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I didn't think it was the alcohol racing through his system, though, that made it so he couldn't meet my eyes.
He'd come here to see me, and he couldn't even look at me.
I'm not sure how that would have made me feel a few months ago, or even weeks, but with what I now knew, it made me feel wretched.
And angry. Confused and conflicted. Wounded and lost.
But also, it touched me deeply.
How long had he been living this double life, stuck in purgatory, trapped in a vicious web of lies, completely alone?
Protecting me from everything.
I, frankly, didn't even want to know. It is much easier to hate someone who you're certain has wronged you than it is to hate yourself.
And I was very afraid that if I knew just how far back his lies went, my self-hatred would know no bounds.
"Dante," I said, my voice so soft that it forced him to look at me, his entire drunken face registering a sort of endearing surprise, like he'd forgotten where he even was.
"You look like hell." That being said, he made hell look good. His hair was messy, more scruff on his jaw than usual. I was still wearing the evidence of that scruff on my thighs from his last visit, and no, that wasn't a complaint.
No suit for him today, instead he was wearing gray sweats and a zip-up hoodie that was open wide enough at the neck to expose his defined collarbone and the top of his muscular chest. And the cursed chain that he never took off. Also, there was enough bared skin that I suspected he wasn't wearing a shirt under. If he weren't drunk, I'd have assumed he just came from a workout. He was dressed for it, down to his running shoes.
"How do you keep getting past security?" I was mostly curious about it. I'd had to jump through hoops to get on set the first few times, they were so strict. How did he get so lucky?
"They think I'm your boyfriend."
"Why would they think that?" I asked him, but I knew the answer.
"Because I told them so. And I bribed them."
At least he was honest. For once.
"What are you doing here?" I asked him point blank.
His shaking hand pushed his hair impatiently back from his face. "I'm here for the same reason I always come back to you. I've come for scraps. Anything you'll give me. I've come because I can't stay away." His voice was low and hoarse from the drink, but thick and dark with emotion. "I tried to. Don't you know that I'm always trying to stay away? It doesn't matter. It never works.
There was a time in the not so distant past that his words would have set me off, thrown me into a temper that would have left us both bloody.
But something had changed. Something that terrified and excited me both.
Something that utterly destroyed me.
Something that made me whole again.
I did not know how far all of his betrayals ran, how deep or shallow his lies, but I was starting to realize that in one respect, at least, it didn't matter.
Some part of my pathetic heart was going soft for him again.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
"'Love' is the name for our pursuit of wholeness, for our desire to be complete."
~Plato
Without another word I went to make us both a cup of coffee. My hands were shaking badly, but either he didn't notice, or he was polite enough not to comment on it.
"Are you in town long?" I asked him as I offered him his cup.
