Black (Clashing Colors Book 1) (28 page)

“You mean before I screwed up and made a scene at your art show?”

I didn’t respond since the answer was obvious.

“I’m sorry about that…” he said, low. “I think seeing you in that costume just felt like a rejection of me.”

“Oh, come on,
you
felt rejected? I wasn’t the one wrinkling my nose at you or humiliating you in front of people by showing my disgust.”

“I already admitted I screwed up,” he said and cleared his throat while I turned to face him with a grim expression on my face.

“You know we wouldn’t even be having this conversation if I was still dressed as a Goth. You only want Cia and couldn’t care less about Black.”

“That’s not true. I bailed you out of jail and went with you to the camp when you were still Black.”

I knitted my brows and gave an imitation of his deep voice. “I prefer my women a little less Goth.”

He tensed up but kept his eyes on the road.

“You only want the pretty part of me. Not the angry, troubled part… but guess what, soldier, I’m done trying to be the perfect version of myself around you or anyone. I’m fucking flawed and imperfect, and the fact that you judge me tells nothing about me but
everything
about you.”

Darren had spoken those words to me and I had clung to them for weeks. I couldn’t be with someone who couldn’t accept me for who I was.

For the next fifteen minutes we didn’t speak. Gabriel took Exit Thirteen and made his way up the mountain, and he didn’t stop until we arrived at a forest.

“Come,” he said and got out of the car.

“Can’t you just take me home?” I asked, but he had already closed his door before I finished my sentence.

Ten seconds later he opened my door and offered me a hand. I ignored it and got out by myself.

“Have you ever been here?” he asked.

I looked around. “Where exactly is here?”

“Cougar Mountain Regional Wildland Park,” he said calmly. “They used to do mining here – I’ll show you.”

“So what are we now…? On some kind of historical sightseeing tour that I never asked for?”

He reached his hand out to me but I ignored it and marched on.

“So if me judging you tells everything about me… then what does you judging me tell about you?” he asked behind me.

I had to repeat his words in my head before I understood what he had actually said.

“I never judged you,” I scoffed.

“Really? So you are allowed to be flawed and imperfect, but I’m not?”

“What are you talking about?” I asked annoyed.

“I already apologized for screwing up, but you won’t forgive me or give me a second chance… so I’m concluding that there wasn’t room for me to make mistakes in our relationship. You want me to accept your flaws but expect perfection from me, is that it?”

“Of course not,” I said, offended. “All my friends are different and kind of crazy… I don’t judge and I don’t need perfection.”

He arched a brow. “Is that what you’re telling yourself?”

I moved on, annoyed with his insinuating that I was asking more than I could give.

When I came to a split trail I stopped. “Left or right?”

“Left.”

“I don’t know what your problem is. How do you expect me to be with a guy who finds me repulsive?” I asked.

“I don’t find you repulsive,” he said. “I never did.”

I turned around so fast that he almost bumped into me. “So are you saying that if I was dressed as a Goth you would still be attracted to me?”

“No. I don’t like that look, it does nothing for me.”

“Aha… See, I rest my case.”

We stood there on a narrow trail with the forest all around us and glanced deeply into each other’s eyes, stubbornness burning brightly.

“I won’t lie to you, Cia. I’m a guy and we’re visual. I like it when you dress in feminine clothes and I don’t like it when you dress like an angry boy.”

“That’s what I said. You only want the pretty version of me.”

“That’s not true. I’ve seen you in awful clothes at the camp and still felt attracted to you.”

“But you can’t accept me as Black.”

“Seeing you like that makes me feel like a failure.”

“Why?”

“Because that darkness represents your past… and I wanted to be your future.” Words hung in the air… Gabriel’s eyes grew moist and he swallowed, making his Adam’s apple move several times. “I wanted to marry you and give you the life you deserve,” he whispered.

I could hear my heart beat and feel water rise in my eyes. I should look away, but I couldn’t.

