Nightmarish Sacrifice (Cardew) (15 page)

             
I let out a sigh – not filled with sorrow but one of bliss – and the smile that shimmered on his lips pleased me in an utterly thrilling way. My head was comfortably resting on his shoulder, and, suppressing my overly dominant pride, I couldn’t help confessing to myself that he was really making me feel protected – much more than the small amulet still lingering in my pocket ever could.

             
“Cardew –” I turned to face him and his amazing eyes poured grayish beautiful light onto mine as they met them. “Who are you when you’re not in a role?”

             
The smile in his expression did look sincere again, but his pupils quickly got smaller as a sign that he had sensed danger around or was dissatisfied with something.

             
Or as a sign of sorrow...

             
“I always am in a role, lovely – for you, for them – even for myself,” he left an imperceptible fragrant kiss in my hair, and the scent of his perfume as he bent down distracted me so much that I almost forgot what I had been thinking about.

             
“Yeah –” he added through an outburst of joyless giggle, and the false glitter of purposefully excessive cheerfulness flashed in his darkly proud smile. “Even when I’m alone, I am still in a role – and I myself am the most exacting audience I have ever had.”

             
“But don’t you have your own emotions?” my fingers began playing in the edges of his crimson mane, and his smile immediately got more limpidly sincere and widened, his eyes half-closing, and the regally blissful expression on his face made me feel as though I was fondling a large majestic lion pleased with my endearments.

             
“Emotions don’t interfere in my acting, nor in my life,” Cardew answered with a light shrug and his arms tightened a bit around me as if to hint me the direction in which he would prefer the topic of the talk to shift.

             
However, I could not give up yet: I needed a sign – a faint unnoticeable gesture giving him away, an insignificant word placed out of context, or a movement he hadn’t found revealing enough so as to fear – any sign which could be the hint showing me whether Cardew was really so brutally cold on the inside that he could never possibly fall for me, or that he had been so devastatingly hurt that he had chosen to forget his past and the existence of feelings at all...

             
Or simply that my own imagination was making up tragedies where there weren’t any.

             
The last possibility was exactly what Cardew most probably wanted to convince me of; unfortunately, I was sure he would want me to think that, no matter which one of the three scenarios was true.

             
“But –” my hand froze on his neck and I strongly fixed my eyes onto his not to grant him with a chance to slip away without giving me a straightforward answer. “Don’t you love me?!”

             
The question resounded emptily into the silence, my loud heartbeats making me shudder.

             
Cardew’s pupils were already so widened that I could drown in their blackness, and the mighty graphite-gray flames raving inside his intense stare at that moment were so untamable and expressive that I didn’t need another confirmation of his feelings...

             
Yes, Cardew loved me!

             
Even a flawless actor as he was, he hadn’t managed to suppress that overpowering feeling enough so as to hide it completely, and the passionate affection in his eyes was giving him away.

             
Cardew loved me!...

             
Overfilled with the triumph of sudden happiness, my heart leaped excitedly at that realization, and then immediately laid in tense anticipation of the spoken confession that would really make it explode into relish...

             
But no such words followed…

             
Despite the mask Cardew was struggling to keep on his face, I could both logically and intuitively sense that – however little he wanted to be in need for someone so much – he had fallen in love with me.

             
And that he had done it in the most dangerous and enslaving, devastating way: for real…

             
Had what was making him hang around me been just some physical attraction, he would have simply laughed in my face at the question I had directed at him point-blank – but the fire filling his whole soul and visible even through the shield of his eyes wasn’t letting him even joke about that.

             
During the whole evening, all of Cardew’s movements – more instinctive than much thought over – had been aimed at not only possessively dragging me closer, but as well at making me feel comfortable and warmly safe, caressing me and generously indulging my desires even before I had completely formulated them in my head; what was he finding so embarrassing about wanting to take care of me?

             
As I was staring at him in expectation for an answer, his lips were trembling almost unnoticeably as if they were trying to rebel against the steel-hard orders they had been given, and finally utter the words I was craving for so much… Why was he considering love as a weakness – would it really cost his freedom?...

             
And why was he reluctant to give the latter up by himself?

             
Everything in him was whispering of overwhelming feelings he couldn’t repress, his eyes were so overfilled with the maddeningly forceful longing that he was unable to hide it and wasn’t moving his gaze away only because that would make me think he was surrendering; everything in him was so clearly showing me that he loved me...

             
Everything: his movements, his lips, his eyes...

             
But not his voice.

             
Not his mind.

