Beast(27)

It's a long process. But he does not complain. The longer I work, the  more relaxed he becomes. When I am finished with his hair, I move onto  his beard. Trimming it to a more manageable level. One that highlights  the strong features of his face, but still hides the scars lurking  beneath.

And when I am finished, I hand him a mirror. He stares at his reflection  for a long time. I don't know what to expect. I don't know if he likes  it.

He simply hands me back the mirror and grunts.

"Are you done?"

"Yes."

He gets up and tells me to finish getting dressed while he walks down the hall to his own room.

I know what will come next. I hasten to put on my dress and wait for it.  I wait for his fury. His yelling. And just as I feared, he appears in  the doorway a moment later. This time, he is clothed in jeans and a tee  shirt. But his fists are locked at his sides. The vein in his neck is  pulsing. And his eyes are lasered in on me.

"Where are they?" he demands.

"You don't need them anymore," I whisper.

He stalks towards me, and I scurry back until I hit the wall behind me. He corners me and grabs my face, rough and dominant.

"Where. Are. They?" he roars.

It takes every ounce of courage I can muster to do what I do next.

I yell back at him. The way he always yells at me.

"You. Don't. Need. Them."

He stares at me in disbelief. Then annoyance. And I wait for it. Wait  for him to blow. To flip. To say he's going to punish me. To threaten me  and scold me and have his way with me like he always does. But this  time, he is waning.

There is uncertainty in his eyes. He wants to believe me. And I am not about to let this opportunity pass me by.

"I have already seen you," I tell him again. "There is no reason for you  to be lurking around here with your face covered in shadow all the  time. Especially not now that you've had a haircut."

He searches my eyes. Looks for the lies hidden within my words. I take  him by the hands again, and he lets me. He lets me touch his face.

"Is it so wrong of me to want to see you?" I ask. "Can you not believe  that perhaps I am telling the truth, Javi? That perhaps I actually find  you incredibly handsome."

He doesn't respond, so I continue.

"Things are always worse in our own minds," I remind him. "You should  know this better than anyone. The way you exposed my fears and exploited  them when you brought me here. The words you played on repeat. The ones  you knew would hurt me most."

He looks away. And for the briefest moment, I thought I saw shame in his  eyes. But he does not voice it. He does not allow me to witness it  again, either.

"Your scars mean nothing to me, Javi. Please. I am only asking you to try it."

"I want them back," he says again.

But his voice has lost the harshness from before, and he does not demand that I bring him the hoodies now.

Instead, he simply leaves the room.





CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE





JAVI LOCKS himself in the office over the course of the next three days.

He has not asked me for his hoodies again. From the rare glimpses I get  when I catch him in the hall, I know he is walking around without them.                       
       
           



       

I am lonely.

There is a hunger inside of me that I can't defy. I ache for his body  against mine. The smell of his skin. The vibrations of his voice. I lay  in bed at night and wonder what he's doing. I wonder how to break  through the walls he has built so high around his heart.

And then I wonder why I want to. Why am I still so broken for him?So willing to overlook the things he has done.

My mind and heart are divided.

I don't know how to find peace with either decision when they both hurt  so much. It is ripping me apart. I can love him or hate him, but I can't  go on feeling both.

I write in my journal. I play at my piano. And I sing songs with words only he can hear. But still, he does not come.

My heart is melancholy, and I think of my father too often. I wonder  where he is. If he's even still alive. I wonder what he would tell me to  do if he were here now. Then I remember it wouldn't matter. Because I  have always been on my own. Even when he was there, the solitude was an  ever-present guest. He was consumed with work, and I was consumed with  vying for his attention.

My soul is tormented by the mystery of his fate. The unknowns that still  linger. But even so, there is peace in my bones. Peace that wasn't  there before.

I am at ease with the knowledge that Javi needed him too, in his younger  years. Regardless of whatever happened between them, Javi did love my  father once. He looked up to him. And I know my father loved him too.

Now, only questions remain. Questions I am not certain I will ever have the answers to. Not until Javi is ready to share them.

The doorbell rings again this afternoon, and this time I do not race to  see who it is. Javi locks eyes with me before he moves towards the door.  Searching for what he is so certain he will find there.

Hope.

Hope that someone else has come to save me. But that is not what he  sees. I know, because it is not what I feel. I ignore the visitor and  continue the business of writing new lyrics.

It is only River anyway. He comes into the kitchen to snatch an apple  from the counter before he follows Javi into his office. They shut the  door behind them and remain there for an hour. And when River leaves  again, Javi emerges.

Agitated.

He looks at me, and I do not like what I see there. I don't like the  doubt in his eyes. The shift in his mood. He seems cold now. Shut down. I  think he's going to punish me again. He's going to push me away or hurt  me. But that isn't what he does.

He goes to the gym. And stays there for two hours.

Punishing himself instead.





I'M SOMEWHERE between worlds when Javi startles me by removing the book from my hands and setting it on the table beside me.

The conservatory is dark now, apart from the glittering lights of the  stars above and a solitary lamp on the table beside me. The roses are  fragrant, and the air is warm, and there is something else in the room  between us.

A new energy. A strange energy. An exciting energy.

Javi bends down and scoops me into his arms, carrying me to the  bathroom. He places me on my feet again and removes my clothes before  starting the bath.

I don't question his actions.

We are both silent when he helps me into the bath and begins to wash me.  Shampooing my hair and cleaning my body with his hands. When he is  finished, he moves to pull the plug, but I stop him.

"Don't," I plead.

His eyes are absent of the turmoil I saw there earlier. He is softer  now. And I don't want to waste these moments, which are so rare with  him.

"Will you let me wash you?"

He is silent and still for a long while. Too silent. Too still. I don't  know what he's going to do. Not until he removes his shirt and unbuttons  his jeans and discards them on the floor beside my own clothes.

Then he climbs in behind me, pulling me into his arms. He does not let  me wash him. But he holds me. And that is more than I had hoped for.





CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO





WHEN THE WATER IS COLD, Javi helps me from the tub. He dries my hair  with a towel and then my body too. He uses the same towel on himself,  and I watch.

Then he takes me by the hand and leads me back into the library in the  conservatory. He pulls one of the chairs onto the hardwood floor and  cups my face in his palm.

"Do you know what I need from you, my Bella?"

His voice is gentle. Filled with want. And it doesn't matter what he needs from me because whatever it is, I will do it.

I nod. He kisses me.

"Good girl," he says. "Now stay right here."

I stay in place while he walks back across the room and returns a moment  later with a cup in hand. A cup that I recognize well from my early  days with him.

It is filled with dry rice. Rice that he scatters on the floor beneath  me. I swallow and look up into his eyes when he is finished. Wondering  if he is angry. Wondering if I've done something wrong.                       
       
           



       

But that isn't what I find. Today, I only see need. He needs this from  me. And so when he asks me to kneel, I do it without question. It has  been a long time since he punished me this way, and I have forgotten the  pain. But I bear it.

For Javi.

For Javi, I would bear anything. The thought scares me. Excites me. Confuses me.

He sits in the chair in front of me. Naked. Hard. Swollen. He spreads  his thighs in offering, and I lean forward to take him into my mouth. I  draw him in, and he strokes my cheek reverently.

"Good girl, my Bella. That's such a good girl."

I work him over for a long time. Until my knees are on fire from the  pain and I'm certain he's about to come. But he stops me before I can  get him there.