chapter 35

T ime, please stand still. Just this once.

Not for a second did he take those piercing eyes off me. "My Love. Come," he said, lacing our fingers and pulling me to him.

I settled into his side as we laid back down in front of the fire. Though I was absolutely dying to get railed by his surprisingly thick, juicy… it meant so much for me to give him that.

Finally, even if it was a little quick.

"Let's go to bed, my babe," I said, stroking his jaw.

"No."

"No? You're so sleepy."

"Let us read some more." He sat up, looking down at me, waiting for my joining.

Dark hair hung around his cheeks. White dress shirt was still unbuttoned, showing off his now cleaned body. Silky chest hair glimmered in the flickering light. I am so blinded that I don't even notice the extent of scarring anymore.

"What are you looking at?" he asked as if he didn't already know how beautiful I found him. He would make me say it. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction.

"Come on" he grinned, patting his hand on his thigh. "It is now your turn to be tortured, my love."

"You're a sadist," I replied and flipped over, laying my head in the lap of the demon that sat at the other end of the rug we'd just defiled.

"And you love it," he said as I settled in. "You love me."

Without warning, Erique's free hand slid up under my skirt and found its rightful place between my thighs.

"You are absolutely soaked," he groaned. "Shall I get you a wash rag? Or should I continue…?" he said, moving his hand slowly against me. "Now, where were we before you so abruptly ended our reading?"

"I…I…you," I stammered.

"Try to pay attention or I'll stop. Do you understand?" he said. His serpents' words slithered into my ears. What a terrible, beautiful man.

He cleared his throat, still running his fingers around all the places that liquefied me. " These visions faded when I perused, for the first time, those poets whose effusions entranced my soul and lifted it to heaven… "

***

One amazing, prolonged orgasm later, it was finally my turn to read. I was a bit tired already and a little drained, but Erique was insistent.

"One more. I promise," he said, again.

I was impaled by his steady gaze. Playfulness had left his body and his eyes flicked from mine to the book. It was just starting to get to an intense part of the story. But even he was acting weird. I laughed and took it from him. "You know what happens next, why are you so anxious?"

I opened the book and my smile immediately fell. I short circuited and my limbs went numb. "Erique…" I said, as my stomach clenched tight and panic rioted within.

In the pages of Frankenstein , was a hollowed out square that held the bottom half of a circular, red box. Sitting in the center of the box were alternating blue sapphires and white diamonds set in a silver band shimmering in the firelight.

He hadn't been reading. He'd been reciting from memory.

Erique had shifted to his knees and was kneeling before me. Terror and certainty in his warm eyes. I was going to vomit. My heart either was beating too fast to feel it or it stopped. I was stuck. I couldn't move. "Erique… don't."

Trembling hands took my own shaking hands quickly. Every hope and dream went on for miles in those eyes.

"Peace was a myth. Love, something you had to take. Selflessness was for the weak. This was my mind before you," he said. "In the few moments I held you the night you emerged into my darkness, this fractured mind fell together."

"Erique, stop…" My heartache leaked down my face no matter how hard I tried to hold it back.

This was the cruelest thing possible and it was my fault. I allowed myself to be with this man knowing his feelings for me. In this world I don't belong. It's the most beautiful thing. I think that's the cruelest part of it all. Not once had any proposal before come close to something so simple and perfect. So wanted .

"Every note written since that moment has been you. In my denial, I still found you. Your strange, odd ways hold me captivated. I see the world in a new light through your eyes. Certainty holds me knowing I was made for you and you me. I see you. I have loved you and promise to love you." He pulled the book from my frozen hand and removed the beautiful ring from it. "With that, Melody Amber Reilly, will you do me the greatest honor this creature never thought possible, and allow me to be your husband?"

I was too happy. Of course, this would happen. Every millisecond crushed me more. Why did he have to ruin everything? Why did I have to ruin everything?

My shaking hand raised and clamped around his. "I can't. I'm so sorry," I said, choking on my cries.

I couldn't look at him. Never ever had I wanted to hurt him, I loved him.

My lashes were heavy, laced in my own tears, as I finally looked up to find emotion had overtaken his as well.

He lunged at me, catching my arms in his grasp. "Tell me you love me," he cried with desperation, squeezing harder. "Please!"

I held his face. He leaned into my hands, kissing them. "Please tell me you love me, Melody," he begged, and rubbed his cheek against mine.

"Erique, my Erique…" I pleaded through a waterfall of tears. "Do you not see with your own eyes, in your heart, how I feel for you?"

"I need to hear you say it…" he answered. "Why won't you say it?"

Everything inside told me to tell him. To yell it out and take his hand. But it wouldn't come. It couldn't.

His hands dropped from me, and compassion left his eyes.

