blinking. I shook my head at the memory of it. Of him standing there berating me about texting and walking and implying I was a magpie because I told him his shiny car caught my eye. A thoughtful smile came over my lips as I recalled. "I remember thinking as I walked away from you...God...it was as if you were the only one of your kind in this world. That's what I thought. I thought you were so beautiful." I told him.
His eyes almost melted me, they softened, warmed, as if I'd taken the sting out of his apprehension, however briefly that might last.
"I remember being exhilarated by you. Like my heart didn't know what to do with itself. Like it was skipping with all these butterflies playing jump rope or something. But I remember...I remember being scared," I confided in him.
His brows narrowed in on each other as he looked genuinely thrown. "Scared?" he asked, pulling back for a brief moment and looking at me to seemingly grasp what I'd just said. "Did I do something? Was I too full on?" He shook his head; it was obvious he wasn't sure.
"No. No, that's not what I meant." I reassured him with a hand on his broad chest. "Just...there was this..." I paused to catch my breath, to try to articulate myself the best way I knew how, my hands trying to animate my words.
"Go on." He said softly.
His tone encouraged me to draw a calmly inhaled breath before I spoke again, "There was this...indescribable...pull I felt towards you. It was so sudden. And you...you're like...I just remember thinking we're from two different worlds. And I didn't even know how accurate that little thought would turn out to be. I just meant you being this wealthy guy in a world that was alien to someone like me, now it's about something completely different. It's an undeniable fact. We're worlds apart."
He just kept looking at me. He just silently watched and waited. But he seemed to be, dare I say, scared?
"I'd never met anyone like you before." I could remember thinking. "You took my breath right from me." I looked to him. His returning gaze was wrought with feeling, fear...doubt. I could see it etched across his features too.
We traded an intimate silence in what felt like a long moment and I felt myself swallow back the overwhelming feeling in me. I was scared for what I knew were different reasons to him. My fear eating away at me, stinging my eyes. I shut down hard on my eyelids as if to open them would mean the tears currently sealed under my eyelids would succumb to gravity and freefall off my face.
"Aer..." he immediately closed off, a pained expression came across his face as he eyed my glistening stare. He paused for a moment as he caught them. Sitting up now, he pulled me to him, both arms coming protectively around me as I rested my side against his chest, my head under his chin and my cheek to his collarbone. I comfortably had my legs over his strong thighs and my arm couldn't help but snake around his back and rest there as our chests heaved together.
He laid one hand over the side of my face, stroking through my hair as he rested his cheek over my head. It was a lulling kind of peacefulness, as if soothing me in his hold. I could have been there forever. I wanted to be. For the briefest of moments it felt like a place where there'd be no more tears, no more pain, for a small moment I felt like we could be indestructible.
"Please," he said as his voice succumbed to possibly the same inevitability as mine. "If you're going to do what I think you're doing, then don't. Please."
"Dante—"
"Please," he slightly choked. "I won't be able to deal with it. I need you." His admission struck so hard against me, it broke my heart. I couldn't imagine Dante needing anyone.
I moved out from within his grasp and looked up at him, taking him by the hand. I felt him flex beneath me so I positioned myself to sit over his lap, facing him. I wanted to be honest with him. I wanted him to think about everything that could possibly affect us. Because honestly, there was so much.
His eyes were strained, but heated, they were breaking me. No words were spoken for a long moment, an almost excruciating long moment, and my chest jolted. Things appeared to be ominous between us, I knew it was me who had made it so, and I finally broke the silence.
"Me and you..."
"No." He said with a shake of his head, grasping at both my arms, forcing me to look him in the eye. "Don't do it."
I blinked profusely, I wanted to look anywhere but at him. The ceiling was what I blinked to most. It was as if I was praying to it.
He grabbed my face between both hands and brought it down forcefully so my eyes would meet his, but I shut mine, I didn't want to see him.
"Open your eyes." he told me.
I swallowed as I listened to the way he said it. The gentleness was ebbing away in his tone. It was replaced by something else now. Something raw. "Damn it, Aer, look at me!"
My eyes instantly fluttered open at him; my lashes coated in motionless tears.
"Hey," he said. The warmth in his otherwise steely grays was a welcome replacement for the rawness I'd just heard. It astonished me just how much power I gave this man. For example, like now, stunned by the beauty of him when he looked at me with eyes that felt as comforting as his arms right now, my breath was caught. To be mezmerisied by him alone was his power over me, and he didn't even know it.
