Page 97 of Lovely Wicked Things

The remedy to the mental illness is in the ailment itself, the very heart of the problem, his obsession with his muse.

And I’ll always be with him to counterbalance the frenzy with grounding logic and reason.

Because I don’t just crave his maddening, fiery passion—I need it. I need him. I am so utterly, fervently in love with Kallum that it can frighten me, the fear I have of losing him. When I think about those terrifying, endless seconds on the dam with Emmons, where I thought Kallum was gone, and the violent force that tore through me as a result…

I am the fucking abyss.

And I refuse to lose him to any monster, outward or within. The demons that threaten to annihilate his mind will discover how dark my shadow can become, how fiercely I will fight to protect the man who is branded into my flesh and my soul.

All the philosophers had their elements. Heraclitus, fire. Thales, water. If there can be only one element argued to belong to Kallum Locke, a chaoist at heart, it would have to be aether.

Theprima materia, the dark matter of the universe. The chaos of the soul.

As he deepens the kiss, his hand settles over my belly. Being consumed by him, I unlink my arms from around his neck and touch the crescent concealed beneath his crisp dress shirt.

In another lifetime, maybe we wouldn’t have had to wade through hell to be together, and Kallum wouldn’t have to walk a tightrope over an abyss of insanity, or I’d have no fear of falling too far into the void.

Our love story is bittersweet, saturated with heartache and loss, sacrifice and all that we strive to give to each other.

But as Kallum said, our story can be beautiful here, too. Because we have pain, we can have pleasure. Because of the darkness, there is light. There is so much loveliness beneath the shadows when we let our eyes adapt to the darkness.

As he fills me wholly, completely, leaving no room for those fears in this moment, I know that whatever the universe has in store for us beyond this point we’ll face it together.

A thousand love stories told through the ages and one moral endures:

The darkest love kindles the brightest hope.

We could be a romance, or a tragedy. But that depends on where you pause the story.

In life, there is no such thing as a happily ever after. There’s a sad moment. Pain. Struggle. Then a brief moment of pleasure and contentment. Maybe even happiness. But the credits don’t roll. The story keeps going. So there’s more sadness, more pain. More struggles and pleasure.

Until the story just…

Stops.

EPILOGUE

WHAT IF

KALLUM

The brightest little pixie laugh captures my attention to stop me in my tracks.

Sheltered under the eaves of the quad, I remove my hand from my pocket and touch my chest at the sudden, foreign ache. I then turn in search for the source—and there she is, the most exquisite creature I’ve ever laid eyes on.

Wittgenstein wrote:Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.

He spoke on this in reference to negative theology, when what we experience is too ineffable to define, only a fool would make an attempt to put it into words.

And I would have to be a fool to try to define this rapturous rush that overpowers me.

As I make a study of her from my secluded corner, the chorus fromMedia Vita in Morte Sumusspills into my head, and suddenly, I know without fail I’m a devil who’s stumbled into heaven.

She throws her head back and laughs, and I’m slammed with a cyclone of emotions—all of them, every goddamn emotion she has ever felt and will ever feel crashes into me.

It feels like a heart attack.

Yet it’s the bittersweet melancholy steeped in honeysuckle and clove, an ache so euphoric it nearly drops me to my knees, that holds me bound, fearful of walking away from her.

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