My Darrling (8 page)

“I began to feel starved for attention. I wanted notoriety
so that no one could ignore me. Modeling wasn’t getting me far, aside from a bunch
of photo shoots. It paid well, but it wasn’t money I was after. I wanted
attention. I wanted to make my dad proud, to make him finally love me. You see,
maybe if I had been better, maybe if I had shown my dad that I was worthy of
love, then he would have stayed with me, he would have loved me…but he left,
took his life, because I wasn’t worth staying for. I wasn’t worth anything to
my dad, or to my mom. I want to feel recognized for the first time in my life—and
I won’t stop until everyone knows who I am, knows my name, my face. I want my
trial to be long and memorable; I want everyone to know who I am, and to
remember me.”

He spoke the words matter-of-factly, unapologetically. He
had no emotion when he spoke of his crimes. An almost tangible tension hung in
the air. I didn’t know how to talk about this. Humans aren’t meant to casually
sit and chat about murder, especially not
with
a murderer. Isaac and I were
on different pages, from different books, written in different languages.
Nothing about us was the same—aside from our thirst to be loved.

“Your dad’s suicide had nothing to do with you. He had a
problem and—” My words were feeble; what could I say to even remotely fix the
damage that had already been done. It felt like trying to tear down a brick
wall with my bare hands—impossible. I gave it another go. “What I mean is that
I’m sorry your life turned out this way, Isaac. I wish things could have turned
out better for you, because I believe that you’re better than all of this.”

But it was too late. There was nothing I could say that
would change Isaac’s fate: a lifetime in a prison cell, or worse, execution if
he was tried in federal court. Once he was caught, his past, the abuse, the
neglect—none of it would matter. All that mattered was the right here, the
right now.

“Thank you for believing that,” he said, pulling me toward
him, kissing a trail from my forehead down to my lips.

It seemed as though I could kiss Isaac a million times, and
every time would feel like the very first. My lips thirsted insatiably for his,
which plunged regret through me. You’re not supposed to want to kiss a man who
desires killing people above all else, above his own life.

I snuffed out the regret almost as soon as it came.

I wrapped my hands around the back of Isaac’s neck and
pulled him closer; I could never seem to feel close enough to him. I wanted to
crawl inside of his body, become a stowaway to his soul. I knew that each day
was a day closer to when he would be taken away. Isaac deserved everything that
was coming to him, I will never deny that, but I also knew that his absence
would leave a void in my life, a void that no one would ever be able to fill.

I felt something different in the way Isaac kissed me
tonight; an unraveling of a certain passion I’d never felt from him before. He
was somehow so gentle and so dominant at the same time. He knew what he wanted.
He hungered for me.

In one effortless movement, he swung me up and laid me down
on the bed. “I still can’t understand you,” he said through a series of tender
kisses, “and not a lot scares me, but your dauntlessness and passion come
closer than anything.”

“I’m glad I scare you,” I breathed, pulling him down on me.
“Someone has to.”

He hesitated then pulled back to look at me. His eyes
examined my face carefully, thoroughly, as someone would inspect a diamond.
Just the sound of our shallow breathing filled the room.

“I’m a virgin.” The words seemed to explode from his lips,
like air bursting from a balloon. He looked embarrassed.

“Uh, y–you are?” I instantly regretted asking with such
surprise. Just because Isaac was beautiful didn’t mean he slept around. “I mean—”

“Sophie?” he interrupted with certain urgency in his voice.

“Yeah?”

“Sorry for interrupting you, but I need to get this out.” He
kissed the tip of my nose, then skated his finger along the curves of my lips
and smiled. He sat up and I mirrored him. “I’m not sure, exactly, what love is.
I don’t believe I’ve ever felt it before, but when you and I are together, I
feel something I’ve never felt before. And I think—I’m certain it’s love.” He
paused, and I gulped. “Sophie, I love you.”

I felt weightless, like I could float up and away. I felt
like I was outside of my body looking in. This couldn’t be me; this couldn’t be
my life. I couldn’t be head over heels in love with a serial killer.

But I was.

