The ride home from Grey Manor was strained. Caspian didn’t say a word the entire ride home, his hands wrapped around the steering wheel as tight as they could be, his knuckles white. The tension swirled inside the car, building like a storm just beneath the surface. I didn’t even attempt to speak, not wanting it to be a Band-Aid or blow-up of things.
By the time we reached his penthouse, I could fairly expect that he would sweep into his office as was his custom. But actually, he moved into the living room. He was staggering stiffly about, angry, and the anger was radiating off him in some sort of physical aura.
I shut the door behind and trailed after, my own anger getting the upper hand.
“Are we going to just turn a blind eye to what occurred there?”
I folded my arms across my chest.
Caspian folded his arms and stood in front of the windows. “Let it go, Lily.”
“No.” I said, the word surprising me. “I’m not going to let that go. You opened yourself to me, Caspian. You told me something about yourself that you don’t tell other people. And now you’re shutting me out again.”
He turned away from me, his blue eyes closed and immovable. “That’s because it was a mistake.”
I winced, the words a blow. “A mistake?”
“Yes.” Far away, distant from the tone, and I saw glimpses behind his mask. “I shouldn’t have let you get this close.”
“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” I interrupted, stepping nearer to him. “You never let anyone in. You push them all out at arm’s length and you push them away because you fear hurting. But the thing is, Caspian? You are hurt. You’ve been hurt for a long time enough.”
“Don’t,” he sneered, voice low and dangerous. “Don’t pretend you do.”
“Then say it!” I seethed, well past anger. “Say whatever it is that you’re too afraid to say to me. Because here you are, going out of your way to be here with me, and you won’t even do that!”
His jaws clapped together with a sharp slap and for a moment I’d have sworn he’d explode like wood under the swing of an axe. Then the walls crashed down over his face again, and shut behind.
“You’d never find a way to get yourself into my life, Lily,” he sneered. “It’s complicated. It’s tangled. And it’ll kill you.”
“Don’t even dream of lecturing me, for goodness’ sake!” I yelled at him, crying in earnest. “You always go out of your way to ditch me, teach me how to stay away, and look where I am now, Caspian. What do you think that implies?”
“Because you don’t know any better,” he snarled, but pushed in anyway, his body trapping mine against the wall. “You think you can save me, but you can’t. Nobody can.”
“Maybe I don’t want to save you,” I told him, my voice now a whisper. “Maybe I just want to meet you. The real you.”
His eyes cut through mine like a blade.
For a moment, I would have wagered my life that I caught something in him—something coarse, unadorned, and destitute. And then he turned from me and ruffled his hair.
“This is a mistake,” he said to himself, not me.
“I am not a mistake,” I lip, my heart aching. “And neither is this.”
Caspian’s muscles had tensed, his shoulders slumping. The air between us was charged, pulsating with heavy silence.
When he finally looked at me, his expression was empty. But his eyes. His eyes were a maelstrom of feeling that took my breath away.
“I told you,” he snarled, his voice rough and deep. “Punching me will hurt.”
“Maybe,” I gasped, moving forward. “But what if not?”
All the teasing it had needed.
In an instant, Caspian grabbed my arms, his on my lips. Not gently—a kiss of possession, of starvation, of all the words he couldn’t speak.
I breathed into his mouth, my arms instinctively around his shoulders to stay. His arms pulled me close, holding me tight, as if he was afraid to let me go.
It was not a kiss. It was a breaking point.
All of the rage and desire we’d pent up inside broke out there, with no time for thinking or hesitation.
When we’d at last pushed back, both of us were breathing hard, our foreheads hitting together.
“This doesn’t change anything,” Caspian growled, his voice whip-strung and raw.
But his eyes lied.
It rolled onto its side, I took a breath, my chest pounding out the rhythm of my heartbeat.
Because it had.
We’d fought so hard to suppress it, and we couldn’t help but do what was flowering between us. And for the first time, I wasn’t certain that I didn’t.
