"You couldn't be further from the truth if you tried. I don't want to fix you … I want you to heal. I want you to bring back the boy who made me feel special for an afternoon. I want to find him and bring him back."
"He's gone!"
"No he isn't!" I fought back, my words clawing their way through my throat and leaving it raw. "He's not gone. I see him in there. I hear him when he talks to me. I sense him when he touches me. The same way he touched me before. You want him to be gone. But he's not. And it's why you live in this empty space, because you think you're filled with empty space."
Nolan reached out to me, causing me to flinch away at the force in which his arm came at me. But instead of touching me, he grabbed the bottle of wine from my hand and ripped it from my fingers. His body twisted at the hips as he threw it to the floor. Glass shattered into millions of pieces as the burgundy liquid coated the pristine tile, instantly staining the grout.
"Is that better?" he shouted, his voice causing me to take a step back. "If you think I'm living in a space reflective of how I feel inside, then let me show you what it would look like."
I stepped back against the cold door, my breathing labored and uncontrollable. My hands pulled to my chest in a vain attempt to save my crumbling heart. The man in front of me, the one turning over the dining room table and chairs, knocking pots and pans over and spilling its contents onto the floor, was so broken. Beyond shattered. And no matter how much I wanted to save him, I finally realized I might not be able to.
"Is this better? You want to see what it's like in my head? Inside me? Well, sweetheart, here it is. Messy. Disheveled. Upturned. This is what it's like in here!" He pounded on the side of his head with the heel of his palm, and hot, scorching tears filled my eyes.
But the one good thing about the heat filling my veins was how it fueled my fight. Hearing the pain in his voice, the brokenness of his tone, tore me from my fearful state. I knew, beyond a doubt, this man wasn't to be feared. He was to be saved. To be brought back amongst the living, and given a reason to fight.
I wiped away the falling tears from my face and moved toward him-ran for him. He may have been a burning building in that moment, but there was something within him worth going back inside to battle the flames for.
I reached him and immediately began to tear at the shirt on his chest. My fingers slipped between the buttons and I pulled it apart with all my might. The black plastic pieces spilled to the floor, bouncing off the tile at our feet, but I kept pulling, wouldn't stop tugging until I uncovered what was beneath.
My eyes were met with thick white scar tissue and black ink. My hands traveled up his chest, to his shoulders, until my fingers were beneath the sleeves, clinging to his masculine form. I pushed them down his arms until his shirt fell to the floor, joining the lost buttons that had once kept it in place. My gaze never left his chest, the reminders of what he'd lived through. The raised flesh kept him trapped-imprisoned-in the nightmare he called life.
One breath, one beat of my heart, and my mouth found the space in the center of his chest. The unforgiving pounding beneath my lips grew stronger, and his ragged gasps at the crown of my head became heavier.
"You're still in here, Nolan. I can feel you. I know you're here," I said without completely taking my lips from his skin. "It's not messy in here."
Without warning, he backed away, leaving me unsteady on my own feet. He didn't bother to step over the mess he created or even walk around it as he made his way to the balcony. And all I could do was watch as he left me alone, surrounded by food, glass, and buttons.
Chaos.
For a moment, I couldn't hear the pounding of the rain on the terrace over the stifling silence surrounding me. But then a loud roar broke through and stilled my heart, stole the air from my lungs, and forced my feet to move.
I ran to the open doors just as Nolan overturned the small, wrought-iron patio table. He wrapped his hands around the back of his head as he curled into himself, his shoulders shaking in the dim light coming from the top of the building. I moved to him on unsteady feet. Pain radiated off him in waves and slammed into me with the weight of a freight train.
"Nolan … "
He turned around, his eyes wide, his nostrils flaring and jaw ticking. "Is this what you wanted? You said you wanted to know the real me. Are you satisfied?" His hoarse words broke, barely intelligible over the sound of the rain behind him. His chest puffed out with each labored breath, and the shadow over his face made his eyes seem dark and tormented-more so than normal.
"No." I walked closer still, moving until I could physically feel the emotion emanating from him. "I'm not satisfied, because this isn't the real you. I know it … I only wish you did, too."
"You don't know me, Novah. Don't pretend you do. Spending an afternoon with me a lifetime ago doesn't qualify as knowing me."
I grazed the smooth skin on his face with the tips of my fingers and heard him suck in air before holding it. "You're the boy who hugged your mom after every game. The boy who shook your opponents' hands with a smile on your face, even if you lost. You're the boy who saw something in a plain, ordinary girl who-"
"That boy died in war," he whispered and closed his eyes.
My mouth met his bare chest once more, the heat of his skin burning my lips and restarting my heart. "No he didn't. He didn't die. He's still in there, trapped by the weight of the world on his shoulders." I pulled away an inch and glanced up into his eyes, watching the muted light from around us glisten in them. "I know this because when you look at me, it's the same as before. You're still that boy, looking into the eyes of the invisible girl in your parents' back yard."
"You're not the invisible girl anymore, though," he rasped, his hands clinging to my waist.
I shook my head. "No, I'm not. But it doesn't mean she's gone. It only means I've changed, morphed. Like a butterfly."
His head shook side to side, yet his shimmering eyes never left mine. "That's where you're wrong, Novah. You've always had wings. But you're hiding them right now."
Nolan didn't give me a chance to respond before pushing me until my back settled against the concrete wall surrounding the terrace. His hand slid from my waist, up my side, and gripped my shoulder. He pushed my upper torso over the ledge. Panic filled me for one brief second, knowing this four-foot wall was the only thing keeping me from falling twenty stories to my death. But the way his hands gripped me-one on my shoulder, one on my hip-I knew he wouldn't let me fall, and the fear evaporated, washed away with the rain on my face.
I released his forearms as I slowly spread my arms out wide, allowing the cold water to land in my opened palms. I closed my eyes and relished the raindrops pelting my skin, realizing I hadn't experienced this kind of freedom since childhood. A heavy presence covered my chest moments before wet warmth coated my neck. The heat of his bare chest and lips warred with the chill of the rain and left me in an unstable state of fluctuating body temperature.
"Take off the mask, Novah."
His deep, rugged voice caused my head to snap up, trapping his stare with mine. Confusion filled me. One minute I felt as though I was suspended mid-air, free falling into contentment. And the next, I had fallen, hard, his intense tone splattering my heart on the ground beneath me.
Mask? What mask?
In a flash, his hands were beneath my shirt, scaling my bare sides as he pulled the material over my head, righting my body once more. But he didn't toss the shirt aside; instead, he wrapped it around his hand and used it as a rag to dry my face.
Except he wasn't drying my face.
He ran the material over my eyes, down my cheeks, and rubbed it over my lips. He repeated the action a few times, keeping a hand beneath my chin so he could turn my head when needed, tilting it back a few times to rewet my face after each swipe of the shirt.
After a few times, he pulled my face to his and examined every inch of my now clean skin. His fingertips ran from my forehead, over my nose, to my lips. I couldn't move. It was like I'd been put in a trance by staring into his softened eyes. The only sensation I had was how raw my face was.
I felt raw.
"What was that for?" I asked softly.
"Just finding the girl beneath the disguise."
Shock struck me and rendered me useless for all of ten seconds before my fingers moved, finding their way to the button on his pants.
"What are you doing?" His eyebrows knitted together harshly, yet he didn't move from my touch. Instead, he allowed me to continue with the button on his pants.