frustration at the helplessness of my situation was what I felt the most. The first time I laid eyes on you…” I let go of her and ran my hands through my hair. There was no way she could understand what she made me feel, so she was probably going to think what I was about to say was bullshit or crazy. And, yeah, it may very well be crazy, but it definitely wasn’t bullshit. “The first time I laid eyes on you, I finally felt something different from the frustration, fear and sadness. You made me feel…capable.”
I stood up and started pacing. I was getting frustrated at trying to explain how she made…makes me feel. “It’s hard to explain because I was only five and didn’t understand the feelings I was experiencing. You made me feel like I was strong. You made me feel like I could be my favorite superhero, but for some reason, instead of a positive superhero like Superman or Batman you made me feel like a horror movie villain. When I looked at you, you made me want to be a masked Michael Meyers or Jason because I knew enough about their characters to know that nobody fucked with them. You made me feel powerful. You made me wish it was always Halloween, so I could dress up and pretend to be so dangerous no one would dare come after me. You had made me feel like I was strong enough to go home and protect my mother. You had made me want to protect you.”
I looked over at her and the tears were really flowing now. “Damien,” she whispered.
“You made me feel untouchable when I knew it wasn’t true. I knew my father could crush me. So, I began to hate the hope you made me feel, and I started to hate you. Only I didn’t really hate you. I never hated you. I just didn’t know how to exist around you and how you made me feel,” I finally confessed to her.
I sat back down next to her. “As we got older, your hold on me tightened and you had no idea what you were doing to me. You’d go about your day without any need for me and it killed me. It killed me knowing you could and probably wanted to live your life without me around but I would lose my shit if I didn’t see you at least once a day.” I let out a pathetic laugh. “You should have seen the state I used to fall into whenever you would stay home from school sick or whatever.”
“I don’t know what to say,” she whispered.
“There’s nothing to say.” I stood up again and looked down at her. “Look, I know all this sounds crazy and paints me as unstable as fuck, but it’s the truth. I wanted to keep you behind me and let no one else see, hear, or touch you. If anyone else realized how special you were, they might try to take you from me, and then I’d really lose my mind,” I kept confessing.
Fiona blinked away her tears. “I can’t believe how clueless I was all those years.”
I sat back down and leaning forward, rested my elbows on my knees as I held my head in my hands. “I was so sure I had given myself away the night I went after Dennis Franks. I’d never felt so much rage as I had that night when I saw him with his hands on you.”
“The night you kissed me,” she confirmed.
I looked over at her and brought my fingertips to her lips. “Yeah, the night I kissed you.”
“Do you have any clue how confused you left me that night? One minute you hated me and the next you were kissing me with everything you had. It was overwhelming,” she admitted.
I gave her one of my rare smiles. “Baby, if I had kissed you with everything I had, you would have been naked underneath me that same night instead of two years later.”
She lowered her eyes, unsure. “All those girls…”
Fuck. “All those girls were Will’s crazy idea of helping me control my obsession with you. After that night with Dennis, he finally understood the depths of my issues with you. He thought if he paraded other girls in front of me, it would help. Hell, we were sixteen-year-old hormonal boys, it should have worked, but it hadn’t. Nothing ever did.”