nighterror
He might have been able to convince her, once, that his motives were only pure. But it had been a long time since she'd been able to believe anyone, and most assuredly since she'd believed in anything pure. His carefree smile was hard to ignore, though, and his sunblue eyes held only a bright sort of innocence that broke her heart to ignore.
it always amused her when the others at her school tried to claim dinosaurs never existed. when they tried to say that such things weren't in god's bible, so how could they have been real? she wanted to ask how anything could be more real, more concrete, than bones, than skeletons, than the essence of a body made of some skin and blood and muscle, wrapped around the internal structure of bone, but she knew better, knew they would never want to understand, anyway.
she wandered through the mansion. he'd taken her on a tour of the place on her whim weeks ago, but the place was big enough that she still managed to get lost. it was odd that something about the empty rooms made her think of home; odd, but not entirely surprising.
he wrapped the scarf more tightly around her neck, pulling her closer.
she could barely breathe, but it grounded her. for a long moment, she stood afore him, feeling as if the only thing keeping her from sinking to her knees was the silken scarf tightened against her wind pipe, and she met those pale eyes of his that she loved even in the memories she didn't have.
carefully, he pulled her in for a kiss, and she realized that it wasn't the pressure that was making it hard to breath. it was his proximity, and the smell of him, and the sharpness of her heartbeat exploding in her breast.
she'd never been one for control.
and of course, she always had.
everyone who knew her - thought they knew her, at the least - would say she had complete control over her life. it wasn't full of order, but they rarely saw her lose control of her emotions, never saw her really lose control under the influence of too much drink.
but the truth of it, really, was that she'd leaned well what control looked like, and she'd learned well how to wear it.
she'd never had any specific interest in getting flowers from a loved one. that is, she'd never gotten any, and she never had any cravings for a specific flower, and she'd never seen the meaning of flowers as a show of feelings. but after seeing the plethora of them - and so many roses; aren't those supposed to be the flowers of love and vitality? - fluttered over his grave, nearly hiding her fiance's jutting gravestone from view, she couldn't help but have specific feelings. specific, hateful, cold, pained feelings that could only associate life with death, could only know that each petal, vibrant and wild, would inevitably fade and wither.
he pressed her backwards, one hand on the small of her back to steady her as they almost tripped over the cheap champagne glasses littering the floor. they'd spent the better part of the afternoon filling all of her flutes in the house and then seeing who could drink more of them -
and really, she shouldn't have expected it all to culminate in anything other than this.
she fiddled with the keychain in her hands, considering her options. one, she could actually use the key he'd given her to this - goddamned huge what the hell - mansion of his, or, two, she could run like hell.
the old chipped silver heart dangling from the chain reminded her of another key that had once been there, reminded her that once, she'd chosen the first option - and to say that it hadn't gone well would have been a disgusting understatement.
but could she run from that for the rest of her life? sure, she'd fallen head over heels with a man she couldn't remember meeting, and she'd lost herself in him like the escape she shouldn't have been weak enough to need, but -
but, really, she'd never had a choice, not since she'd picked up the phone all those months ago, his name (though she hadn't known who it was at the time) flashing demandingly on the screen.
he wrapped his arms around her shoulders, and it surprised him that the strong woman he'd come to know felt so small in his arms. she leaned her face into his chest, and he tightened his grip as he felt her begin to shake.
she could see the old red rolling barber post across the street - her father used to go there as a boy, it was that old. he'd only gone as a boy, and maybe as an old teen, and a very young adult, because he'd died just months after her birth, young into his twenties.
she couldn't help but wonder what sort of sign such a recollection was for her impending meeting with her mystery man.
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