I looked around the room again, the clutter now telling a different story. I see the trail left from the pile on his desk over to the chair and then finally scattered on the floor by the couch like he’d been reading them and fell asleep.
“D-do you sleep here?” I wondered out loud. The couch didn’t look very comfortable at all.
“Some nights,” he replied gruffly. “If I have a lot of work to do.”
“How can you even work in this mess?” Forgetting my clothes for a moment, I bent down and picked up some of the crumpled sheets that had been caught underneath me, thankfully sans blood.
His body tensed as he tapped his knuckles on the desk, his eyes trailed on the papers that sat there.
I scanned through some of the images and excerpts on the papers in my hands before reaching down for more. I picked up the pieces of paper wishing it were just as simple to pick up the pieces of him, look him over, and understand his melancholic darkness. I should’ve finished getting dressed, but my nudity was a lure; it was an olive branch coercing from him the same vulnerability.
“These…” I rifled through the stack of rough sketches and raw emotions, seeing only one thing. “These are all of me.”
He’d let me see them, pointed me right to them, in fact. Still, the sculpted planes of his face hardened like maybe it hadn’t been a good idea. Maybe it revealed too much.
“This whole time you’ve been drawing me,” I murmured, my body going from warm to hot even though I wasn’t completely dressed. “Why?”
Twenty-thousand leagues pulled me under with a rip current that I didn’t feel coming.
“I told you,” he grumbled. “You’re the only thing strong enough to break through the anger, the only thing that has tempted me to pick up a pencil.” His strangled laugh interrupted his answer. “Your expressions, ma petite, are the sculpture of your soul et je me trouve impressioné.”
And I find myself in awe.
My mouth parted as I drifted closer to him.
“What are they for?” I couldn’t stop staring at them, every hurt I felt from him pushing me away erased by the desperate need that was etched into the parchment.
“I have a paper to write and a piece to create for an exhibition back in Paris at the end of next semester.”
Knots coiled in my stomach at the mention of him leaving. Of course, he would go back. He lived there. How could I not have remembered that? How could that finality of whatever this was not cross my mind?
For the first time, my nakedness now made me blush. I tugged on my pants and then my shirt, stuffing my bra in my bag because it was too much work even though the outline of my nipples was clear.
He didn’t give me the courtesy of hiding my hurt. Walking over, his fingers gripped my chin and forced my face to his. Slowly he lowered his lips to mine that had been stapled into a firm line of defiance until he touched them, licked across them. I couldn’t resist. My mouth opened and let him back inside.
Fire pulsed back through my body as my hands gripped into his shirtsleeves, pulling him tighter. This kiss was soft and final. The conclusion. The dénouement. When his tongue caressed mine, I rolled my hips against his, instinctively craving more.
Firm hands dug into my waist and held me back as his mouth separated from mine.
“I’m taking you home.”
I blinked until he came into focus again. “I don’t want to go home, Léo. I want to stay with you.”
What I really meant was, ‘I don’t want you to go to Paris.’
“Aux objets répugnants nous trouvons des appas,” he murmured hoarsely against my lips and through the new fog of desire, I realized he was answering my question. “You can’t stay, ma petite.”
How was it possible to want someone so much who was destined hurt me?
This time, I pushed away from him and turned for the door. It was the most defiance I could muster.
I should have walked alone. It was snowing and cold and those kind of bitter surroundings pair well with unrequited emotions destined for destruction.
Paris.
His home.
Just when I thought I crossed over the last hurdle with Léo, I was faced with an even insurmountable one—a real ocean this time that led to a whole life I hardly knew anything about.
“You should talk to him,” his voice rumbled from a pace behind me, giving my thoughts about him space to sink in.
“Who?” Bursts of cold registered on my face as the snowflakes attacked it and melted underneath my sadness.
“Ton père.” My father. “Even though he hurt you, you still love him. You should stop fighting, Troy, and let him fix this,” he spoke softly as he trailed behind me on the sidewalk.
And what about you? I wanted to scream. Should I stop fighting for you, too?
“Why should I?” I let the wind carry the question over my shoulder, turning up the block to my house.
I slipped on the light layer of snow, cursing as I almost fell but instead felt myself supported by him once again.
He leaned into me. “I know the look on your face when you saw him call you. I know the way your brow furrows,” his free hand traced along my eyebrow, “and your eyes become hollow, wanting him to fill them.” His fingers trailed ever so lightly down my cheek. For a second, I wondered if my mom could see any of this from the window.
His hand fell from my face and his snow-shimmered features hardened. “I know what it’s like to want to fix something, something that feels insurmountable, with someone who is inextricable from you. Talk to him before you don’t have the chance any longer. It might be painful, but not knowing is a prison. A lonely one. Talk to him… not for him but for you.”