             
Taking a sharper breath after the short pause that had opened up, Cardew bit his lips so as to gain command of his expression, and the stare he fixed onto me was neutrally tender, but I could clearly perceive the already thicker mask standing between the two of us – his mask he wasn’t brave enough to take off.

             
Not brave enough, not trusting me enough...

             
Or simply too strong.

             
With a caressing gesture, Cardew raised my chin a bit, lowered closer towards me, and uttered in such a way that I rather sensed his words on my skin than heard them, “You are perfect –”

             
The temptation to abandon the philosophical wandering and just focus on kissing him was overpowering, but I did manage to resist to it, and, instead of indulging in Cardew’s generous compliment and the enchanting endearments his intense eyes were promising me, I fixed my heavy unbending gaze onto him again, this time in an almost painful way.

             
“That was not what I asked –” I announced quietly but firmly, without displaying any domination or attempts for such – just the opposite, trying to appear as frail as possible. “Why are you with me if you don’t love me? –”

             
Nonetheless, Cardew once again managed to avoid the word which was horrifying him so much.

             
“I’m with you because you are my ideal fantasy come to life,” he smiled and the flattering awe in his tone made me wonder why I was still insisting on hearing the exact words – weren’t all the signs he had involuntarily given me enough to satisfy my thirst for hearing confessions?

             
Obviously not.

             
“Cardew!” I knelt on the sofa beside him and rose so as to tower above him, then placed my palms on his shoulders and stared at him insistently from no significant distance; my voice trembled with feverish excitement, but I did manage to say the fatal sentence clearly, “I love you!”

             
The unstoppable fire in Cardew’s eyes instantly flared up, as though a fresh whiff of air had infused so much oxygen inside it that it couldn’t but blaze into vehement ardour, and he was unable to suppress the impulse to drag me to himself into a fervent inflaming kiss which took my breath away in all possible ways, including literally.

             
“You are perfect, lovely –” he whispered intensely and clasped me in a steely but amazingly tender embrace, where I relaxed completely, resting my forehead back on his shoulder, and relishing the sound of his voice as he went on repeating, “Perfect –”

                                          I had lost track of the time passing, and when Cardew and I finally left the cafe – objectively an hour or so later – I was feeling as though there had passed decades of years since I had last seen the night sky. Everything was the same, just the perceptions I was floating in were completely different, but I was too focused on my reflections and the boy beside me so as to ask myself what the reasons for that were.

             
Cardew wasn’t holding my hand – instead, he had wrapped his arm tightly around my shoulders to shield me from the cold rising from the freezing land, and, had it not been for his protective hug, I would have felt the threat of the icy air far more seriously.

             
He had been so tender to me all evening, so disarmingly caring and gentle, that I had simply forgotten it was all a part of the treaty we had made, and only the frosty gust of wind in my face reminded me that this peace would be over soon to be replaced by our sweet rivalry again.

             
Was it sweeter than the potential harmony, I wondered…

             
I was not brave enough to ask Cardew.

             
“So, we are still enemies, aren’t we?” I asked quietly when we stopped in front of my hostel to say goodbye. “What can I expect from you tomorrow?”

             
“Depending on the situation,” he playfully gave me a wink and his fingers instinctively smoothed a wanton ringlet of mine and gently glided it behind my ear. “Do I still have to ask verbally for your special permission every time I want to kiss you?”

             
Light giggle escaped my lips, and I raised an eyebrow in a challenge. “Depending on my mood.”

             
“How about now?” Cardew smiled mischievously and I rose on tiptoes to block his question with a vigorous insistent kiss.

             
“Just don’t get over-confident,” I smiled, following the outlines of his lips with the tip of my forefinger before drawing a bit back. “Good night –”

             
“It will be good,” Cardew promised and a slight warm kiss of his quickly brushed my neck before he let go of me and smiled secretively. “You will be thinking of me –”

             
I laughed negligently – not that he was wrong – and I hurried to the entrance; turning back on the door-sill, I saw that he hadn’t left yet, his proud silhouette mildly standing out against the dark background.

             
The boy raised his hand for a greeting, and I waved lightly, too, then I turned back and ran inside the building as though I was late for something.

             
Or running away from too fiercely demanding a longing…

             
My room was absolutely dark but there was nothing ominous about darkness that night – it was friendly, protective, and peaceful, just like Cardew’s hug in the cafe...

             
A menacing pile of textbooks met me from the desk with persistent accusing staring, and I blinked naively as though I wanted to delude them; the fact that I had to study this evening had somehow slipped out of the important things haunting my mind, and – to make up for that – I hurried to pick up the first book that came into my sight, opened it and began reading the text there ferociously, like I could pass through the whole of it in a single minute.