Stay With Me

“So, are you gonna tell me what happened with Nina?”

I sighed, keeping my eyes shut while Gerard’s lips were grazing my shoulder blade, soft and smooth against my skin. We were in his bed, like every Monday evening, naked and wrapped around each other after a pretty amazing round of sex. I had tried to push the conversation out of my mind, and recently I found that Gerard’s arms were the best source of distraction I could find. When I was in his arms, I didn’t think, I didn’t feel anything but him inside me, bringing me to new heights of ecstasy, and everything wrong in my life faded away into non-existence. I didn’t even have to try, really – Gerard was amazing at everything he did, and that included sex. I didn’t want to think about how much experience he must have had to become so…skilled. He just knew how to push me to my limits, and then leave my hanging there until I begged for release. Every flick and lick of his tongue drove me crazy with lust, and it was impossible to deny him anything when he touched me with his amazing, artistic hands. I had been completely consumed by him when I had all but dragged him to his apartment, forgoing our customary coffee stop. Looking back, I could see how he could’ve picked up on my obvious restlessness when I left the office when I had hardly spoken.

“We talked about my mother,” I told him flatly, my tone expressing that I wasn’t in the mood to talk further on the subject. I supposed I shouldn’t have been too surprised that Gerard belligerently ignored it.

“You never mention her,” he spoke softly, as though he knew he was treading on thin ice.

“I know.”

He sighed, and I felt a stab of guilt. I didn’t want him to think that I didn’t want to be open with him. It was just a topic I wanted to avoid talking about. I wanted to sweep it under the carpet, let it rot and disintegrate until it ceased to exist. I hated that Nina had made me think about my mother, and I was angry that she forced me to consider the option of telling her the truth about Nick. I knew that there would only be one ending to that scenario. She wouldn’t believe me, not for a second. Nick was perfect – a golden child, who was the perfect son that any parent would love to have. My mother would never accept that Nick was nothing but a paedophile, who preyed on his stepsister during the most vulnerable time of her life. My mother would rather believe that her daughter was still a liar, resentful of how well Nick had done for himself. In my mother’s eyes, being a legal secretary was nothing. It didn’t matter that I actually earned a good wage, or that I had a nice apartment, and that I had an amazing boyfriend, who was also quite successful in his field of business. There was no way that that particular conversation would end in a satisfactory way for me. It would be a final nail for my mother, and there would be no way to take the words back, to deny a long withheld truth. Any chance of having a normal relationship with mymother would be destroyed, and I wasn’t sure if I was ready for it. Maybe there was a part of me that wanted things to be different.

“Gerard, it’s not that I don’t trust you. I don’t like talking about her to anyone. That woman is the reason for everything bad that’s ever happened to me, and I prefer to ignore her existence when possible.”

“I think that’s sad.”

I turned to face him, shocked by his tone and the sympathetic look on his face.

“Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure she feels the same way about me.”

“I doubt that very much.”

I let out a bitter laugh, one that was cold and harsh but that perfectly summed up how I felt about his last statement.

“You don’t know her like I do. She’s a cold-hearted woman who never loved me. She cares about appearance and money. Anything else is just…unnecessary, including me.”

He didn’t say anything after that. He cupped my face, capturing my lips in a kiss that could only be described as loving. He had yet to repeat the sentiments he had told me the night that he had first kissed me, but I felt it. It was in the way he looked at me, the way he touched me, and how he made sure that I knew that I was on his mind all the time. I was glad that he hadn’t spoken the words, though. I wasn’t ready to say them back, or refute my feelings. I think he knew it too, and he avoided explicitly saying it. Part of me wanted to say the words, just to make him smile. It was strange that I was utterly confident in how he felt about me. I felt somewhat narcissistic acknowledging that, but it was so hard to deny something that was made so abundantly clear in his actions.

“I’m sorry that she made you feel that way. You are the most amazing person I’ve ever met, and your mother is a fool for not making sure you knew how perfect you are.”

I blushed, his words making my stomach clench with giddiness.

“I’m far from perfect, and you know it.”

A slow grin appeared on his face, showing off his teeth with a boyish charm that made me melt every time I saw it.

“You’re perfectly imperfect. You’re the biggest contradiction I’ve ever met, and I wouldn’t change it for the world.”

“What about for a million dollars?” I giggled.

He looked thoughtful for a few seconds, rubbing his chin mockingly.

“Well, a million dollars is a lot of money…”

I shoved him playfully, letting out a girlish giggle. I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude towards him in that second. He was the only person who could’ve made me laugh right then.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“You don’t need to thank me for telling you how I feel.”

I shook my head.

“You know you’re an idiot, right? If you were smarter, you’d be staying far away from me and spending your time with someone-“

“Better? More available? Less fucked up? I could, you know. You’re right. It’d be the smarter thing, and hell of a lot easier. That’s not what I want, though. I wish I did, but I don’t. You’re the only person I want to spend time with, even if that time is limited.”

I sighed, the all too familiar twisted pain in my gut flaring back to life. Fuck, I wished things could be different. I wished I was more decisive. I wished I wasn’t such a coward. Above all, I wished that my heart wasn't torn in two between two men who were both far too good for me. Neither of them deserved my shitty treatment, and if I were a better person, I’d walk away from them both so that they could find someone better. I’m not a good person, though, and I was slowly coming to terms with that. Nick had been right all those years ago. I was a whore, and though I had spent years trying to deny it, my actions now only proved it to the world, if they were to know exactly what I was doing, and see what I was capable of. It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t nice, and if I believed in God, I would be destined for hell.