His door closed on me, room between us, with an electric charge of electricity. I felt the warmth of him, could feel the stickiness of his mouth where we had kissed. It seared me like it was something more than a kiss. My chest was pounding wildly. My head spun from all that happened.
Caspian’s fingers relaxed their grip around my arms but he did not let me go. His forehead remained against mine, his scratchy cheek against mine as his wheezing breath mixed with mine. The storm in his eyes had not dissipated—it had intensified, raging on as if he was fighting within himself.
What was he thinking?
Was he already sorry?
I tried to say something, but words remained stuck in my throat. A thousand different emotions ran through me—confusion, longing, anger, and something on the verge of hope.
Why did he kiss me anyway? Was it merely tension between us finally released, or was there another reason for this?
I could feel the walls he’d so painstakingly built tremble, cracks appearing in the walls of the fortress he’d built about himself. And I could see him trying to prop them up, keep me at bay behind the walls he’d so effectively built between us.
There had been a time when he’d growled low and raspy with menace, “I shouldn’t have done that.”.
The words hurt, but the tone hurt more—like he was trying to convince himself, not me.
“Why did you?” I cried.
He screwed up his eyes, jaw muscles trembling. “Because I’m selfish.”
“Selfish?” I echoed, hatred creeping into my voice.
“Yes.” My eyelids flipped open, held hostage by him in a wildfire that left me gasping. “I’ve done as I pleased with everything in my life—my business, my reputation, my feelings. But you.” His head recoiled, struggling on. “You make me lose control, Lily. And I hate it.”
I swallowed, his confession washing over me in a wave. “Perhaps losing control isn’t so bad,” I gasped, inches from him so that I could put my hand over the dip of his chest.
His heart thudded, beating and unmanageable against the ends of my fingers.
“You don’t know,” he said to me, his voice rough-edged but not ungentle. “I cannot lose control. With you. With anyone.”
“Why not?” I asked, my own feelings overriding me. “Why can’t you just let people in, Caspian? What is wrong with you?”
He winced, his eyes dropping from mine. For a moment, I thought he would respond. But then his face closed off, the pain in his eyes closed off.
“Because every one that I’ve ever let in has left,” he completed, his own voice dry and hollow. “Or worse, used me.”
They pierced my stillness.
I felt the pain behind his actions, but the pain which he had pushed so deep within him that he barely permitted himself to recall. And I realized then why he pushed people away, why he pushed me away in spite of the burning passion between us.
“You’re not the very first human being to ever come onto this earth and get hurt,” I said to him, my words shaking with emotion. “But you can’t keep the entire world at arm’s length for the rest of your life, Caspian. That’s not living-existence.”
He looked at me again, and I would have pledged my life that I’d finally gotten through to him. And then he backed off, and the distance between us was chilly and barren.
“This is not about living, Lily,” he snarled. “It’s all about keeping my hands on what I have made. What I have worked all my life for. And I am not going to let someone get in the way of that—I am not even going to stand aside for you.”
They cut cruelly, the words, stabbing, painful, like a knife, and I did not permit him to witness how truly deep they cut.
“Fine,” I told him, my throat already tightening into a knot as I battled to keep my voice level. “Then I’m leaving.”
I didn’t slow my stride in walking, my breathing more strained with each step that I took towards the door. But I hadn’t gotten there yet when he yelled after me.
“Lily.”
I stopped. My hand was still on the grip of the door.
“Don’t go,” he breathed to me, his voice so low and so fractured that it pierced through my heart.
I turned back to face him, and the look in his eyes nearly shattered me. He was torn, conflicted, his emotions laid bare for the first time since I’d met him.
“I don’t know how,” he whispered, his voice shattering. “I don’t know how to let someone in without losing it all.”
A sheen of tears at the corner of my own eyes, too, but I would not weep. “You don’t have to do it alone,” I said, moving slowly, nervously. “But you must leave the door to me ajar, Caspian. You must trust me.”
His eyes scraped over mine, as if he hunted for something—somehow, some hope. And then he stumbled, nodded.
It wasn't a promise.
It wasn’t an answer.
It was a start.
And that was all I needed at that moment.