For a split, unrealistic second, I thought she might know about Lilith and me. Why else would she ask something like that?
“Sorry,” she stuttered, “you don’t have to—”
“No,” I hastily interrupted her with a shake of my head. “Sorry, I was just thinking how to answer. Are you talking about college? Do… do you think I expect you to go for chemistry?”
I’d certainly never said something like that to her.
Then again, what other impression had I given her except that science was more important than everything - including the people and things we care about.
Like lightning that flashes across a lit sky, I realized the truth that I’d never seen coming.
“No… I mean, I don’t know…”
I swallowed over the tightness in my throat. In spite of how dry my mouth was, my tongue moved to form words that I was far too stupid to know and now only wizening up enough to feel them.
“Troian,” I cleared my throat. “I don’t expect you to go to school… to do anything except what is in your heart. I’m sorry if I gave you a different impression, but this is your life. I will love you no matter what you do, but I will be happy for you knowing that you’re doing what you want. And if someone else isn’t happy about your choice… well, nobody else matters when it comes to your happiness. They aren’t living your life, they don’t get to judge and choose.”
She stared down at her plate for a few seconds, finally nodding her head.
“Thanks, dad,” she said softly, hugging me as she grabbed my plate.
The conversation ended even though I knew there was something deeper rolling around in that head of hers. That would be another discussion for another day. And I knew another day would come because I’d survived this one. It might not have been the perfect thing to say, but it was the right thing at the right moment. And Lilith was right… that was enough.
“Oh,” she turned and added, “I have an awards ceremony in two weeks for my AP Chemistry class, if you want to come. I… I got the highest score.”
My chest swelled. Whether or not this was what she decided to do with her life, I wouldn’t let her think I wasn’t proud of what she accomplished. “Of course, I’ll be there.”
“It won’t take long. And then I have a lunch thing after it… so it won’t take up too much of your time.”
“Troian,” I said sternly, knowing it was my own fault that she assumed I didn’t have the time. “I’ll be there.”
And when she disappeared to study, I found my way back through the maze of obstacles that was slowly disappearing, back to Lilith - while my own words echoed between the beats of my heart.
Nobody else mattered when it came to my happiness, not even Troy.
For the first time, I realized that the best example I could set for my daughter wasn’t to pursue my work to death; it wasn’t to show her that meeting other peoples’ expectations was the goal in life.
It was to show her that when you find who or what is important to you, you fight for that piece of happiness; you claim it. You own it. You make it your reality.
Happiness is only hypothetical when it comes hitched to someone else’s idea of right or wrong.
It was too late.
I was too late.
I might have saved the world, but I couldn’t save myself.
I thought I’d taken enough when I cut her out, but the truth was that she’d infected me right down to the deepest, most lonely parts inside me that even I hadn’t visited in such a long time. That’s how I didn’t realize that she was there - until she wasn’t.
Nothing had ever driven me to distraction. Not Mary. Not Troy as a baby. Not the divorce. Not Troy deciding to stay with me. None of it. Only her. Only Lilith.
And it was at that moment when she showed up, standing in front of me like a lab-gowned angel, that I realized that Lilith had never been my cancer. Loneliness had. Lilith had been my cure.
The problem was that for so long, I hadn’t wanted to be cured. I clung to my disease and let it define me. I was a genius. I was saving lives. I was above emotion. I was too busy doing work that was too important to have relationships.
That’s the problem when you live with an incurable disease - you plan out the rest of your life defined by it, knowing that it will never go away. And that’s exactly what I’d done. I’d planned my life around having nothing more than my work because if what I’d had to give to my marriage wasn’t enough, it sure wasn’t enough as a father either. I didn’t know how to change it, so I rationalized that I was unchangeable.
Until Lilith.
Now, my cure made me want more. It made me unable to focus on my work after so many hours. It made me irritable to still be in the lab when I could be home having dinner with her. And it made me feel both guilty and determined for how I’d treated Troian. I’d always known she’d deserved better and now I realized the way to make that happen.
All because Lilith had shown up demanding hypotheticals and miracles.
Each day hadn’t gotten progressively worse… the deterioration had been exponential. Everything was a mess. I was behind on where my methods and materials outline needed to be. I’d only just managed a shower today after a woman rushed off the elevator two floors early in favor of taking the stairs. That was the problem with finding a cure: going back to living with a death sentence was, ironically, unlivable.
I lived in the unlivable for weeks, forever caught up in my thoughts - the ones that she knew paralyzed me, the ones that kept me from going to her because I was afraid of making another mistake. And dealing with the finalizing the FDA approval.
I knew what I wanted - the result of the equation, I just didn’t know how to get there.
Or maybe I did.
I’d made a point to make it home for dinner every night during the week, both to spend time with Troy, who I was realizing would be leaving for college in only a few months, and because I kept hoping that she’d invite Lilith over and this impossible task of unbreaking a heart would be slightly easier.
She didn’t.
“Is everything ok with Lilith?” I finally couldn’t stop myself from asking. “She hasn’t been around lately.”