My thoughts all jumbled together. He was talking about the woman who’d hurt him, using his pain to heal the rift with my dad. But all I could think about was him… was us. I wanted to fix us, to fix the ocean between us that felt insurmountable, because I was afraid he was inextricable from me. Our jagged pieces had clashed and locked and melted together under the heat of our need. There was no separating me from him now. Not in the ways that mattered.
For this single moment in time inside of my body, complete hope and utter desperation were not mutually exclusive; they both existed in the same alternate reality where Léo and I —who we were, what we’d done, how we felt —where we were made of the same and the same was always meant to be.
“Goodnight, Miss Milanovic.” His gruff goodbye blew over me with the cold and ushered out of my presence. I refused to look for him, to look back at him as he walked away. Instead, I waited every second that he was in my periphery before I turned and went inside
Hot tears boiled over and ran down my cheeks as I climbed the steps two at a time to my room. I’d shower in the morning. I needed to sleep with the comfort of having him still on me—his trace, his scent, his claim. It was the comfort of knowing what I’d done to him, how I’d made him lose control, how I made him feel so much that it was the only thing that brought him back to his art.
I cried because it was too many things and yet not enough to keep him.
I couldn’t not fall for him if he was leaving.
I would not fall for him.
No matter what the history books said, the fall of Troy would not be repeated.
The building still shook from the way I slammed my office door behind me. Of all the things I’d ever done… My grip flexed on the edge of my desk. Of all the things I never thought I’d do…
I’d fucked a student.
And not just a student. A virgin.
Putain. Fuck.
I hadn’t been thinking. All the other times—the times when I’d insulted students, threatened them, I knew what I was doing, I just hadn’t given a shit. This time, I hadn’t been thinking. I couldn’t think. All I could do was feel—feel the way my anger and desire seeped into all the broken cracks of her that begged to be filled. They didn’t make her weak, they made her perfect for me.
She was my poison—a
fever I couldn’t sweat out.
“Merde.” My knee slammed into the side of the desk as I desperately tried to avoid the spot on the floor where we’d been.
Aux objets répugnants nous trouvons des appas.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw that tattoo. I saw the way it snaked down her side. I saw the way my bite marks made the black ink come alive in red. I saw it and felt like she might as well have gotten a tattoo with my goddamn name on her body for how fiercely it made me feel like I possessed her. Baudin. Baudelaire.
La mienne.
Mine.
My broken fit perfectly into her broken.
And that’s when I realized that I and she weren’t broken at all—we were each part of a puzzle that remained unfinished…
Until now.
Collapsing onto the couch, I stared off into the memories of how I’d fucked her. How I’d taken what was forbidden and made her mine. Reaching for my sketchbook, I moved past the last erotic images of Troy and started fresh. I started with the way her wide eyes looked at me like I was the storm and yet I was the only thing keeping her afloat. Touching her meant finally reaching for the part of me that wanted to feel more but couldn’t. She’d broken through my creative block, through the wall that had risen up. And now that I’d possessed Troy, she was in my blood and begging to be let out.
My hand flew over the paper, creating various sketches and outlines that should have been done already.
Until Troy, there’d been a very real possibility that returning to France would mean turning down the honor I’d been presented with, that it would mean declining the invitation to show my work at one of the greatest art shows in France, if not the world.
When Amélie left, I thought my despair and rage would fuel a piece of art unlike anything the world had ever seen. It had worked for Baudelaire… I thought anger and melancholy would be enough to burn a breathtaking masterpiece into the canvas because, God knew, I had more than enough of those emotions to light the whole damn thing on fire.
But they weren’t enough.
They were trapped in a cage without a key. Until Troy.
She didn’t calm the storm. She brought me right to the center of it and, for those few moments, allowed me to capture the beauty in the chaos.
But now, the despair that began with the future I’d lost, bloomed with the knowledge of the future—with ma petite—that I could never have.
Eventually my eyes drifted shut even though I continued to work. I hardly needed to see to know what I was doing because the simple fact was that I wasn’t drawing what I saw, I was drawing what I felt. I didn’t see her eyes, I only felt the way that they stared at me, begging to find comfort in my madness. I didn’t see her lips, I only felt the way that they pressed against mine, needing what only I could give. I didn’t see the sadness in her soul, but I felt it seep out of her and suck me in.
And I let myself drift off for the first time since Amélie left. I let the obstacles wash away.
Until tomorrow.
Tomorrow, I would forget how I’d lost the battle to protect her from me. Tomorrow I’d wake up and remember that I had nothing to offer her, nothing but misery and loneliness. And ma petite bataille deserved better. Tomorrow I would remember why the reasons I needed to stay away were greater than the reasons I needed her. Tomorrow, I would remember to hate her for making me want what I couldn’t have.
In the things we loathe become the things we love.
‘Ne cherchez pas mon coeur; des monstres l’ont mangé.’
Don’t look for my heart; the monsters have eaten it.