“I trusted you, and you broke that trust,” I whispered.

“How? I never lied to you. You always knew I didn’t like that look on you. I still don’t. You can trust that.”

“But you hurt me.”

“I was angry and upset. I would have apologized sooner if you would have only talked to me, Cia, but you cut me off, as if what we had didn’t mean much. Like
I
didn’t mean anything to you at all.” A tear started running down his cheek and he dried it away with annoyance. “Do you have any idea how much that hurt?

“I asked you to marry me, I told you I loved you… and one single mistake made you give up on me.”

“You meant everything to me,” I protested and blinked away tears too.

“Apparently not, or you would have fought for what we had.”

“But…” I was confused and affected by the sadness on his face.

“So I’m a flawed man who doesn’t always think before I speak. And maybe it’s an imperfection that I prefer you in feminine clothes compared to black military boots and pants. But how can you blame me for judging you when clearly you judge me just as harshly?”

I wanted to argue that he was wrong… that I didn’t judge him… but I couldn’t.

The contradiction in my head was that I wanted him to be open-minded and take me as I was… Black or Cia. But that I wouldn’t accept his narrow-minded behavior suddenly stood out as hypocrisy.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered. “I cut you off when I should have talked to you about what happened.”

“Well, talk to me now… I need to understand what made you dress that way.”

I lifted my shoulders in a small shrug. “I don’t know. It was an impulsive act. Maybe I thought I looked more like an eccentric artist in that outfit, but I certainly didn’t do it to hurt you or push you away from me.”

“Didn’t you stop to think about the signals you were sending me?” he wanted to know.

“No.” I lowered my head, ashamed that I hadn’t considered how he would interpret my clothes as a personal failure.

Gabriel reached out and took my hand. “Cia,” he said and I lifted my gaze to meet his. “Did you ever love me?”

Someone was squeezing my chest and making it hard for me to breathe and those damn tears came dripping out of my eyes without permission. 

“Did you?” he repeated.

It took everything to push out the word. “Yes.”

“You loved me?” He broke into a sad smile.

“Yes,” I confirmed and we both stood there like a pair of sissy-pants sniffling up our tears when he leaned in and hugged me.

He was holding me in a tight hug and I placed my arms around his waist and hugged him back.
God, I’ve missed him so much.

When he spoke it was softly muffled against my hair. “I still love you and I always will.”

That made me hide my face against his chest and give in to my tears. I’d felt so hurt and rejected by him, and now that I was beginning to see both sides of the story, I was overwhelmed with the stupidity of my stubbornness.

He pulled back to look at me. “I know you think I only love you when you act and look a certain way, but it’s not true. My love for you is unconditional…”

“How can you say that and at the same time say you don’t like me as Black?” I asked in a brittle voice.

He kissed me on my hair. “Don’t confuse my sexual desire with my love. I’ll always love you, even when you have a cold and your eyes are puffy and your nose is running, but I probably won’t feel sexually attracted to you in that moment though.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Of course not.”

“It’s the same with the Goth costume. I love you but seeing you in that black gear is a turn-off.”

“But if I chose to go back to wearing black, would you still love me?”

“I would, but our relationship would suffer, because I would feel rejected by you.”

“Why?”

“I already explained that to you. So who do you want to be… Cia or Black?”

I looked down at myself. I hadn’t dressed as Black since that night, nor had I wanted to.

“Maybe the two aren’t opposites in my mind. I’m wearing a black dress now,” I said. “You got a problem with that?”

He slid his hand down my arm. “No, it’s very feminine and you look beautiful.”

“Good, because I won’t let anyone dictate how I dress,” I told him.

“Hey, you can dress any way you want. You’ll just get a different reaction from me.”

“Because you’re imperfect,” I said dryly.

“If you call being male imperfect, then yeah…”

“Are you saying all males are visual?”

A smile lurked at the corner of Gabriel’s mouth. “I’m sure it’s just a male thing. Because as we all know, women never try to make their men wear certain things or complain about men in sandals and white socks.”