"You don't love me then," his voice suddenly low and cold.

"Erique, please don't," I begged, grabbing at him. He shook me free and turned away. "It's not like that at all."

"My patience has run out. No more make believe," he said, then whipped around. "I have stood by as you used my body, mind, and my heart. And yet still you will not love me."

"No… I…" I said, trying to reach out.

His eyes were dull knives as they cut into me and I deserved it. "You what?" he said through gritted teeth. He stepped forward and grabbed me like he'd never done before. Rough and intent. "You what, Melody?" he growled in my face.

I quaked in his grasp. This was the real him. The first time his anger would be directed towards me. I deserved it, totally, but now I was scared.

It was only a matter of time.

"You really need to see this disease to make your decision? To bear the thought of loving me?" he seethed. In a swift movement, he ripped the mask off and threw it aside, shoving the deformity of his face into mine. "Here I am!"

Nothing could have prepared me for what I was looking at. It was horrible. I recoiled but couldn't look away.

The area around his eyes was mostly sunken like he was missing the muscle beneath. A skeleton with skin. The skin over most of his face looked as if someone had ripped it off and tried to reattach it blindfolded. I wasn't even sure it was just from the burns, it was so bad. It was a surprise that he had a nose, if that was what you wanted to call what was left of it.

"This is the monster you beg to fuck you. Who takes you with this face and these hands, hands that delight in removing life from this world. Look upon this, dear." He laughed. "I am no dashing Count with the wit of a stone, that is for certain. I am a walking, breathing corpse. Decaying before your eyes. Cold as death's visit. A corpse that loves you more than anything this god forsaken life can offer.

This is what you wanted, needed, to see before you could love me?"

The anguish mixed with rage twisted my heart until it was unrecognizable. This was the cruelest thing I've ever done to someone I care for.

I tried to look away. Not sure out of fear for his face or the heartbreak we were both enduring.

"Look at me!" he demanded, not giving me a choice. "Do you love me now, Melody? Now that you have seen the real man, the monster beneath the mask? Scream! Fill this cabin, this forest with the voice I have given you!"

Violently shaking within his grip, I stared. What was I going to do?

The rage in those eyes softened and sorrow suddenly took its place. Tears fell, and so did I, when he let go.

From the floor where we read not even minutes ago, I watched as the broken man walked out into the spring night.

Tears stung my cheeks and snot suffocated me. I got caught up in a fantasy and fell in love. I knew it was going to break us and I did it anyway. We were never meant to be.

Without warning I could be gone. Ripped away from the only man I've ever actually loved…

"We are never promised tomorrow," he once said.

Then my sister's words echoed in my mind. "God himself could literally hand you the man specifically made for you, and tell you ‘This is the one' and you would still be like… No thank you. I'll just hide my heart."

I sniffled back at the memory. "What am I doing?" I said. I was going to be here and have the one person I've always wanted, why the fuck would I throw that away?

I leapt to my feet, searching for his mask. If anyone saw him, it could be trouble and he didn't need any more of that. "AH!" I screamed, finding it underneath the couch.

I rushed through the open door and into the moonlight. It was as bright as daylight.

My head spun trying to pick a direction to go. Maybe out to the water? I would just walk that way until I couldn't anymore. No matter if it was freezing, or that my feet numbed, or my breath was visible. I was going to find him.

I took a deep breath, hoping to calm everything. I exhaled slowly, trying to keep my head level. That was hard. He was unpredictable.

" …un giorno Dio mi porterà via e sarò bella e amata… " I heard his song in the distance.

My chest heaved in a sigh of relief. He was here and alive. I followed the voice through some of the trees towards the lake. It was so faint, but for sure was him.

Breaching the tree line, I listened carefully, honing in on the weak voice that sang.

" …lei sarà lì ad aspettare e io sarò amato. un giorno sarò amato. fiori e luce del sole. camminare in primavera… " his voice grew louder as I neared the dying tree.

At the base of the tree, rocking back and forth with his knees to his chest, singing to himself in a language I didn't know, through the most heart wrenching sobs I'd ever heard, was the heartbroken monster of Le Garnier .

The sounds he made were devastating. Unbearable. I stepped closer. His hands flew to his face as he recoiled, trying to further hide himself within the tree. " …mia unica amica. la notte mi amerà solo e i demoni mi abbracceranno. perché non sono degno?... "

I set the mask in the sand as I kneeled beside him. Gently, I touched his face, trying to get him to look at me. He quieted and looked up through fallen hair. Mournfullest eyes slowly met mine. They told me his whole existence was to see how tortured a soul could be before they broke.

There was so much to say. I didn't know where to start or what should even be said. I froze.

"Go inside" he mumbled, breaking the silence and pulling his head from my hands.

" We need to go back inside. It's freezing out here."

