His(76)

I stared at the man who had tied me up and teased me to the edge of insane desire. Someone worse than him?

“You’re skirting the question, kitten,” he said.

“I…”

I looked down at the lines once more. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine them gone. Tried to imagine my skin bare and unpuckered again. The image in my mind was of myself, but younger. Fifteen. Before I had taken a knife to my veins.

“No.” The word left my mouth as if of its own accord.

“No? You don’t want them removed?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

I turned my face up toward him. I thought of the box inside his closet. All those pictures of him as a boy, covered in bruises.

“Why do you keep those photographs?”

His jaw clenched, sending the vein at his temple pulsing. He took a deep breath and relaxed.

“I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t remember the pain.”

“But you’ll feel the pain of the past no matter what,” I said. “And remembering this way… it shows you the danger inside of you.”

“It reminds you how dangerous you are?” He smiled. “How dangerous are you, kitten?”

“I’m more dangerous than you. Suicide is the ultimate escape route.”

“Is that what it was? Escape?”

“Maybe.”

He paused, looking down at the scars on my wrists.

“I wished that I could escape,” he said. “I wished it every night when I heard her crying. I wished it every night when he came up to my room. And one night, when he swung the door open, his belt already half-undone, I wished that he would go away.

“I wished that he would go hurt her.”

“Gav—” I wanted to stop him from telling me this. This was a confession that I could not comprehend. As bad as my parents had been, it had never been that bad.

“I wanted him to stop hitting me and hurt her instead. And he did. He hurt her so bad that I did something I never did. She screamed and screamed and finally I couldn’t take it. I ran downstairs and into their room, something I was never allowed to do. Not under any circumstances, understand? And there he was, with the knife. And there she was, the blood soaking into the carpet like a dark wine stain. She was still beautiful.”

His shoulders shuddered. His mouth twitched.

“Still as beautiful as the day.”

“You don’t know what happened to him? Your father? You don’t know where he is?”

“No. If I did know, I would be there right now with a syringe in one hand and a father’s day card in the other.” His mouth quirked. “I’m a terrible son.”

“You’ve never had a chance.”

“Maybe. Maybe I should have killed him before he killed her.”

His eyelids fluttered at that, cast down.

“So you don’t want to remove your scars?” he asked again, quietly.

“No.” I was firmer now. Resolved.

“Why? Because you might forget? Is that the only reason?”

“No. It’s…” I closed my eyes, trying to make the right words form in my mind. “It’s because they remind me of how close I came to never being here right now.”

“And where are you right now?” he murmured.

I cradled his head against my chest. His arms wrapped around me, his palms warm against my lower back. His ear was pressed against me like he wanted to sink into my flesh.

“I’m here,” I said simply. “I’m here with you.”