I tilted my head. “Very funny… I see your point: so we’re all visual to some extent.”

“Yup… and I honestly don’t care if you dress in sweat pants and a ponytail… in fact I like your natural beauty… but when you hide it behind that black armor it makes my dick shrink.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“Hey, just keeping it real,” he said and picked a leaf from a branch close to us.

“Did you sleep with the blonde?” I asked out of the blue.

“No.” Gabriel pointed back over his shoulder. “Do you want me to open the trunk so you can ask her yourself?

I stuck my tongue out. “I still think it was wrong of you to kidnap me.”

He raised both palms. “Hey, desperate times call for desperate measures. I had to do something, and besides – you should see it as a sign of my devotion to you that I’m willing to become a criminal to prove my love to you.”

I didn’t think before I caressed his face. “Is that what this was about? You proving your love to me?”

“Yes, Cia… this is me telling you that I still want to share my future with you.” He took my hand and kissed it. “If you’ll spend your time with someone as flawed, and judgmental, and imperfect as me.”

Gabriel had asked me to marry him before and I had never really committed to him. My hands were shaking, my chest was heaving, and I was seeing spots in front of my eyes. But none of it could distract me from the intensity in Gabriel’s eyes that spoke of unconditional love for me – something that I had always wanted. Life was reaching out an olive branch to me; all I had to do was reach out and accept it. 

CHAPTER 25

But

Gabriel

I hadn’t planned to propose to Cia today. I hadn’t even known I would run into her after ten weeks apart, but standing here in the green forest with all emotions raw and real, the moment just felt right.

She was looking down at me as I kneeled in front of her, tears running down her pretty face.

“Will you marry me, Cia?”

She swallowed air and took a deep breath.

“I mean it, sugar,” I said, hoping this would be enough to convince her that I really loved her unconditionally. “I want to share my life with you.”

Cia didn’t say yes or no. Instead she sank to her knees in front of me, still holding my hand. “You are amazing,” she said and looked down.

The fact that she wasn’t looking me in my eyes was a bad sign and made me sink back on my heels waiting for the “but.”

“I love you too,” she whispered and gave me a small smile.

I blinked… dreading the “but” that was sure to follow.

“But…” she said and I sighed in defeat.
Fuck!

“You’re moving too fast. I’m still pissed at you for kidnapping me and rejecting me that night at the gallery. I can’t just go from being angry at you to saying yes to marrying you. It doesn’t work that way.”

“But…”

She leaned in and kissed me softly. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” I muttered and for a while we sat in the grass without speaking.

“Do you still want to go and see the mining thing?” she asked quietly.

“Maybe another time,” I said with a heavy feeling inside.

We got up from the ground and made our way back to the car in silence. My head was spinning with questions that I wanted to ask, but she had been specific about not going too fast.

I tried to cheer myself up by focusing on the fact that at least we were talking again, but in reality the ride to Violet’s house was very quiet. 

“This is it,” Cia said and pointed to a small cottage-style house in shades of red.

“Wow… I didn’t expect her house to be so...” I trailed off when I saw Violet’s old station wagon and a large sign on the front lawn saying Psychic Medium. Yep, this was Violet’s domain all right.

“Nice?” Cia suggested.

“Right… I didn’t expect it to be so nice. I’m just surprised that a fraud like Violet would be able to afford something so well maintained and idyllic-looking.”

“You know she comes from money, right?”

“No… what do you mean?”

Cia spoke in a calm voice. “Well, her family isn’t as rich as yours or anything, but she grew up on the east side with private school and that sort of thing. Of course, now she hardly sees them anymore.”

“Why not?”

Cia sighed. “I think you know why. They don’t like the whole psychic medium thing and want her to get a normal job. She’s got a college degree and everything.”

“You’re kidding, right?” I said.

“Nope, true story.”

“But why the hell would someone with a college degree sit in a market square and read people’s fortunes?”