"You have totally stolen me." I told him. It was true. There was this immense feeling, it was like a wave I was trying to surf but it was too big to go against, and it was crashing down on me, I would be under it until someone pulled me out. I thought to tell him how much he'd stolen me. He had. Completely.
Warmth was now all over him. "You think I've done that to you?" he smiled gently. "I'm not sure you can take knowing what you've done to me." He then looked around him as if remembering where we were. He must have wondered how long we had here, as I did. Lukas Hall would be back. They all would. He turned his attention back to me. "But I didn't take anything you didn't willingly give to me."
"You say I have your heart, but you stole mine, Dante. It's a cliché but it's the truth. I didn't even see you coming, but you saw me. You were like some...incredible surprise. I was completely taken aback by everything I felt for you. You just... my heart isn't mine anymore. You have it. You've taken it."
"Well then we've taken each other's now, haven't we?"
"What is this? A steal for a steal? What the hell am I supposed to do, Dante? You're terrifying and beautiful and...and exciting all at the same time. It's like I have no control over my feelings anymore, it's like—"
He huffed. "I didn't steal you, Ariel, you stole me!"
I looked at him through dampened eyes as he cut my words off, and swallowed at the fierceness in his delivery.
"Look at me, Aer. Look at what I am now? I've never felt before in my life what I'm feeling now for you. You stole my fucking heart. Not the other way round. And as for stealing you? No, if you think I've stolen you, I haven't, you gave yourself to me and I took it because I wanted it. Because I wanted you."
I did look at him. He sounded so passionately aggressive telling me that I'd taken him by complete surprise as well. As if he'd been struck by his feelings for me as I had been for him.
"I go for what I want, and I wanted you from the moment I first laid eyes on you." He continued to tell me. "Before we officially met." He stopped this time. He swallowed hard as he eyed me. Something in his eyes...Oh God...I could feel my stomach clench hard...
"I think..." his voice faltered for a second, and then he composed himself to start again. "I think I know what you're about to do right now, and I don't want you to do it. But don't think for a second that I'd let you go now. I'd have to die in your arms before I'm willing to let go. That's the only way I'd do it because I could never be free of you. Then I'd have no choice but to let you go, because there's no place for you were I'd be going."
"Where you'd be...? What do you mean? Where?"
"Somewhere bad people like me go."
"You're not a bad person."
He huffed with a sheepish smile, "I just do bad things, right?"
I sort of shrugged. I guess...
He slowly smiled, he seemed touched as he said "Love has made you blind."
"Hmm. And what has love made you?" I asked him.
He paused for a moment. "Reckless." He said. Then he seemingly thought about it again and looked me dead in the eye. "Mortal." He told me.
As if by some delayed response, my face twisted at that word.
He elaborated for me. "Do you want to know how an immortal becomes mortal?" he asked me. I waited. "When he falls in love."
I watched him as he said that, as if his heart couldn't be more open. "It's like showing a man his heart and then taking it away from him. Once you've taken it away, you can kill him from the inside. He slowly dies without it, figuratively speaking. If you were to ever know that, it would be to know what dying feels like. It makes an immortal feel like they're no longer that."
My hand came over my mouth as I blinked profusely at the idea that love could control a person's mortality. I'd heard of old couples dying within days of one another, hours even, because one of them passed away and the other one's heart became so heavy with grief it could no longer go on. That kind of devoted love claimed your mortality.
He lowered my hands and took them in his own, watching me. My heart felt heavy.
"I love you, you know." I told him. It's what I wanted to say to him. What I needed him to know.
His breath hitched at my words. He held tight to my hands, my words seemingly sinking in as he allowed them to. It was the second time I'd told him this tonight. I wondered how he was seeing it now. In a short space of time, things had now since changed.
He sighed and nodded pensively to himself. "You know, when you told me that before, I felt...something..." he thought about it again, my heart was racing. I was scared of what he was going to say but I bit at the lump in my throat.
"Something so...it was like that was all I wanted to hear from you." He admitted, "Like it was all I wanted to know. That you loved me. That you could love a man like me. I didn't even know that I wanted that in my life until I met you. But if I'm honest, I didn't care for all that stuff before I met you. You changed things. You made me want those things. Just you." He told me, before swallowing. "But now...I hear you say that to me and I just wonder—"
"No." I bit out shaking my head. My teeth clutched desperately to my bottom lip to stop my lips from trembling at the fear of what was coming next. "Don't." I choked. "Don't wonder anything. Please...Look, I—"
He shushed me against my lips, stroking over my hair, a gesture to let him finish before I draw any conclusions. I nodded for the sake of it but I looked away. I didn't think I could bear it.