Little by little, the monsters Baudelaire wrote of chewed it apart. Their breakfast was my doubt that Friday night had really happened; the soreness combined with the long, hot bath this morning to wash away the rest of the blood just barely convincing that it had. Their lunch was fed from the memories of how he spoke about me right before he reminded me that he was leaving. Dinner came from the wondering if it was the end; if I would never touch him… kiss him… again. And dessert? Well, that came after I got home from Rhymes after a long night of staring anxiously at the door waiting for him to come in—and he hadn’t.
I’d slept with my professor.
I’d had sex with Léo.
And then I hadn’t heard from him.
I knew why. There were so many reasons why. And they all appeared the second he’d mentioned Paris and his demons returned. The solitary suffering on his face gutted me. Like he’d taken something from me, something that we both wanted, but he had nothing to give me in return.
Maybe I was supposed to pretend it didn’t happen. That would be the smart thing, the right thing—given every single obstacle. Maybe trying to put distance between us and give me the space to think was the kindest thing he could do.
Because even if we could get past the idea that our relationship was forbidden, it was hard to ignore that Providence still wasn’t his home.
I bolted out of my room and just barely made it to the toilet before I threw up.
How could I have forgotten that?
I didn’t forget. It was like the moment you reach in your purse and pull out Chapstick you forgot you put there. I knew Léo’s home was in Paris, but that fact had laid buried in the cluttered depths of my heart until last night when I unexpectedly pulled it out.
It didn’t matter. It didn’t change how I wanted him.
Panting and sweating, I sat back against the wall, grateful that my mom and Paolo were out at the supermarket. What made me sick was that I was the one who healed him just like he was the one who helped me, and still the world tried to pull us apart.
Another wave of nausea rolled through me as I heaved over the toilet again.
The war was inside me. Doubt raged strong and hope clung to the hurt in his eyes, the hurt that reached out and held onto me begging me to keep it at bay. Hope clung to the bite marks that shown red in the mirror as I walked back into my room to change. He bit into the words because they were the truth. And the truth can be hard to swallow.
And after all of it… my little book of truths was still held captive.
I was going to find it. And find my way back to him.
When I was with Léo, even though he demanded of me… I didn’t feel inadequate. I felt equal. I felt challenged. I felt like I was worth the fight.
And when he was inside me—stretching me to my limit, pushing my body beyond pleasure it was capable of feeling, I felt whole. I didn’t need anyone or anything but him.
Grabbing my phone, I texted Kev, telling him to meet me at the Wise Bean in fifteen as I grabbed the first articles of clothing I could reach in my closet, needing to get out of the house and out of my mind.
What I felt with Léo couldn’t have its own word. It couldn’t. And still, what happened between us last night had left something inside me. A wholeness. The notion that I had triumphed. A comfort that I’d gone up against him and even though I’d succumbed… So. Had. He.
I looked down at my phone. No call from my dad yet today, but I knew it was coming. Unlike last time when I’d answered in the spur-of-the-moment, I thought consciously, preemptively that I could talk to him today.
I saw our footsteps in the snow from the other night, so tempted to see if he’d be there waiting if I followed them back. Tempted to see if it could take us back to that moment of bliss right before the claws of my reality and his sunk back in.
From the very start, Léo had pushed me to rethink my future and my past. He’d pushed me to fight for myself—to fight him so that I would stop fighting myself. And that was the most messed up thing about our war—that in order for me to win, I had to defeat him. There was no compromise. There was no truce.
Like a virus that forces your immune system to be better in order to get rid of it.
Like a fracture in a bone that demands your body heal the break stronger than before.
He was the thing that would weaken me, relentlessly, until I grew better… stronger…
enough to destroy him.
All those emotions planted inside my heart like a needy little seed that craved more of him as I grew in myself.
Love was the gift horse. Not just a gift horse—love was like the Trojan Horse… and any moment now, I was going to be woken from my secure reality to realize that it had conquered and consumed me under the guise of pleasure, in the dark of night, and from the inside out.
Putting on my headphones, I yanked my arms into the jacket that I carried but didn’t wear on the walk home last night, ignoring how it still smelled slightly of papers and cigars from Léo’s office. Tugging the hood up over my damp hair, I trudged out of the house and headed for caffeine—the only relationship I needed to make me feel strong, make my heart race, and make me feel like I could take on the world.
Kev was telling me something about his and Jake’s plans for this coming weekend, but I couldn’t focus on it (and it was only Monday for crying out loud.) All I could focus on was that it. Was. Monday. And we were sitting in Léo’s class waiting for him to get there. And it was the first time I would be seeing him since…
Nope, this definitely couldn’t be love; there weren’t butterflies in my stomach, only wrecking balls.
My gaze swung to the door as soon as I saw a body appear, only it wasn’t Léo; it was Giselle. And the wrecking balls went wild.
Her presence had never really bothered me, even after what I saw in the storage room. I’d never gotten the sense from either of them that it meant more… that she meant more. But that was before I’d held him inside my body. Before I’d confessed my brokenness. Before he… showed me the extent of his melancholy and told me that I’d made it better.
The Fall of Troy Page 23
