“I can’t…” I whisper.
“It’s okay, but I want you to feel free of it,” he says. “No matter how horrible you think it is, I want that part of you more than anything else.” He kisses my lips with reverence and I sink into the bliss only he creates, thinking…but I’m afraid to be free.
28
Max
The soft lullfrom the TV plays in the background, the eerie blue light from the screen casting shadows over the wall. Ava is asleep on my chest and I’m combing my fingers through her long hair, wondering what in the actual fuck I am doing.
Her face has been plastered all over national newspapers. Her family has been interviewed on TV—there’s a hefty reward for her safe return. And here I lie in a scummy motel with her asleep on me, pretending that she is with me because she simply should be.But she should.
Something about her—there is something so goddamn deep to her that can only come from trauma and despair and heartache. When you get down to it, there are two types of people in the world: those who have struggled and those who have not. And by struggled, I don’t mean financially or physically, I mean psychologically, emotionally. People who have experienced things so fucked up and twisted that, at times, they long for the peace of death. Experiencing things we shouldn’t, learning how to compartmentalize all the bullshit and the evil and the anger, it carves out jagged crevices inside a person’s soul, creating a dark level of depth the human mind isn’t meant to really know.
And I can see that depth in her, within the pain ridden glimmer in her eyes. It sucks me right in, making me want to know what’s happened to her, making me want to love her. Icouldlove her…I believe Ineedto love her, and maybe it’s the guilt—maybe it’s all come to a head and I’m just desperate to know what actual love feels like.
No, fuck love.
To hell with that emotion. Love is like the holy fucking grail. It is something we chase and chase and then, right when it’s within our grasp, we realize it’s been nothing but a mirage. It disintegrates in our hands and all the promises, all those passionately heated words turn to lies and dust that is swept away and forgotten within the sands of time.
Love is not a real thing. It is contrived, whether by someone like me or by the person themselves. We believe what we want, because the truth is when you realize something as pure as love is nothing more than a fucking fairytale in a world of shit, well…that epiphany is enough to make the strongest of people crumble.
I want to love her.And all that does is terrify me, so I lie to myself:You’re too fucked up to really understand the concept of love.Her eyes are closed, her lips slightly parted in her sleep and I sweep my fingers over her cheek.I want to covet this woman and pretend I could love her in ways no one else ever would.
She is merely deception—all I want and can never have. She has been molded to see me as love. And love I am not for I have demons so deep, so fucking violent—even something as pure as love can’t cleanse this.
Shifting ever so slightly in her sleep, she rolls onto her side and takes a deep breath. And fuck me if she isn’t beautiful. Raw beauty, completely unintended.
And I want it.
I want her.
“Please, no…” She whimpers. “Stop…” Her arm flies up into the air, her legs jerking. “Stop!” Just as I reach over to wake her, she gasps and bolts up in the bed.
I sit up and grab onto her, and she yanks away, panting like she’s just finished a marathon. Her gaze darts around the room before it lands on me. She holds her chest with her hand, exhaling as she closes her eyes and rests her head on my chest.
I tenderly take her face in my palms and tilt her head back, swiping away the tears beneath her eyes. “Only a dream…”
“But it wasn’t.” She chokes back a sob and I kiss her forehead.
I want to save her, protect her, and I can’t help but scoff at the irony of it all because, unbeknownst to her, I’ve ruined her in a way she’ll never come back from. But until that moment where she understands what I have done, I can have her.
“You are safe with me,” I whisper into her hair as her fingers dig into my arms. I grab the remote from the nightstand and turn the television off, but she immediately takes the remote from my hand.
“Don’t do that,” she says, desperately pressing buttons to turn the TV back on. “Don’t turn it off. I don’t like the silence when I sleep. The noise drowns the other things out.”
“Whathappened to you?” I ask.
She swallows and fidgets. “When I was little…” She inhales then exhales as she shakes her head. “I was just a kid and he…he…”
I know what has happened to her because I justfeltit. Some things don’t have to be said.
“I can’t,” she whispers. She clings to me, burying her face in my shoulder, and I sweep my hands through her hair. “I just, I hated him for it. I don’t know why I never said anything, you know? I just, just couldn’t because it was wrong but I thought it was my fault because why would someone do that to you? Why would someone you trusted do that and say those things and hurt you if you didn’t deserve it? What was so wrong with me that he had to do those things? It just—and then all the things I saw growing up. All I wanted was to be like everyone else and I never could, I never could…” Her words are lost on sobs.
“But if you were like everyone else, you couldn’t appreciate the beauty in the darkness, the miracle of light. As terrible as they may feel, the things you see as flaws”—I pull her close to my chest—“thosearethe things that make you beautiful. It makes you able to understand those people no one else does. And we all need someone who can show us we shouldn’t be afraid of our demons.” Her arms fall from my back, her body goes limp, and all I can do is hold her.
Ava is an angel whose wings were severed and ripped off before she was cast to the earth. And as heartbreaking as it is, those are the most precious kind, for fallen angels are the only creatures who know what both heaven and hell are like.
We’ve met with the dark side of humanity, the raw, gritty, terrible faces most people only see in nightmares. She and I—we both know the truth: the concept of love is the grandest façade man has ever dreamed up.
