Chapter 23: Confrontation

After Officer Marcel left, he sat down on the sofa and buried his hands in his soft, black hair.

He did not seem like a murderous person at all. But more like a vulnerable child who needed protection and comfort. It was the first time that I was faced with this situation, I didn't know what to do. Finally, I sat down next to him and touched the smooth hair on his head, just the way he comforted me when I was a child.

“Do you also think I'm an evil man?” he asked and stretched out his arms to hug me, putting his face on my shoulder. I did not want to deceive him again, instead of giving him false smiles, I answered, "I don't know!”

“I am determined to become a good person, but there are things I cannot control,” Jonathan told me. I hugged his trembling shoulders with my thin arms, listening to him quietly because I didn't know how to answer.

"When my elder brother, Harvey died, I was downstairs. He was beaten black and blue, thrown from the twenty-fifth floor.

“Your sorrow won’t bring him back,” I blinked my slightly moist eyes, trying to squeeze out a smile, and said to him, “You have to find a way to forget it!” There were only two of us in the spacious and bright living room, two people struggling in the endless pain.

The next day, after accompanying me to the concert, he took me to the beach, leaving the bodyguards waiting in the car. I took off my shoes and stood on the fine sand with my bare feet. The water swept over the footprints quickly, whirling away from the fine sand under my feet.

It reminded me of the melody at the concert. That piano music, like this wave at the beginning, was tranquil amidst the hustle and bustle. However, a gust of wind stirred up the waves, destroying everything. “It's probably the same as my destiny!” I thought.

Jonathan was like the water. When it was calm, it made me feel gentle. When it was flowing, it made me confused. When surging, it could destroy everything. It was his features that made him so fatally attractive, no matter his mood, he had me so addicted to him, drowning around him, lost in his eyes.

A feeling of warmth drove away from the coldness of autumn wind. I looked up and saw Jonathan’s face, peaceful and hazy, in the faint, yellow light. It was like midnight a few years ago when I stood barefoot in the yard, looking at the stars.

My mother said that when people die, they would become stars in the sky, looking down at others. I stood in the yard for fear that they couldn't spot me. When Jonathan came back, he saw me in a trance and walked slowly toward me and said, “Why are you still in the yard?”

When the faint yellow light shone upon him in the yard, I saw blood on his shoulders. My voice trembled, “You are bleeding,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. He took my hand and went back into the house. As he touched my cold feet, he covered them with his big hands, and frowning he said, “Don’t walk around with bare feet, it’s easy to get sick.”

"Oh!" I said, then felt his warmth on my feet. I almost burst into tears, as I remembered that when I was a child, my mother would scold me for running around like that, saying that I had soiled my feet and that I was not allowed to go to bed. But I had I lost the chance to hear her scold me forever.