"I just wonder,' he said again, finishing this time, "If that's enough for you?"
I swallowed that lump I'd held so firmly in my throat. I shook my head and looked back at him again "What...?"
"Tell me that love is enough, Ariel. Tell me that that's all it takes for us to make it. Because honestly? I don't think you can."
My lip quivered, I opened my mouth to speak but he stopped me.
"You mean the world to me." He said over me. "The world and everything in it. I'm crazy about you, Ariel. But even I know that's not enough. I wasn't thinking before, but I see that now."
My heart was snapping in half. Literally cracking inside me. I felt it, a physical ache embedded deep in my chest, twisting and squeezing down on me. As I took a breath to say something to him, all I heard was the strangle in my throat at the same time as the sting against my eyes. I felt like I knew what was coming. That I was the reason it was coming. I was kicking myself that I didn't say something sooner. That I didn't tell him... it seems all I'd allowed him to do was think more about things. Damn me! Why did I wait so long?
"I know what we feel for each other," he said. "The problem is knowing if we can still make it."
I frowned and cut in wanting to tell him why we could make it. But my emotionally wrecked voice was as unstable as I was, "Look," I fought against myself, "We'll never know anything unless we try, right? Loving each other is not the problem." I told him, my voice nicking with emotional overwhelm. I wanted to be convinced of it. I wanted to feel that he was too. Was I just kidding myself?
"It is the problem." That one statement crushed my heart and had me stuttering a breath. A breath that hurt. "Without that, no problems exist between us. It's because of that that they do. But I can't switch that off. And if I'm honest, I don't want to. I look at you and I wonder how both agony and ecstasy becomes you. It's like I can't have one without the other with you."
"This is killing me." I said lowering my head, my voice shaking with uncontrollable upset. I don't know why I even spoke; I didn't even trust my own voice not to fall apart on my behalf. It was already doing it now.
He looked me over. He almost didn't speak as if to start would mean his voice would betray him too. But when he did speak, he looked away.
"Me too." He finally said, almost on a whisper. There was a strength that I knew he wanted to hold on to, but it was failing him in that moment too. Maybe by looking away he could maintain that strength, because sometimes, when I looked at him, when I caught his eyes or heard something unspoken in his voice, I fell apart too.
"I actually have something to lose now." He said as his eyes levelled with mine, it was as if he was speaking into them. "And I don't want to lose it."
I shook my head and licked at my drying lips, "Why does it hurt so bad?" I said quietly to myself, but he heard me. I didn't mean to say that out loud, but my thoughts were cracking under the weight of me.
"That's the thing about love, Ariel, there's no weapon against it. Love is the weapon. And sometimes when we fear losing it, it hurts. When someone uses it against us, it hurts."
As Hall was doing to us.
My eyes watered uncontrollably, I was overcome completely this time, and my emotions could not be held back. I'd failed miserably already anyway. A tear escaped down my cheek and I instantly dropped my head to prevent him seeing it, raising my hand up to wipe it away before he glimpsed it. But he saw it. He watched my head dip and lifted my chin up. Upon seeing the trail down my cheek, he smoothed his thumb over it.
"If I gave you the words you so desperately want to hear, will you stay?" he said. "Would it make you feel any more secure if I said it?"
"How do you know I'm not secure?" I managed to say through my treacherous voice.
"It screams from you." he replied. "It's like a siren. How could I not know? Which I find crazy because it doesn't matter how many times I try to show you how I feel about you, you still don't feel secure in this with me?"
He was right. I didn't feel secure. But that was only because no matter how we fought, could we fight time? How much of it did we really have together?
"I'll admit I've fallen fast. And hard." He said. "Half the time I'm catching my breath just looking at you. But what's a man to do when the woman he cares so much about won't stand by him?"
I grabbed his face and suddenly felt the strength to tell him. "Dante, look at me; I'm here. I'm right here. Whether it's in front of you, next to you, behind you, I'm here with you. How can you say that to me? Nobody forced my hand; I'm here because I want to be wherever you are, because I love you too much to walk away. You're the most beautiful part of my life despite it all. I want you in it."
His hands touched over mine now but I wouldn't remove mine from his face. I still held it. I wanted him to look into my eyes and see the truth in them. I loved him.