“To make money. She has a mortgage to pay.”

“But couldn’t she make more money using her college degree?”

“Maybe, but she made enough for the down payment of this house and she’s determined to never ask her family for anything.” Cia sighed. “Violet is… unique.”

“You mean weird.”

She shrugged. “Definitely weird, but I like her.”

I nodded. “For what it’s worth, I’m impressed that she’s living life on her own terms. I mean I don’t understand why she would choose this line of work, but at least she’s living out her dream.”

“Yeah… I agree,” Cia said and fiddled with her hands.

“So what now?” I asked Cia and turned off the engine.

Cia unbuckled her seat belt and turned her body to me. “I don’t know. What do you suggest?”

“I think you know what I want.”

“What?”

“I want you to go in and pack your things and come home with me,” I said and even while saying the words I was mentally slamming my forehead.
What part of take it slow is so hard for me to understand?

Cia looked up at the house and then back to me.

“I think I need to process this all. How about I call you tomorrow? Bruce and I are talking tonight.”

“You still do weekly sessions?”

“No, we only talk every two weeks now.”

“Good.”

There was a moment of awkward silence between us. “Can I see you tomorrow?” I asked.

“I’ll call you,” she answered noncommittally.

“Okay… just remember what I said.”

“You said a lot of things,” she said, in an attempt to lift the mood, I suppose.

“About loving you and… you know.”

There was a quick frown on her forehead so I didn’t repeat my proposal.

“I’ll think about it,” she promised and then she got out of the car with a small smile and waved at me. “I’ll see you around.”

I only drove three blocks before I parked and pulled out my cell phone to call Bruce, who luckily picked up on the third ring. 

“G… how are you doing?” he asked in a cheerful tone.

“I need your help,” I said quickly.

He was quiet for a few seconds. Then: “I already told Cia that you want to talk to her. There’s nothing more I can do. It’s her choice.”

“No, that’s not what I need help with. I already talked to her. That part is fine.”

“Oh, you talked to her?”

“Yes and I apologized to her,” I explained.

“All right, how did she take that?”

“Good. I think we managed to talk things through.”

“Wonderful.”

“Yes, but then I proposed to her.”

“Again?” He sighed.

“Yes.”

“And what did she say this time?”

“She said I’m moving too fast.”

Bruce chuckled. “Well, no one can accuse you of commitment issues. That’s for sure.”

“How do I make her say yes to me?” I asked.

“How would I know? And why are you in such a hurry anyway?” he asked.

I rubbed my forehead. “Because I love her and I want her to understand that… I want her to commit to me and stop running every time there’s a bump on the road.” I didn’t tell him that a bloody psychic had told me to apologize, convince, and empower her.

“And you think she doesn’t know that you love her?”

“She’s upset that I don’t like Black and she feels like I only love Cia.”

“Okay… so just to clarify… she didn’t say no to your proposal, she just said not right now?”

I nodded although he couldn’t see it. “Something like that.”

“But that’s good news, right?”

“Yes. But how do I get her to understand that even though I prefer her as Cia, I still love Black too?”

“Did you tell her?”

“Yes, but I don’t think she believes me.”

“That’s because there’s a difference between understanding something on a cognitive level versus accepting it to be true in your body and your heart.”

“I’m listening.”

“It’s like walking on hot coals. You can see that other people get away with it and the instructor tells you to trust him and that you’ll be fine, but your body is conditioned to associate burning coal with pain and suffering, so it becomes a battle between your mind and your body.

“Okay.”

“In this case you’re like the instructor telling Cia to trust you and that she’ll be fine, but she probably needs to walk on the hot coals herself and experience not getting hurt before she believes it fully.

“So what are you suggesting exactly?”

“I think she needs to experience your love, more than hear it.”

“All right, but how?”

“Well, you know me, I believe in hands-on interventions. If she feels you don’t love Black then the obvious way to convince her would be to make love to her as Black.”