“I love you, too.” I spoke with potent certainty. There was
no question about it and, if I’m honest, I believe I fell in love with Isaac at
first sight. To say the words—those three simple, yet complex words—felt like a
ton of bricks being eased off my chest.

Isaac lit up as the words tumbled from my lips.

“The reason I’m a virgin,” he began, “is because I’ve always
believed that it would be better to make love once to the right girl, than to
have sex hundreds of times with all the wrong girls—as cheesy as that sounds.”

“I don’t think that’s cheesy.” In fact, it made me even more
attracted to him. “Isaac?”

“Yes?” He kissed the tip of my nose.

“I’m a virgin, too,” I confessed.

He smiled shyly. “Sophie?”

“Yes?”

“I would love nothing more than to lose my virginity to
you.”

I felt like I could float away. Love does that, makes you
feel separated from yourself, because it’s so good that we don’t think it could
possibly be happening to us. Feeling this good doesn’t just happen all the
time. It’s rare, and it’s overwhelming—but in the best way imaginable.

“Isaac?”

“Mmm?”

“I would love nothing more than for you to be my first.”

In that moment I pushed everything but Isaac Darrling and
Sophie Lenon out of my head. In that moment, Isaac wasn’t a killer, wasn’t
plastered all over newspapers and the news. He wasn’t vile; he wasn’t
malicious. He was Isaac, the boy I loved without condition.

“I want this to be special.” He jerked his chin toward the
bathroom. “Can you go wait in there for a few minutes?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said. Then I remembered the blood. There
isn’t a bigger mood-kill than finding blood in a murderers washroom. “Or I could
wait outside.”

He shook his head. “It’s cold out there.”

“I’m hot.” Despite the sparsity of the heat in Isaac’s motel
room, my palms sweated, my cheeks burned up. “And I’ll wear a jacket.”

He picked his jacket up off the dresser and swung it around
me. “All right. I’ll come get you when I’m ready.”

Isaac was very methodical; every word that left his mouth
seemed well thought out, careful. He was used to planning his every move, so
this would be no different.

I waited outside the door. It was a cold, windy night, but I
still felt warm. I tended to burn up when I was nervous or anxious—or just when
I felt any heightened emotion.

I was about to lose my virginity.

I was about to lose my virginity to a boy who killed
innocent people.

And somehow I had never felt so sure of anything in my life.
Isaac, without a doubt, took too many wrong turns in life, but I believed that
he was the person who was put on planet Earth for me. He fit me like a glove;
he was the part of me that had been missing my whole life. I had spent the past
eighteen years of my life as half a person, and I had finally found the rest of
me. Despite Isaac’s crimes, despite how dangerous he was, despite how cruel and
disgusting his actions were, he was the person I was made for. I had never, even
for a second, doubted that.

I hadn’t even been outside for ten minutes before Isaac opened
the door a crack. “You can come in now.”

I stood up and walked back into the room, taking his hand in
mine.

An iPod streamed music softly through the speakers. The floor
was a carpet of flower petals, and flickering candles lit the room. Isaac had
bought me so many candles and bouquets of flowers that I lost count. I had to
leave everything he bought me in his motel room so that my parents wouldn’t
question me, and now it all laid before me; so beautiful, so mesmerizing. The
blanket was ripped off the bed and spread across the floor, also covered in
flower petals.

My voice caught in my throat. I was speechless.

“I, Uh—I didn’t want to do it on a sleazy motel bed, so I kind
of created our own little paradise.” His voice shook a little. He was nervous,
too. He seemed so fragile in that moment.

“I love it, Isaac,” I finally said. “I have an idea.”

He cocked an eyebrow in confusion.

I tore the sheets off the bed, tucked one end in the dresser
drawer, then closed it. I tucked the other end in between the mattress.

“A fort?” He watched me in what looked like amusement.

“Why not? C’mon, only drones let society tell them how to act
at each age. There’s no manual, no rules to follow.” I shrugged. “And besides,
this might sound weird, but I’ve wanted to build a fort and just waste time in
it with you since I met you. Since before I met you.”

He smiled wide and I stopped to stare in awe for a moment.
Isaac almost looked like a different person when he smiled. His face lit up,
beamed. It was beautiful.