“One day you’ll see.”

I furrowed my brow at the almost serene, yet intense look that took over his beautiful face. I had no idea what he meant.

“See what?”

“One day you’ll see yourself the way I see you.”

I couldn’t speak. His eyes were hooded, but sparkling with an honesty that was clenching my heart in a vice grip. My throat tightened up, my breathing stalled before it became rapid with the overwhelming range of emotions that were hurled at me. Fuck, I didn’t know how I felt when he did this. Part of me wanted to glory and bask in it, enjoy every second of his praise and admiration that would never be deserved. The other part of me was just plain frightened by it, and wanted to run away and hide from my feelings and his intensity. He made me feel good about myself - too good, at times. That, more than anything else, was what made me come back, and what made it so utterly impossible to stay away when I knew I shouldn’t be coming back. Deep down inside, I think I was beginning to understand why I was unable to make a decision.

“One day you’re going to see the real me, Gerard. And you’re not gonna like it, when you do.”

I thought about Frank right then. He had finally seen every side of me, and yet he had stayed with me. Things were different, yes, but strangely we were a little closer than before. I saw the irony in that - that things were perhaps the best they could have been, yet I was having an affair on the side. Gerard wasn’t seeing my flaws properly. He was covering them up, blurring over them and not accepting them. It was a case of ‘rose tinted’ glasses, and one day that would fade. Maybe it would be soon, or maybe it would be years down the line, but it would go away, and his misplaced adoration would be gone in a flash.

“I see who you are, Grace.”

It was too much. I shut my eyes, counting to five in my head before reopening them, swallowing the lump in my throat and calming my breathing down a notch.

“I think I should go,” I flashed him a smirk, itching to leave and not have to deal with whatever the hell I was feeling right then. I was suddenly pinned down by the wrists, preventing me from getting up.

“Don’t. I’m tired of watching what I say, in case you walk away. Do you know how that makes me feel when you do that?”

I saw the hurt and anger in his eyes, his lips thinned out unattractively as he fought to containhimself. I was almost frightened by the sudden aggression in his tone, and his dominating action, but I knew he would never hurt me.

“Do you?” he asked again when I didn’t answer.

I hadn’t thought about it, was the honest truth. I didn’t think about how it must feel to constantly hold himself back. For the first time, I put myself in his shoes. I thought about how much it must hurt to see someone you care about going home to someone else. I thought about how shit it must be to be afraid to say the words you wanted to let role off your tongue, out of fear that the person you wanted to say them too would walk away, like they had before. It hit me hard then, watching him watch me with big eyes that shined with pain. It was wrong of me, to keep doing this to him. I should have ended it, right there and then. Get the pain over with, let him hate me and think I was the devil in female form, out to destroy him with everything in my power. And yet, I couldn’t. His eyes were begging me to say the words he wanted to hear. He was pleading, beseeching me to just give him what he wanted, to make him happy and be what he needed. I wanted to, staring back at his powerful gaze that was so convincing and overwhelming to the extreme.

“I’m sorry,” was all I could choke out.

He shook his head, a wry smile on his face.

“You know you drive me fucking crazy? Sometimes I just want to-“

He stopped himself, sighing with frustration and dipping his face into the crook of my neck as though trying to compose himself. Maybe he was. I wasn’t sure. He didn’t let go of my wrists, something that should have bothered me. I hated being restrained – Nick would do it frequently, and I had never indulged in any kind of bondage with Frank. I was afraid that it would bring the memories back, that it would hit me unexpectedly and then I would panic. Panic would lead to explanations or lies, and I didn’t want to do either, so it had been avoided at all costs, not that Frank had brought it up. Of course, once I started thinking about it, old memories came rushing back, as I feared.

“Gerard.”

He sensed the panic straight away. His head shot up, and when I wriggled my wrists, he seemed to understand immediately.

“Sorry,” he apologised, guilt swimming in his eyes.

I kissed him, knowing that it would convince him that I was okay, better than words. He didn’t need much convincing, his lips gliding over mine with a sweet caress. I pulled away, knowing that we didn’t have time for things to go any further.

“I really do need to go,” I whispered, biting my lip.

He attached his lips to the flesh on my neck, slightly sucking on the flesh.

“No, you don’t.”

I sighed, my head fighting with my body. I needed to go. I knew that if I stayed much longer, Frank would question where I was for so long.

“I really do.”

He huffed, clearly annoyed, but he refrained from saying anything, and rolled off me. The atmosphere was tense and filled with unspoken anger as I dressed, feeling Gerard’s eyes watching me with scrutiny. He was holding back, and even though I wasn’t facing him, I could just tell that his lips were pursed, tightly shut to avoid saying something that might drive me away. I hated that I made him feel like he couldn’t be honest. I had run away and lashed out so many times that by then he just kept quiet, instead of saying what he needed to say. I knew what it was like to stay quiet when all you wanted was to scream, or shout, and vent. I finally faced him when I was fully clothed, and I couldn’t help the little smile when he held a hand out for me, beckoning me to go back to the bed. I obliged, crawling on top of him, straddling his hips, which were clad by a thin bed sheet.

“One day, I’m gonna make you stay.”

His jaw was tense with determination, and I knew he meant it. I just smiled and kissed him.The kiss was fleeting, but full of meaning. I couldn’t decide if I wanted that to happen.

Notes

Hey guys,

Things will really pick up in pace soon. I know there's been a real lack of Frank, but that will be fixed next chapter. Your thoughts would be appreciated and welcomed.

Lyra x