"If I say it, will you stay?"
"Will you?" I asked him.
He looked confused. "I don't understand?"
"Will you stay?"
He shook his head and moved my hands down in his. "Aer, where am I going? You haven't lost me to anything, I'm not going anywhere. I'm here with you, aren't I?"
"You sure about that?"
His brows quirked as he cocked his head quizzically. "What is this about?"
"I need to know something."
He looked at me curiously. He waited.
"How long have you known that you wouldn't last here?"
His brows twisted. "What? What are you on about?"
"Here. You said it yourself; sometimes you don't feel like you belong in this world. How long have you known you wouldn't have to live in it any longer?"
The question took him by surprise. He looked hard at me, "Who have you been speaking to?" He asked curiously, slowly pulling back.
"Doesn't matter."
"It does to me. Who?"
I wouldn't answer.
"I know it wasn't Malcolm, he'd n—" he stopped.
I swallowed when it became evident he realised.
"Are you kidding me? Sydes? Sydes?" he asked again. "Wow, you two must have gotten pretty cosy for him to have told you that."
"Oh for heavens sake, Dante! What have I told you about him and me?"
He cut his eyes from mine and literally put me on the seat next to him to get me off him and rose to his feet, his hand roughly raked through his hair, his breaths deep and ragged. He was calming himself down. "I'm sorry." He said. "I just...sometimes it's hard for me to get the image of you and him out of my head. I can't stand it. I can't stand him. I can't stand that you once loved a shit like him. What the fuck were you thinking?"
"Maybe because I thought I loved him."
"Please...spare me. I don't want to hear about any feelings you may have had for him."
"Do I really have to defend my choices?" I asked him. "He was different back then. People change sometimes. Besides, I didn't know what he did; he hid that part of himself from me until he felt he had no choice but to tell me because now I'm involved with the one guy who happens to be the one thing he hates most in this world. Why don't you tell me about your exes, huh? Who were they? Go on. Tell me." I challenged him, seeing as he was so quick to judge me and mine.
"Why are we going down this road?"
"You started it."
"This is juvenile." He dismissed.
"Oh, so you have something to hide, do you?"
"Ariel—"
"Who's the brunette?"
"Is this 'piece of trash' you're talking about? Because you've got nothing to worry about from her. I told you; she's nobody."
"What about the other one? The raven-haired one with the icy-eyes...she's 'nobody' too, huh?"
He swallowed. I automatically swallowed at his reaction. No...
He paused. "What about her?"
That pause. Dead giveaway. "You know her, don't you?" I said against a tremor inside me.
"I wouldn't say that's your smartest question. Of course I do. We all know each other."
"But how? How do you know her?"
"Look, Ariel, what is this about?"
"How do you know her?" I persisted through gritted teeth.
"We don't need to do this. Look, it's not even important." He dismissed.
"Oh my God. Oh my God!" I gasped as I realised, my hands coming up over my mouth. "You've fucked her."
His eyes closed momentarily at my conclusion, but he decided to face it, he sounded rough. "Yeah, and you were once in a relationship with Nathaniel Sydes and I have no doubt you did the same! Besides, when I say it's not even important, I fucking mean it. She was just a fuck, unlike you. The past is done with."
"So what the hell is your past doing in your present?"
"I could ask you the same fucking question!" he said angrily, his voice rising violently.
He was right to say that. I was being a hypocrite, I was letting jealousy invade me and it was growing by the second. She was so beautiful I hated that she had once had him. That at one point, even if she had really been "just a fuck", he had once desired her enough to want to be inside her.
But it's not like I'd invited Nate back into my life; Sebastien did. I also hadn't chosen to leave the bed I was sharing with Dante to go hang around with him, unlike him with her. But in all honestly, I didn't completely push Nate away either. I'd heard that saying 'No one gets to be a part of your life without your invitation'. It was so very true.
"When he kissed you earlier did you want him to?"
My brows drew in. "What?" I couldn't believe what he was saying to me right now.
"Is that why you're bringing her up? To ease your own conscience."
"Dante...why...?" I shook my head, my face an expression of disbelief. How could he say this to me? "What are you doing? Why are you doing this? Are you trying to hurt me?"
"Maybe I am!" he shot back confrontationally. "Maybe just so you can feel even an ounce of what I do. So you can hurt like I am right now. Because even now you're bringing up anything and everything just so you can avoid answering the fucking question!"