Troy nodded slowly. “Yeah, just busy with school and stuff. She’s been very, very focused. I’m sure she’ll be back to normal soon.”
My heart thudded a little slower. She was focused on school because I’d proven to her, like I’d proven to Troy, that what your heart wants doesn’t matter. And I needed to fix it.
I wasn’t a grand gesture genius. I’d calculated a million and one scenarios from kidnapping to storming the school and demanding that they hand her over to me.
In the end, I told Aiden, my colleague over at the NIH who I’d handed off Lilith’s internship too, that I needed his help planning a surprise for Troy and the only way to make it work without Troy finding out would be if he let me use one of her last sessions in the lab before graduation to figure out all the details.
So, I sat waiting. Annoyed with how Aiden’s lab was much less organized than mine. I picked up on all the little inconsistencies because I was nervous - like a fucking teenager - for the first time in my life. God, I hadn’t even been this nervous when I’d asked Mary to marry me.
Like the sun coming out from behind the clouds, I felt her as soon as she walked in the room. I watched from my perch as she set her bag down and put on a lab coat that was more suited to her size. I hated it. I wanted her in mine.
Like from my microscope, I watched her reaction - her realization - happen: the way her body shivered as she began to look around, I swore could feel her heart racing inside of my chest.
Then she saw me, and I hated how the immediate glimmer of hope was quickly shadowed with pain.
“Lilith…” I said as I stood, unable to stay away from her any longer. She froze - like I was a predator and if she stayed perfectly still, I would leave her and her broken heart alone.
I tried to tip her face up
to mine but she pulled away.
“Lilith, I’m sorry,” I whispered, the words bleeding from the open wound I’d inflicted on my heart.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded. I could hear the tears thickening in her voice and I’d never hated myself more.
Say something romantic. Say something that would make the stars fall in its sweetness.
Instead, only the blunt, unadorned truth came out. “I’m here because I need you.”
Lilith
“No, you don’t.”
I couldn’t stay here. I couldn’t risk it.
But when I went to turn, hard hands captured my waist and spun me against one of the lab tables, his arms caging me in on either side, as his body pressed to mine - like a band-aid, refusing to let my hurt and my heart continue to bleed.
“Look at me,” he commanded and like the love-strung puppet I was, my watery gaze dragged up to his. “I was wrong. I was wrong about everything. And I don’t care how many times I have to say it, I don’t care if I have to publish it in a peer-reviewed journal, or list it as a disclaimer at the top of every future drug I create. I was wrong. More than that, I, Damien Milanovic, was an idiot. For however smart I am, that means my mistakes will always be that much grander.”
My heart that had been on life-support for weeks, finally began to beat again.
In the days that had separated us, I’d understood how he became the way that he was. My emotions had failed me, so I cut them off and I cut people out. I’d barely seen or talked to Troy outside of school. I didn’t do anything except go to class, go to my new internship, study, and then repeat. And it worked. Each day, the pain in my chest lessened even though the cost of not feeling hurt meant not feeling anything.
But after years… decades… of doing that, I stared up at the man who’d been in that cage for so long, that he didn’t even think to step outside the door when it opened.
“You were right. I-I’m too young. I’m Troy’s friend,” I echoed his reasons, thinking they’d bring him to his senses.
“Do you know what they tell me?” he rasped as his hand cupped the side of my face, this time I couldn’t turn away from the warmth.
“Who?”
“The patients who are on my drug,” he clarified as his forehead dropped to mine. “When I tell them that it looks like the drug is working, that it looks like the cancer is going into remission, the study coordinator always asks them what they plan on doing with their life afterwards - after the trial is done.”
I couldn’t speak, I just shook my head slightly, hoping he’d feel that I wanted him to continue.
“More often than not, they say that they are going to live it.” I felt the words drift over my mouth more than I heard them. “They are going to do the things that they always wanted but convinced themselves weren’t right for them. Sometimes, it’s going back to school after fifty. Sometimes, it’s completely changing careers. Sometimes, it’s fixing a relationship that had been broken for decades.”
More and more tears crawled down my cheeks, unwilling to let go but desperate to be free.
“I was sick, Lilith. I had my own form of cancer - one worse because it was completely self-inflicted. And you, you came into my life and showed me what it was like to be cured and I threw it back in your face because I wasn’t prepared. I was dying inside, and I wasn’t prepared to truly live.”
My whole body shook with sobs and greedy grabs at happiness that seemed again within my reach.
“I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry,” he repeated almost as many times as he kissed my face. “I don’t do or say the right things, but I swear, I know that being with you is the only right thing.
“W-what about Troy?” I swallowed, trying to focus on everything that still felt like it was between us, like a wedge trying to separate the atoms of a nucleus.
I saw his jaw harden and relax several times before he answered.