“Let me help you,” he finally offered. He grabbed a corner
of the sheet and tucked it in between the mattress.

I tucked the last corner in, and then stood back to admire
our fort. “Looks good.”

I crawled in, and Isaac followed. The fort was slanted and
we couldn’t sit up in it, but it was cozy.

Isaac and I were face-to-face; as he exhaled I felt his warm
breath blow across my lips. The angles of his face were more pronounced in the
candlelight. He lay down on his back, and I rested my head on his chest. He
wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close to him. I felt so small and so
safe in his arms.

“I’m going to miss this,” Isaac admitted. “Above all else,
this is what I’ll miss the most; just laying with you as time passes too
quickly; feeling like I could die right here, right now, and that would be all
right.”

My heart ached so bad that I had to bring a hand to my chest
and massage it. “I hate thinking about it. I don’t want to think about it.”

“Sophie, why do you spend time with me? Why do you love me?
I can’t comprehend—”

“Because,” I interrupted, “I am indecisive, I’m uncertain,
erratic, and…I’m not certain of who I am, or why I’m here, but when I’m with
you, Isaac, everything that doesn’t make sense about me, suddenly makes absolutely
perfect sense.”

“I feel the same way around you.” I could hear the smile in
his voice.

I kissed the hollow of his neck, then pulled back and met
his eyes. “Do you think, maybe, if you would have met me before”—I squirmed a
little, then bit my lip—“your crimes, that you wouldn’t have become a k—”

“I would have still, I think,” he admitted, soberly. “The
itch would have still needed scratching. I think it’s all far beyond our
psychological understanding.”

I sunk into myself, felt deflated. “Oh.”

We sat in silence for a few moments. I felt so warm in this
confined space with Isaac. I could feel the heat from his body; I could feel
his thumb rubbing soft circles on my ribs; I could hear his heart drumming steadily
in his chest. I was hypersensitive to everything in that moment. Goosebumps
bloomed all over my body, and my palms started to sweat. I was a beautiful
mixture of nervous and floating on a cloud.

“Can I kiss you, Miss Lenon?” His voice slipped past his
lips in a whisper.

“You don’t need to ask.”

And with that, everything turned into a euphoric blur of
sweet, thirsty kisses. I was swept away to a place where only happiness and
bliss existed. Where Isaac’s body belonged to me—and mine to him—to do as we
pleased with. To pleasure. Where his lips, sweet and minty, melded into mine. Where
our clothes were swept off and just our bare bodies so vulnerably remained. It
was a place of vulnerability, and admiration.

I didn’t cover myself in front of Isaac; I didn’t have to—he
made me feel utterly beautiful. He traced one long finger around the curves of
my naked body, making me shiver with pleasure. Everything I felt was new to me,
and every moment of it was heavenly.

“God damn, you’re beautiful,” Isaac whispered, his eyes
drinking me in with a passionate thirst. He looked at my body with so much
affection, warmth.

I leaned into him, kissed his collarbone and then slowly
glided my tongue up his neck until I reached his jawline. “I’m not beautiful,”
I disagreed, “but you make me feel like I am. Thank you for that.”

“I wish you could see what I see,” he said, a tiny bit of
frustration spilling through his tone. Then the corners of his lips curved up
into a smile and he pulled me onto him. The fort crumbled down on us, and we
laughed. Isaac glowed when he laughed and I felt so lucky to be one of the very
few people in his life to see this side of him: laughing, smiling…
happy
.

Most would say he didn’t deserve happiness, and a part of me
agreed, but another part of me saw a person within the monster; a lost and
lonely boy who never felt truly loved or cared about. Sometimes love is
all
a person needs—but unfortunately for Isaac, it came far too late.

I skated my hands over nearly every inch of Isaac’s toned body,
kissing him like it was the last time I’d ever see him. I could hardly catch my
breath. “You literally take my breath away,” I said, my chest rising high and
falling low.

Smiling, he tugged lightly at my lower lip with his teeth
and then he reached down by his feet for his pants. He pulled out a small,
square wrapper. A condom. This was it—it was really happening. I was about to
lose my virginity.

And I couldn’t wait.