"Of course I want to fight for you, you idiot!" I declared to him. "I would walk right out that door if I didn't! I would have watched you kill that man and left you at the first fucking sight of it. I wouldn't have told you I was afraid of losing you if I wanted to leave you. I wouldn't have said that if you weren't worth fighting for! You, to me, are worth everything. Everything! But I don't know if in the end you're the one who's going to leave me. This whole thing...it hurts, Dante."
Dante held his breath at everything I said and then when I was done, he released it. His face...it was like I'd hit him with every word he wanted to hear me say to him. His heart was on his sleeve in that moment. He sighed as if he should have known and looked at me. He took a step towards me, suddenly stopping when I raised my hands.
"Loving you is like some kind of...blade." I told him as he stood there. It cuts so deep. I wouldn't look at him as I said that though. I couldn't. I was shaking.
When I did look at him, I saw that he'd stiffened, "Don't say that..."
"It's true." I protested.
"Look, come here—" he said stepping towards me.
"What does that change?" I said trying to back away. "It's true."
"It's not."
"It is."
"It's not."
I said it again. He was right in front of me now. He cupped my neck and rested his forehead on mine, softly shushing me against my lips to calm me down as I quietly through strangled sobs told him how much it hurt.
"You don't mean that, baby. I know you don't." He said.
I nodded against his denial. But his sudden stillness came when he really listened to what I was saying. When he really grasped what was coming out of my mouth. There was no pretending I wasn't saying it anymore. No more whispering "it's not" to my "it is". He faced it.
"It's like a blade?" He asked me finally, hurt peaking through. That blade was cutting him now it seemed.
"It is."
"It..." He faltered as he looked at me. My obvious hurt finally hit him. The expression on my face suddenly agonized him to see, my words the same to hear. He stilled as he looked into my eyes, they glistened wet at him.
He swallowed and his gaze narrowed. "I said I would never hurt you, but I am, aren't I?" He realised.
I blinked. Just him saying that was enough to send another rushing tear desperately falling down my cheek.
"God...I am." He said, his face screwing up with a similar pain to the one I felt. He grabbed my face between both hands, his face straining with anger, and his warm thumb wiped my tear just under my eye and across my dampened face. I blinked another leaking tear away and he wiped it again spreading the wetness across my cheek, almost smearing it across frustrated at himself. My cheeks felt so hot beneath his touch.
"That's more than once I've made you cry." He said against strained features. "But tonight is the first time I'm seeing it. Love is not supposed to fucking hurt, Aer." He said.
"It's not." I agreed. "But that's because this whole situation is what's hurting me. Not necessarily you."
"No. It's because i'm hurting you." He insisted, torn up. He stepped back. The admission clearly took him aback. "I'm fucking hurting you." The recognition of it seemed to hit him again. He ran his hand roughly through his hair. "God, how selfish am I?"
"It's not about being selfish." I said to him. "It's not your fault."
"Yes, it is!" He almost whined like it was the most obvious thing in the world and I'd be a fool to deny it or pretend it was anything different.
"I pursued you. And there's me asking you to fight for us, knowing that things could get especially dangerous if you do. I want what I want and nothing else." He said angry at himself, "You came into my life, and I have felt things I never expected to feel in this God-forsaken place and you think I would let you go? Even if it's to set you free? I wanted you and I had to have you no matter what the fucking cost, I had to!" His need for me was apparent in him right now. He stopped and looked me straight in the eye. "I have to. What would you call that? Selflessness?"
I swallowed hard at his words, I just kept looking at him. "It's okay." I tried to pacify him. "There's good and bad in all of us. That's what makes us human."
He sighed. "But I'm not human, Ariel."
"You're more human than you think. How can you not see that?" I told him, wanting to grasp at his face now, but I simply looked up at him and into his tremulous eyes.
"You said something to me before, when we were in bed, I could have sworn I'd heard you say it. And if you did, then you don't recognise that depth of feeling within you and not have some level of humanity attached." I told him. "You don't laugh with me the way I've heard you laugh, smile with me the way I've seen you smile, touch me the way I've felt you touch me, and do something as simple as just lie with me and not say a word or take me into your home because you think I'd be safest there and not call that human." I told him against his anguished eyes. "There's nothing demonic about that. Nothing."
He halted for a moment. "But that's the thing, Aer," he confessed. "You wanna know why it hurt me to do what I just did? To rip that guys' head off? Not because I was killing somebody, but because I was doing it in front of you. I would never have wanted you to see that. That's the only reason. The killing part... an innate part of me revels in it. Now what do you think of me?" He asked.