Erique let out a low menacing laugh. "What do you care what happens to this creature? Just leave me, Melody."

With a gentle hand and deep breath of courage, I pushed the hair away from the twisted face he hid. "How could you ever think for one moment that I don't love you?"

Erique looked away and clenched his jaw. His eyes seemed uncertain now.

"Of course, I love you, Erique," I said. The words rolled off my tongue as if they were meant to be there and my lungs expanded as though I'd just breached the surface after nearly drowning.

To finally admit it. Wow.

"You love me?" he asked, sitting in wait to hear those words he'd longed to hear his entire life.

"Yeah. More than you could ever know. Every day I am in disbelief that this has happened to me."

"Then why?" he asked, exasperated.

"Because I'm a scared piece of shit that's afraid of what it will mean."

Erique moved quickly, pulling me into his lap. "Say it again," he urged, holding me tightly. Searching my face for a hint of a lie.

"I'm a scared piece of…"

"No. Not that."

"I love you," I repeated, a smile spreading across my face.

This time when he cried, I wasn't sure what it was for.

"I love you. I love you. I love you so much," he declared into my neck. I could hardly breathe with the strength in his hug and overbearing care that radiated from him. "Why could you not tell me, Melody?" he finally asked, cupping my face in his hand. "It could not have simply been fear. There is much you have not said."

This was it. This was the truth time. For a moment I would have him back and then he would be gone again.

When I didn't think my chest could ache anymore, it did at the thought of losing him again.

"Please know that it wasn't anything to do with you. I told you once upon a time those words were only used to hurt. It was that and I was afraid that if I admitted, said those words, then it would mean I'll never go home."

The future returned to his eyes once again. It almost stopped me. "I will take you home. I will buy the next tickets to the Americas. I will go with you. You can show me New York. I do not care where I am. You love me. That is all that matters."

"I don't want to go home!" I said, surprised by my own admission. This wasn't the truth I was going to tell him. Nor myself. Just then I realized what I'd been lying about.

It wasn't even that I wouldn't be able to go home. It's that I hadn't wanted to. And admitting my feelings would have cemented it.

I glanced around, trying to collect my thoughts as curious eyes filled with longing bore into me.

"I… I'm such a terrible person," I said.

"No, you are the furthest from any variation," he said, and kissed my forehead.

"The truth is, even though everything's been scary as hell since I got here, and it smells awful… at home all I did was work and take care of my mom, because no one else would. It's the only reason I was trying to get home. Not because I had such a great life to go back to, but because I still feel the immense guilt for wishing she was gone. So I didn't have to do it anymore." He ran his fingers through my hair, the glimmer of moonlight danced in his eyes as he caught my glance. "I can breathe here, even though it smells like ass. I don't have to spend every waking moment taking care of someone who's mean and miserable all the time. Who's completely…" Useless. Oh god I'm shit. "I haven't had to put my life on hold. And you… I've done things I've only dreamt of. I couldn't have done this with the life I had. I miss her. But I've been so relieved."

"How does wanting for yourself make you a terrible person?"

"I'm her daughter. I should want to help her…"

"You do not think she would want a good life for her child? Where her child's dreams come true? Where she has undying love and career?"

I stared at him dumbfounded. It had never occurred to me for a moment that it was an option for me.

Oh my God, he was right though. I knew telling her that I was miserable would kill her. If she knew I threw away something resembling perfect, she'd beat me.

Any worry I had before of Erique ever leaving me, becoming bored of me, had all vanished as well. I was here right now in this moment.

Like the weight of the universe had been lifted from my shoulders, I exhaled, and I was lighter than a feather.

I'll continue to write home. But I wasn't going to feel the guilt anymore.

"So, this is what you have been holding back from me all this time?" he asked, continuing stroking my hair.

I nodded like a child finally fessing to something they did. "Mostly."

"Hmm."

"There's more. Not emotionally. But, logistically," I said. "It's super complicated. I don't even know how to tell you about that."

"If I do not understand, make me understand," he said, with pleading eyes.

Taking his cold hands in mine, I kissed them. "I love you. I just wanted to say that. In case I never got to again…" I said. "Ok, I have to stand up for this. I can't be right here or I won't be able to do it," I said, getting to my feet.

"My Love?"

Not sure if it was the cold or the nerves making me shake, but it was getting painful. I turned back to the man who'd just returned the mask to his face, and stood up, knocking dirt from his trousers.

"I fell in love with you , Erique, without a last name, remember that when I tell you this. It wasn't the Phantom or the fantasy of it all. You and your kindness. Friendship. Love. Passion. Weirdness. Everything that you are and have become since I've known you. That's who I love."

I wanted to remember him in this moment. Because even the "crazy" Phantom wasn't going to believe me.