“I’ve made a lot of mistakes with Troy. I’ve missed a lot of things, not said things that should have been… I’m going to do better. I have been doing better… because of you… but our changing relationship doesn’t change the fact that Troian isn’t a little girl anymore. She’s an adult, just like you. She’s smart, just like you. And she is damn independent.” He laughed ruefully even my lips quirked in a small smile. “But in her, I see so many of the same parts of me. I see emotions crushed under the weight of expectation. As much as I love her, this part of my life - my happiness - is all my own. One day, maybe now, maybe later, she’ll realize that I acted for my own happiness… for love… and I would want her to do nothing less.”
My heart was ticking like a bomb in a birdcage that love had lit, and time apart had brought closer to exploding.
“W-what are you saying?”
Starbursts of raw emotion flickered in his eyes and reflected off his glasses. I could practically taste the words coming off of his tongue.
“I need you, Lilith. I love you,” he whispered thickly, his lips swaying towards mine, wanting to kiss me but waiting until I could give him my consent. “I love you and I don’t care what the world says. We are fused. We are one. There’s not a single element or energy I know of that will ever keep me apart from you. So, please forgive me. Please tell me that I didn’t mess this all up, too. Please tell me that what we are isn’t a hypothetical. Please tell me that we are law – that our love is proven.”
Warm, happy tears dripped onto my tongue as I couldn’t stop my smile of pure bliss.
“Do you really love me, Damien?”
“Really. Actually. Empirically and statistically.” My smile grew so wide as my hands gripped into his sweater and shirt and tugged him closer, feeling him hard against my stomach. “I love you in every way except hypothetically.”
The most ridiculous sound of laughter swirled with sob escaped me as I practically climbed him to press my lips to his.
His growl set the love in my veins aflame.
“I love you,” I said huskily into his mouth as his hands roamed my body.
I needed him. Holding back everything that I’d felt meant now it all crashed through me with torrential force. I rolled my hips against his desperate for the friction of his arousal. Roughly, I felt one hand yank up the back of my skirt before his fingers dug into the fleshy part of my ass, grinding my hard against his length.
“I need you.” The demand landed with hot, wet tongue against the side of my neck.
“If we were to…” I panted. “…right here…” My mind was so foggy with need. “How much trouble would we be in… hypothetically…”
I yelped as he pinched my nipple, rolling it through my shirt between his fingers.
“If you can be quiet, baby,” his teeth found their way beneath the collar of my shirt, nipping down to the top swell of my breast exposed near its V, “hypothetically, if there were something happening in here, no one would know.”
My core clenched and released a stifled moan from my mouth. When he bit down on my nipple, I let out a squeal, my eyes widening in surprise.
Quiet. Be quiet.
“Can you be quiet, Lilith?” he growled into my ear. “Tell me you can so I can fuck you like I need to.”
“Y-yes,” I stammered just as he spun me around, my hands catching on the edge of the table.
The first draft of air felt cold only on my sex, my soaked panties holding the chill against my hot center. One hand held my skirt up on my back, the other pushed a finger inside me while his thumb moved the rest of the fabric to the side.
“You’re dripping with sweetness, baby,” he spoke to me and I couldn’t tell if he was standing or bending, but when I made to turn, his finger hook inside me and sent the sharpest explosions of pleasure shooting through my body.
My teeth sank into my lower lip for the umpteenth time to stop any noise from leaving my mouth as I felt his finger slowly pull out from me, his hands still working over my clit with the precision of a scientist whose specialty was only my pleasure.
And then the hot velvet of his tongue shoved inside me and the table moved with how hard I jerked against it. All my edges were fraying apart as his tongue
“I don’t have a condom, Lil,” he admitted, nipping on the skin of my inner thigh. “I’m going to need to you come all over my tongue, baby.”
No.
Yes, but no.
As exquisite as his tongue was, it was still second to him. Adrenaline rushed to my brain and my eyes flew open, darting around me. With a strangled whimper, I leaned away from him and reached across the table, shoving my solution back to his face.
A glove.
A latex glove.
“You want me to use a glove?” If he wasn’t so needy, there might have been a hint of a laugh in his voice.
“I need you,” I whispered.
I turned, listening to his ragged breaths as undid his pants and pulled out his thick cock. Tugging the glove down over his erection, he used the thumb and pinky to tie it at the base. His gaze danced up to mine and then darkened. He took the other two fingers and tied them in a knot on the underside of his length.
I felt moisture rush from my pussy, knowing those knots were going to rub all sorts of ways against my inside. I shifted on my feet, my frustration growing as he stared at me, licking his lips.
“Quiet,” he reminded me with a low voice as he gripped my hips and slammed inside me.
Stars exploded behind my eyes. Galaxies of black and white dots spotted over my vision as hot, intense pleasure gripped me so tightly, I swore I wouldn’t recover.
I buried my head in my arms, the table squeaking against the floor as he thrust into me uncontrollably. His fingers searched out my clit when he was close, returning to the rhythmic pinching and rubbing until I saw… heard… processed nothing except the feel of him inside me.
I might have passed out when my orgasm overtook me, the pleasure coupled with the necessity of reigning in it was too much. I felt his last push all the way deep inside me before I felt his dick pump out his release, jerking those knots against my sensitive walls. Without the glove there would have been more results to this reaction than we were ready for. Right now.
No Limits Page 27