I lowered my gaze, thinking about what he just said. I already knew that it hurt him to do it in front of me. It was all over him in that moment.
"You think I'm a good man, Ariel? The only good in me is you."
His revelation...well, what could I say? Malcolm had said it all himself before, 'sometimes you can't fight nature and win'.
"I told you. This is me. Choosing me means accepting all that I am. I don't want to hide anything from you anymore. I want you to see me. I want you to know me and love me anyway. Am I asking too much?"
I huffed. If only he knew...
When you first meet someone, you spend a lot of time trying to put your best foot forward, you dress to the nines, do your makeup, your hair, and wear your most appealing clothes. You're without too many flaws, quirks, idiosyncrasies. You have personality, sure, but you're almost...I don't know...a perfect version of yourself. You are your best self. You put your walls up because initially it's a safe place to be. I felt safest there. Maybe he did too, just being that wealthy guy who came with other-worldly perfection but not giving much else of himself away in the beginning. But there comes a time when you see that person you're with as The One. The one you want to be your absolute self with. The one you hold no secrets from.
If ever I felt like my layers were sloughing away, I was exposed. He would be able to see everything there was to see of me, bare, naked, warts and all. The test was, would he still love me as much after he sees me, as he did before? Like, really see's me? Not just what I chose to show him, but what I didn't? What I show him inadvertently. I didn't want him to see my insecurities, but he saw them and he was still here. He'd sensed them before already. And in all honestly, what I felt was just as much about him as it was me. I could see he was asking the same question; after seeing him, really seeing him, could I still love him and everything he was?
"So Hall's right, then? He asked you to get your demon back. But it never left." I realised. I said quietly "I'm gonna lose you, aren't I?"
"Never." He whispered against me.
I looked heavily into his troubled gaze. "I saw your eyes, Dante. For a split second you lost yourself. If I'm losing you to something like that, then you need to come back to me."
He gazed achingly at me, I wasn't prepared for the depth of feeling I saw in his eyes for me. "Ariel, when it comes to you, I never left."
I watched him as he said that and couldn't help but kiss him, as if every part of me wanted to ease him.
"I want you so bad I'm being selfish with you. It's like I can't see past you." He said after we broke our kiss, his fingers gripping into the back of my neck, kneading it desperately as if no grip was enough to hold onto me, his face mirroring the anguish that set into his tone. "I look at you and I think; this woman deserves it all. You don't think I want everything good for you in your life, Aer? I want to be that good in your life. You don't think I want you to have the world? Well, I want to be your world. But if I'm hurting you, am I supposed to agree that we'll never be together? That we shouldn't be? Is that what you want?"
"Of course not. Never. You mean everything to me."
He smiled softly. What a smile...
But as his stare passed between my eyes in a slow and contemplating way, his smile faded. I could tell he was contemplating; he always had this look in his eyes of slightly glazing over whenever his mind was weaving thoughts. He looked strained, burdened almost, I noticed.
He'd done all this thinking, all this talking, and now with a heavy stuttered breath he paused and then looked at me. "Listen..."
There's always a moment when actions speak louder than words, when you know someone's about to say something you either don't want to hear, or are not prepared for, or make a confession that will shatter you, catch you off guard or hurt you. I knew it was either one of those things, and Dante's face didn't do anything to make me feel any different.
When the fear for what he might say clutched at me, I started randomly talking. I was talking so fast as if by saying just about anything maybe I could stop him from saying what I knew I wouldn't want to hear. Maybe that way I could hold him off.
He looked at me and then momentarily shut hard on his eyelids just listening to me. I was falling apart right in front of his eyes, and it crumbled at him to witness.
"Aer," his voice was soft.
I stuttered frantically shaking my head, but saying anything to him right now. He was trying to stop me.
"Aer—"
"I mean," I went on, "We could totally go somewhere, just...disappear. Nobody has to know. Like—"
"Ariel."
I was scared. Panic was flooding through me. My persistent talking was proof of this. But I wanted it to buy me time for him to think before he said something I knew would shatter my world and bring me to my knees.
He immediately bent his head to press his lips hard to mine and kissed me deeply into stunned silence. My head swam in his kiss.
"Shall I give you a minute." He smiled afterwards despite himself.
I blinked finally. To come down from my kissing high? Oh...that obvious...