I scratched my chin. “You want me to make love to her while she’s Black?”

“No, I don’t want you to do anything. But if you’re asking me how to make her overcome the rejection she’s been feeling these past weeks, then that is my best advice. It will definitely be a powerful intervention.”

I groaned. “You know, after ten weeks of missing her I would have thought that the mere idea of sex with her would be enough to make me say yes to anything…”

“So what’s the problem?” Bruce asked.

“It’s just that Black is my troubled niece while Cia is the woman I’m in love with.”

“Aha.”

“What do you mean, ‘aha’?”

“I mean, that’s interesting, but listen – I actually have another session I need to get to, so the question is: can you make love to Black and show her that you accept her?”

“That depends… Can I undress her and make love to her naked?” I asked.

“I would say yes, as long as she’s Black when you start.”

“But will she still have all the piercings and the black make-up on?”

“Yes, of course, and before you ask me if you can take her from behind so you don’t see her face, the answer is no. If you want to succeed in making Cia feel completely loved by you, you’ll need to make love to her and kiss her while you’re having sex.”

“Oh, man…” I ran my hands through my hair.

Bruce sounded calm. “Can you do that?”

“It’s going to feel like bloody incest, but if that’s what it takes to make her understand that I’m the right man for her, I’ll do it.”

“It might work, but of course I can’t guarantee it.”

“But how do I get her to dress as Black?”

“You don’t; it will happen before you know it.”

“How?”

“Sorry, G, but I really have to go now. I wish you the best of luck and cross my fingers that you and Cia will work through this.”

“Okay, thanks, Bruce.”

For a few minutes I sat with my head leaned back and my eyes closed. I had immense respect for Bruce but this had to be one of his most insane ideas ever.

⦓∞
⦔

Cia

Talking to Bruce was nice, and when I told him how I had run into Gabriel he was very interested in all the details.

“So he asked you to marry him?”

“Yes, but of course I told him it was too soon.”

“Right.”

“I mean, I’m still angry at him, but he wants us to pick up right where we left off.”

“And you don’t want to do that?”

“How can I when I still remember his look of revulsion from that night and how much it hurt?”

“I understand.”

“He says that he loves me unconditionally, but it’s not true – he loves Cia but the part of me that is Black is a turn-off for him. He even said that part of me made his dick shrink.”

“Did he now?” Bruce said quietly. “I think you need to test that.”

“Test that how?” I asked, not following him.

“I suggest that you dress as Black, and ask him to make love to you.”

I gasped. “No way. He would never do that.”

“Then tell him that it matters to you.”

“Didn’t you hear how I just told you the Goth look makes his dick shrink?”

“I heard you. It was just an idea to find out once and for all how deep his love is.”

“Thanks, but he’ll only reject me again and then I’ll be hurt again. It won’t work.”

“No, it won’t work unless you try it, that’s for sure.”

“Bruce…” I said in that tone that really meant: Scale down your craziness, will you?

Our conversation continued another twenty minutes and when I hung up, his suggestion stayed in my thoughts. I couldn’t dress up as Black and go visit Gabriel, could I?

On the other hand, it would be just me and him, so even if he did reject me, at least this time there wouldn’t be an audience. I would be able to leave with closure knowing that he wasn’t worth crying over.

I didn’t intend on dressing up as Black after that, but if he truly did love me, he would behave nicely, hug me, and accept me no matter how I looked. I didn’t need him to make love to me; I would settle for a big long hug.

Violet popped her head into the living room. “Is the coast clear?”

“Yeah, come in.”

“So you’re done talking to the crazy doctor?”

“Yes… but I’m still mad at you for setting me up like that.”

Violet sat on the armrest of the couch. “I can live with that if it helps you move on, either with or without him.”

“He asked me to marry him again.”

“Wow…” She whistled. “That’s something.”

“I know.”

“Can I be your bridesmaid?” she asked. “I’ve never been a bridesmaid.”