But…
Making love.He liked the way those particular words sounded when they came from her.
“I can’t stay with you,” she said.
Oh, yes, you can.Get ready for forever, sweets.
“I have nightmares.I-I fight sometimes, in my sleep.You don’t want to be with me in the dark.”
He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead.“That’s exactly where I want to be with you.”
“Atlas—”
“I can handle the dark.There is nothing about you that I will not be able to handle.”There is nothing about you that I could not love.
But…no.
He didn’t know love.
Didn’t know about any of the emotions most people felt.He faked his way through all the social drama.He charmed.He made light jokes.He bullshitted his way through life so that others would not see the truth.I’m empty.Cold on the inside.I laugh and I smile and I don’t actually feel anything deep inside.
He’d asked her…
Can a psychopath love?She hadn’t answered him.He didn’t need her to answer, though, because he’d done plenty of his own research over the years.He’d realized what he was, of course, early on.With his father, how could he not understand the truth?
I heard the screams when I was a child.I ran outside once, to the old shed.But he came out.He caught me.Carried me back inside the house and told me it was just the wind.
The wind didn’t scream that way.As if the pain was unbearable and death would be a blessing.
But he’d believed his father.
For a time.
He’d…watched his father.Learned.Realized that he and his father were both so different from others.
Atlas could mimic emotions.He could make sure he did not wind up in a cage, or with a needle in his arm like his father.People wanted to see him happy?Fine.He could show happiness.People wanted to see sadness?Oh, sure, he could muster up a sympathetic expression.Could make his voice thicken and even get a teardrop to appear in his eye.
All of that was just surface.
Masking.
He didn’t really love.No matter how much he might want to, no matter how much he might wish?—
Atlas shut down the thoughts.He swept Lily into his arms, intent on putting her back in his bed.But then he stopped.
I want to keep her.I want to force her to stay with me.
But if you kept a butterfly prisoner, if you tried to hold it too tightly, didn’t you just damage its wings?Didn’t you wind up killing the beautiful thing that you wanted to possess so badly?
He’d done that once, as a kid.Not too long after the night that he’d heard the wind screaming.He’d watched a butterfly for days.Seen it flying around his mother’s garden.Not some big, fancy garden.Just some wildflowers.They’d planted seeds, throwing them out.Laughing.And…
The wildflowers had bloomed.Butterflies had flown from one colorful bulb to another.He’d chased those butterflies.Been mesmerized by the beautiful flutter of their wings.He’d held out his hand, dirty from playing that morning, from sinking his fingers into the soil, and he’d waited, barely breathing, still as a statue until his muscles ached, until one butterfly—the smallest one there—had finally fluttered over his palm.
Quick as a snake, he’d closed his fingers around his prize.So eager to keep it.To always have it close and watch those wings flutter and flutter.He’d run for his mother, shouting for her, calling out in excitement for her to see what he had.For her to see his most beautiful thing.He’d run to the front of their little house, looking for her.Searching and searching.
She’d been talking to a neighbor.But she’d finally come his way.Smiled at him.
He’d opened his hand.The dirt from his palm had covered the butterfly’s wings.The butterfly’s still wings.
