I had thought that after the intimate moments Caspian and I spent together in the past few troubling weeks, hr would finally open up to me and stop the way he usually withdraws into his shell, but I was wrong. Caspian hadn't spoken to me for days, he had been hiding himself in the study and I decided that I have had enough.
"You're shutting me out, again," I snapped slamming the study door behind me so hard the creaking old wood cracked and groaned. The echo still resounded in my head, ringing off the walls of the room, mingling with the quiet hum of the computer that had been my only witness to his absence
Caspian didn't even look up from his screen. His fingers tapped on the keys in dissonant groups of keystrokes, each key stuttering out staccato in wordless concerto of aloneness. A resentful ache twisted in my chest—each strike a poignant reminder he was farther than ever away lost in his own world.
I approached his desk and, my hands trembling, pulled the laptop from his grasp. I slammed it shut so forcefully that the sound resonated through the still room, and he finally turned to face me.
"You're not protecting me. You're doing this to punish yourself," I said to him, my own voice trembling with icy rage.
His nose flared, and his jaws clenched, as he attempted to construct an answer, muscles in his face contorting to a shape I'd never noticed before—raw agony mixed with frustration. "You don't understand—" he began to say, but I couldn't bear to listen.
"Then make me understand!" I screamed, voice breaking glass-like. "I am right here, Caspian! Tell me so that I can help you!"
For a long excruciating period of time, the tension between us hardened with air until it was almost a caress. Caspian's chair creaked on the ground as he sprang upright and his black stormy eyes clashed with mine. There was pain there, this biting pain so sharp that it felt as though it would cut through me.
"I Can't," he snarled in a rough, gravelly voice. "Because if I tell you the truth, you'll never look at me exactly the same again."
I was breathing so hard that I feared that the delicate peace we'd so recently made would shatter. I moved closer to him, heaving breast, as I strained to bridge the space he'd created. "Try me," I whispered,in a low and determined voice.
Gradually, he nodded his head, the eyes flinging open in a pain that appeared almost insupportable. For a moment, I perceived all of what he had locked away—remorse, fear, and a desperate urge to be understood. And in the burning, wordless glance, I perceived the depth of cracks in our foundation.
I averted my face from it then, not to see him disintegrate into a thousand fragments before me. I required space—a chasm of time before I too shuddered totally asunder into pieces. I left the study, walking deliberately in quiet steps on the thin carpet, and faded away into thin hall where pale light from lonely lamp danced. The silence there was of a different kind: empty and scattered with questions without ends. The echo of our fight resonated in every shadow.
His voice was still echoing in my mind, low and gruff, the refrain that would not release me: "If I tell you the truth…" My thoughts were full of uncertainty. Was I such a burden, then? Would his love suffice, or was it perhaps the origin of the shadows pursuing him?
I approached the window and peered out into the darkness. The rain had slowed to a soft patter, each drop creating tiny ripples in the puddles below. The world outside was soaked in blues and grays, a somber contrast to the deluge of sorrow within me. The sorrowful loveliness of it comforted the hurt for a brief while, but the comfort was fleeting.
I remembered those quiet moments we'd shared before this fracture—the nuzzling of my cheek against Caspian's palm as we kissed, the hot light in his eyes that had guarded, the gentle moments when, despite everything, we clung to each other in someone else's arms. I remembered the safety of his arms, how his promises whispered gentle in my ear once was a requirement that filled my life that otherwise was terror.
But now those memories pitted against raw pain of his recent finding. What I had so faintly sensed was a ghost of his own past, a shadow so black and close that he believed I could by no means consent to anything like it. And I was there, the rain penetrating my clothes chill to my skin blending with my tears, and I knew that I was afraid—afraid not of the world out there, but of losing him to the shadows that he so frantically tried to hold at bay.
I couldn't keep his eyes out of my head—those haunted, tortured eyes—when he told me that I'd never see him the same way again. I knew he was doing it to protect me, but I felt his stubborn withdrawal creating a wall between us. A wall that I feared might one day be insurmountable.
I went back into the house, my mind made up. I wasn't about to let him kick me out. Not when all of me—each pounding heart—longed to be with him. I crept quietly down the hallway until I found him again in the study, leaning forward over his desk, staring at the empty screen in front of him. The room was lit by the soft beam of only one lamp, and it highlighted the lines of wear on his face.
I approached him, bridging the distance between us. "Caspian," I whispered, my voice trembling but sincere. He did not turn to face me at first, but then when he slowly did, his own eyes overflowed with a virtually intolerable sorrow. His black eyes looked into mine as though he longed for me to condemn him for his failure.
Please," I told him, resting my hand on his arm, "don't shut me out, you are hurting me in the process. I'm here. I need to know, but you must open up to me.
His eyes flashed with the war within him—the impulse to guard, the urge to hide, and the silent fear of losing me. His mouth opened to speak, then closed and he cast his eyes down to the ground.".
"Lily, I…" he began, his voice barely above a murmur. I wrapped my fingers around his, keeping his hand against my face as though I could give him some of mine.
"Tell me," I urged, trying to keep a firm tone over the tremble of emotion. "Tell me what's going on. I have to know why you're so afraid." I said.