Chapter 74: Colors Growing Darker

*What??*

I pushed on his chest harder to put more distance between us. My olive-colored eyes held a frustrated glare this time– something I hadn’t given him since I decided I accept his offer to date in private. “You better get this thought through your head right fucking now and make it stay there for the rest of your life. Never, and I mean NEVER, will anybody stick their shitty ass noses in my business. If I wanted that then I’d go to fucking therapy! Get the fuck off of me. You’ve ruined my mood. Good fucking job.”

My feisty snap didn’t make Julian move at first, he stared down at me silently for a moment to the point I was about to sweat with another angry curse but thankfully he took my warning and got off of me. “Sukia…” he rested his hand on my lap and gently rubbed it up and down as I sat up. “If you want this to work between us… then you’ll need to accept the fact that we’re allowed that deeply into each other's lives.”

I squinted at him suspiciously. The look in my eyes could mirror two middle fingers. Just the very idea put a foul taste in my mouth. Julian saw this and continued. “Not everybody knows that I don’t think my mother ever loved me.”

This got a wince out of me and I looked away. I had to admit, that was a pretty low blow but wasn’t much of a surprise that wasn’t common knowledge. Who would want to share something like that? I pitied him just for the thought alone.

Julian’s hand still rubbed my leg as he let his words settle in my head and then spoke again about my problem. “Your business is my business– what I mean is… how about we start here,” he tapped my thigh and I looked up at him with utter confusion as if he had spit the marbles in his brain off of his tongue. “Let's talk about your last nightmare. What happened in it?”

My body stiffened and I immediately felt a cold sweat coming on at just the very mention of it. A deep frown creased Julian’s lips as he attentively observed my reaction as if he saw every detail that had just run across my body. “That severe and you won’t talk to anybody about it.” his hand squeezed my thigh. “Will you let me be part of that business? I want to help you. I hate seeing you suffer… I just want to take care of you. I love you.”

*Just shut up already…*

Even the little voice in my head sounded exhausted. It’s not that he was annoying me, I was just becoming mentally drained out of nowhere. The joys of trauma. I can never catch a break when it comes to the tiniest trigger.

I stared up at him for a few silent seconds before finally heaving a long sigh and looking down at the floor. “Fuck… I don’t know. It’s hard to remember. I try to forget them as soon as I wake up from them.” I rubbed one of the dark rings beneath my eyes with a spare finger. Unfortunately for me, the memory came back far too easily, almost like a tidal wave. My throat tightened. Julian scooted closer to me and somehow it made it easier for me to breathe. “...Fire.”

“Fire?”

“Yeah… I’m always surrounded by fire in the dark. For over five years I’d hear my dad’s voice and I’d try to fight my way through the flames to get to him but I always burn before I can reach him.” my shoulders sagged at the very thought as if I had just taken a break for a ten-mile marathon sprint.

“So you’re… feeling helpless?” Julian pointed out the obvious when my dreams were summed up into a handful of words.

I was both surprised and annoyed that he figured it out so easily. “I guess? I don’t know. I just…” I rubbed the rings beneath my eyes again, for some reason they began to feel irritated but it was probably all in my head. “...helpless sounds like the right word. Yeah.”

“For someone like *you* to feel helpless.” he took his hand off of my thigh and rested it on my back. “Sounds like utter hell.”

“Hell… right.” my mumble turned into a puzzled murmur as I fell silent. It was hard for me to even think about but I felt compelled to open up to Julian further. “Lately, Dad isn’t in my dreams anymore. It's just me, alone, trapped in the fire. It’s hot… so fucking hot. And I know nobody is coming to save me.”

As Julian listened to me he tilted his head to the side with a perplexed look in his gorgeous blue eyes. “It sounds like… you’re aware of the harmful things you’ve done and afraid of the consequences?”

“I’m not afraid of anything!” I snapped the second those words left his mouth. I fell dead silent afterward as guilt took root in my chest and I sighed. “...Sure, yeah. I guess you could say that. I already know I’m going to hell. The dreams are just preparing me.” my chosen words revealed that I was truly convinced that’s what my dreams were all about. Just preparing me for what’s beyond my inevitable death.

“Going to hell scared you that badly last night?” there was a look in Julian’s eyes that said that he wasn’t so sure about my claim.

*Smart mother fucker.*

“I…” I rubbed the back of my neck, I was still very uncomfortable about this. I’ve never been this open to anybody in my entire life. Not even my mom or Amy. The closest thing to it was Dad… and he’s not here anymore. “The dream I had last night… it was the first dream I had where I was the one in trouble.” I could feel the hair on the back of my neck lift at the very thought of what happened to me. “Somebody said my name and pushed me into the fire.”

“Your dad pushed you into the fire?”

“I said, *somebody*. It wasn’t Dad… why would I dream that? It’s… it’s not right. That can’t be right. I just got a shitty, fucked up imagination when I’m sleeping. That’s it.” I was starting to become convinced that I had just imagined somebody saying my name in the dream at random. Or maybe I heard Julian’s voice while I was still dreaming?

“Sukia…” Julian leaned closer to me to murmur closer in my ear. “Don’t forget your dad left you to become a hero.” I flinched at the brutal words that I thought were the truth but he didn’t stop there. “Your love for him is the fire that’s burning you alive and he’s the cause of it all. That’s why you dreamed of being shoved.”

I looked up at Julian with unexplained shock. I couldn’t believe this giant puppy just said that to me. The words he used– sounded like the absolute truth, and that was the scary part that I could easily believe him when he put words like that.

*But that’s…!*

I leaned away from him and shot him a cold glare. “Don’t talk about my dad like that…”

Julian didn’t respond to me as our eyes remained locked. *What the fuck?* I didn’t expect to get such a cold diagnosis from him, let alone those words leave his mouth in the first place. He had always been so docile and submissive in the past. What’s with the sudden personality change?

“I’m sorry, Suki.” he finally murmured as he leaned down and kissed one of my fading hickies. “I’m just worried about you.” his voice quieted with a tenderness from his heart. I felt his fingers play with my curly hair again, wrapping a springy lock around his index finger. “So beautiful…” his voice sounded as if he were in a trance this time, just completely memorized by this shitty hair of mine.

I didn’t respond to him. Instead, I just turned my head away in an attempt to pretend that I was ignoring him but it was complicated when he began to kiss up and down my neck. My body shivered in response but I kept my willpower strong, for the most part, to keep myself from kissing him back. Opening up to someone about my biggest problem and the core of my unstable mental state left me… well, I couldn’t exactly say that it left me feeling like I could breathe a little more air. In the end, all I felt was more exposed and vulnerable.

Julian’s hand snaked up the back of my shirt as he continued to kiss down my neck and down to my shoulder, picking up where he left off. My heart thumped with each passing second.