"I'm insane over you, you know." He said to me. "Just..." He tapered off. Insane, he quietly said to himself.
He took me by the hand, my fingers slid between his as they curled hard over his knuckles. His grip on my hand was supportive, for both sides. As if he was supporting me, but strangely it felt to me as though he needed my hand to support himself. There was a mutual ache between us, I could feel it in him and it was clear he could feel it in me. We were somehow wounding each other just by being together, and there was hopelessness in his eyes that suggested he didn't know how we could do this. But then I thought of something.
"Malcolm." I said and stopped. "He's married. He's making it work. If he can, why can't we?"
He sighed. "Malcolm's different." He told me. "His responsibilities, his role is different. The demands are less for him. We couldn't get away with the same things."
"What do you mean? What differs between you two?"
"We're powerful where we're from—both of us—but here, the game changes. I was supposed to be that person who made things possible. Power is different here. We define it here as status, money, influence, who you know. You wanna be powerful here? Get rich, earn that wealth. Own things. Walk into any room and have people immediately turn and know who you are, walk into any restaurant and have the manager immediately chuck some poor soul off a table simple because you said you wanted it. That's what I did. I worked like a human, laid low as a demon. I knew what I had to do as a demon to thrive in this world. I had to do it from a position of power." He told me. "Malcolm doesn't hold the same position as me. In all honesty, he was just lazy. Wanted to make a buck to live but didn't want to do too much."
I see.
"The expectations for me are completely different."
"So...what about us?" I asked.
He looked like there were words forming in his head and he was trying to shape them into something he could tell me. Maybe the need to fight for us was no longer an option to him now?
My heart sped at more paces than I could track, I could hear my pulse thump in my ears, feel it hammer under my jaw.
I looked at him with trepidation, and even before he said anything I could feel the slight sting against my eyes again.
"If you need to find your courage to leave me, then do it." He said.
There was a cry in my throat at what he said. A pain at the inevitable. Palpitations beat through my chest, forceful and hard as if it would burst outwards.
I shook my head.
I wanted that to be my only action, because as before, I didn't trust my voice, I didn't believe there was any strength in it to say things with conviction, but I tried anyway, I said what I felt to him, "That's like asking me to stop loving you. I can't."
He sighed his relief and held me to him. He was testing me. "I can't either." He admitted. "I don't have the strength or the power to walk away from you. Of all the things we can do, there's no defence against that fucking arrow."
Cupid's arrow. Love.
"I would love to be your everything, Ariel. I could make you so fucking happy." He said, against a throat that was giving his unsaid emotions away. Croaking in display of his feelings.
I looked up at him, my emotions were mentally raw now too. My eyes a watery statement of that.
He took a deep breath, desperately holding me to him. Clutching me. His grasp was possessive over me and he held me tight, kissing into the top of my hair. It was a long pressed kiss, hard and lingering. As he did it he inhaled against me, breathing me completely in, I heard it as he pressed his cheek on my head hugging me closer, tighter, as if to let go, to stop would mean to lose me. As if to let go would mean I would no longer be his.
"I want you to know something."
"It's okay." I told him. "I know. You told me. Trust me, you don't have to." For the first time, I realised that no amount of words could make this feel any more potent. I realised that everything he said to me, every small touch, every kiss...it all said one thing. In my heart I knew it with everything I had. Hearing it was one thing, feeling it was another. I felt his love and everything that came with it.
He lowered his mouth to mine, our lips lightly touched and then with a deeply drawn breath our kiss got deeper, harder, more needy for each other. There was a painfully brutal passion in that kiss; it came piled with unsaid feelings. It was almost heartbreaking to feel so much from him in that one kiss. It was so intense and so sensual.
When he released and slowly withdrew his lips from mine, our lips clinging but finally parting at the last delicate touch and separation, I could see everything in his eyes. The golden rim around his pupil glowed with firey ignition. We paused holding each others gaze, silently passing a long, deep but equally thoughtful glance at each other, ours mouths still sitting deliciously opposite. The only thing I could hear were synchronised rapid breaths trying to calm. We weren't succeeding. He had peaked my senses and internally I couldn't deny him. His glowing eyes now died to be replaced by what I could only describe as human eyes.
He held me still as the finality in our kiss caused me to sob against him, my heart a frantic mess, my thoughts a pool of fear, need, everything I could possibly feel filled me in that moment. I clutched at him, as if to let him go would mean he'd be my comet. He would disappear and I'd never see him again.
