Page 71 of Compulsion
“But that is who I am.You grow up with a mother who is a killer…you grow up always sensing something beneath the surface, always feeling likeyouhave to be perfect or that something very bad can happen…and you don’t joke a lot.You don’t smile easily.Instead, you overthink.You worry.You try to plan for every scenario so that you can be safe.So that the people around you will be safe.And then one day, you realize that you don’t even really know how to laugh anymore.Not like other people.Because you will never be carefree like them.”You wonder if you can ever be happy.She didn’t say that last part, though.She’d finally managed to clamp her lips shut.
Too much oversharing.Sloane would have been shocked.Lilywasshocked.
He let go of her hand.Took a step back.
She’d revealed far too much.Why on earth had she done that?
Sloane is the one who laughs easily.Sloane is the one who smiles.Sloane is?—
She wears a mask.Sloane learned to mask when she was a teen, and she does it like a pro.
Lily didn’t like to bother with masks.
As he stared at her, Atlas’s expression hardened.Then, seemingly through gritted teeth, he questioned, “Do you think I want you to fake smiles with me?To fakeany damn thingwith me?”
She backed up.Hit the side of the bed.“I—” Lily stopped.“No, no, of course not.”Why had she said anything to him about?—
“I fuckingdon’t.If you smile, I want it to be real.I want you to mean it.I want you to mean everything that you do or say with me.”
Okay.
“But, hell, yes, I would like for you to smile.I wouldlikefor you to be happy, and I have no idea why.My whole life, I’ve never cared if most people are happy or sad.Bored or thrilled.But for some reason,youmatter.”
Her heart began to beat faster.
“So, yes, fuck it all, I do want to see you smile.I want to hear you laugh.But I want it to be real.I want all of you to berealwith me.No pretending.No holding back because you think I won’t be able to handle the monster that lurks inside of you.The one that you can feel inside, pushing and growing in those weak moments that you told me about before.”
He was going back to that, now?
“The one that wants you to stop being good.To just let go.”His hand rose again.This time, though, his fingers slid under her jaw as he tipped back her head.“You keep your control every single moment, don’t you?”
No, she didn’t, not with him.And when she’d let her control break in the past…
David Warren.
She’d done something bad.Something that she would never be able to forget.
“You guard yourself too well, Lily.You don’t let go, so you don’tfeel,do you?”
Anger stirred.“You’re going to talk to me about not feeling?If memory serves, you were the one who said you didn’t feel emotions.”She’d never claimed not to feel them.Quite the opposite.Sometimes, she feared they would rip her apart.You can turn them on and off?Tell me how.Please, tell me how.Tell me how to make the pain stop.
“I told you that Itypicallydidn’t feel them.With you, I find myself feeling far too much.”
That was good, wasn’t it?Or could it be very bad?Maybe a bit of both?
“You have to let go of your control,” Atlas warned her.
That was something that terrified Lily.She shook her head.
“Do you ever do it?”he asked.“Just let go?”
Not if she could help it.“Bad things happen,” she whispered.
“Not with me.Because I’ll keep you safe.”His fingers skimmed over her skin.His thumb brushed across her lips.“Do you let go with your lovers, sweet Lily?”
No.She didn’t.She wanted to let go.She wanted to stop caring and overthinking and worrying and just get lost to pleasure with a lover, but she never had.Her head shook.
His thumb slid over her bottom lip with the slight movement.“Not even with that jackass Gage?”