"You must know I love you, Ariel." He said against my lips, his eyes holding mine. "I don't even think words are enough. I ache for you." He swallowed. "Is this what it feels like to be human?" He asked. "Because there's this...pain...God..." he said looking up, as if this time it was him trying to hide tears from me. "What the fuck is this?"
What he said wrapped itself around my heart. But it was marred by his pain. Like I shouldn't feel joy that he loved me because it came with so much consequence. It sounded as though he almost didn't understand it. It sounded as though he didn't welcome it, it was alien to him.
Not willing to acknowledge the fact that his emotions were spilling over, he said "I need to punch a fucking wall or something." and I wasn't sure if my reaction to that was misplaced or not, but it made me laugh.
I settled my short laughter and he watched me. "I love watching you laugh." He said through an uncontrolled smile. "I can't even think about you sharing this laugh with somebody else. It's just a laugh, I know, but it's my laugh."
I was amazed at the myriad of feelings I could get just by being with him. In this one room alone I had felt anger, sadness, love, heartbreak, agony...oh so much. All because of him. Colour me emotional, why don't you.
"You know, I could let you go and watch you walk away from me but there's nothing in me that will let you. If you turn for just one second I'll pull you back to me. You're not an option, Ariel, you're a necessity. I can't surrender you. I won't. It's not an option to fight for you, I need to fight for you."
It was then Dante's head immediately turned at the first sign of something. I didn't hear it at this point, but I certainly heard something shortly after it. We looked at each other.
"What is it?" I asked him worried.
"Our time is nearly up." He admitted. He swore.
"What does that mean?" I asked. Trepidation was clearly evident now.
"It's now or never. That's what it means."
His instinct was to grab me and hold me behind him when the person rushed in. I clutched at him too.
"Malcolm." Dante's relief was palpable. And so was mine.
"You better hurry this up." He said hushed. "Things aren't looking good out there."
"Why? What do you mean?" I asked coming round to Dante's side. It looked like Dante wanted to say that too.
Malcolm took in a heavy breath. "It looks like Hall and Sydes' arrangement hasn't worked out because of ...this." he said, his eyes all over us as he gestured between us. Something in the way he said it was disapproving. I thought it was quite odd considering. "The idea was that you'd let each other go. They'd all get what they want."
At the point Malcolm said that, I felt Dante's fingers tighten around mine, a show of heart and defiance. Letting me go was clearly not on his mind, his fingers had anchored around me at that very moment.
"Man..." Malcolm said shaking his head, his eyes to the floor.
"There's something else, isn't there?" Dante looked to him for more. His face was rigid, incredibly stern. He wasn't scared, he was uneasy.
Malcolm swallowed. "Get out of here, Dante. Both of you. You gotta get out of here, man."
"I'm not running." Dante said.
"But what about her?" he said to him. "Ariel?" he then said directly to me, "Don't do this to yourself."
"Hey, whose fucking side are you on?" said Dante getting angry now, storming up to him with intent all over him. He had clear confrontation in mind. My hand still in his, he jolted back as I didn't let go and turned to me. He briefly made eye contact, his face was so raw. He then turned back to Malcolm.
"Who do you think?" Malcolm replied, equally squaring up to him.
Dante stopped and looked hard at him. His eyes lowered and he swallowed.
"Dude, it's not fair on her." He said. "You know it. I know that myself. I've been there and look at me."
"Yeah, look at you." Dante threw back. "I see you without Nera. It destroys you. I can't let that happen to me, Mal. I'd have given up on this world without her. I don't want to lose her."
"You've already lost her!" Malcolm shouted back. "The moment you have to run, what kind of life is that? The moment that you have to fight every piece of your darkness just to stop yourself taking her light, what kind of existence together is that? What about when you have to take her from the life she knows just so you can be together? Except you're never really together, you're together but apart. And you're doing it just to keep her safe, when keeping her safe would be to leave her! You think you can make her happy? You want that kind of life for her?"
Dante's silence was heartbreaking.
"Go out there, Dante." Malcolm told him adamantly, pointing to the door. "See for yourself. That fucking demon hunter won't let you leave here with her. He came prepared. And Hall? Ida? There's just too much. Look, I know from everything I've said it doesn't sound this way but if you think you can make it, I'll be behind you both. But I have to look out for her, Dan. I have to. You're clouded by your love for her, you can't see straight. Put her first, Danny."
My heart sank as I felt Dante's hand slowly loosen from around mine.