Chapter 12
D ressed in one of his brand-new outfits, Crue’s waiting outside my bedroom when I emerge the next morning. From the neck down, he looks absolutely delectable. From the neck up though, my bodyguard’s looking a little worse for wear if I do say so myself.
His bloodshot eyes don’t lift any higher than my knees as he sticks out a hand, suggesting I go ahead of him.
That’s it? He’s not going to chew me out for what I did last night? I went to great lengths to sneak out unnoticed. I went to even greater lengths relocating those bats to his room.
I stop and wait for him to let me have it.
Not so much as a nibble, I throw him a bigger piece of bait, asking, “Rough night, Major?”
Still, his mouth remains an angry slash.
“Hmm. That makes two of us.” I smooth out my tan-and-black plaid bodycon skirt. “I don’t know if I’m drunk still or just really hungover.” It’s not that bad. I didn’t feel like running this morning, but I could’ve if I made myself.
Crue’s temples pulsing is the only reaction he gives.
I consider telling him about the guy I let feast on my neck like a newly turned vampire.
He’ll see the evidence for himself soon enough…now that he sleeps right. Next. Door.
Father’s already seated at the breakfast table in the kitchen, a pile of documents in front of him, his steaming breakfast next to those.
“Father,” I chirp as I take the seat on his right.
“Never.” He doesn’t look up from his reports.
Crue sits to my father’s left, directly across from me, but doesn’t let his gaze wander past the table runner between us.
Opposite Father is a wall of glass with an unobstructed view of the sea. Dinner’s always in the formal dining room, the walls the only thing to look at, but breakfast is served in here where we can focus on something other than each other. I lock my eyes on the thick fog clinging to the water. I’ve always liked the fog. Some people find it eerie, but to me, it’s comforting.
Instantly, Chef Ryan appears tableside to serve both of us. His foot bumps mine under the table and I have to stop myself from standing up and slapping him across the face. The only reason I don’t is because then my skin would be touching his.
After getting his coveted first reactions to his creations, Chef Ryan excuses himself.
My father doesn’t ask Crue about his first night in the manor because that’d require him to act like he cares, which he truly does not, so the three of us eat breakfast in complete silence, my small plate of diced cantaloupe and strawberries the first to disappear while Father and Crue take a bit longer to eat their eggs Benedict, home fries, and whatever else Chef Ryan made for them. I stopped listening once I heard the chef’s voice. His over-the-top descriptions always sound so self-congratulatory.
I wait until Crue has just enough left that he can’t finish it in one bite to get up and announce, “Off to school.” I’m not sure how much sleep he got last night, if any, but he doesn’t deserve a full breakfast either. He would get both sleep and full meals if he’d stayed in the guesthouse.
Without complaint, my bodyguard stands from the table, leading the way out to his Bronco. While he does still open the passenger door for me, he does it pretending I don’t exist.
The ride to school is void of sound but full of tension so thick I’m practically choking on it when we pull into Lit U.
This time Crue literally escorts me to each of my classrooms, waiting at every threshold until I’m seated inside before turning to go…somewhere. Wherever he goes, it’s close by because his face is the first thing I see whenever the door’s opened at the end of class.
At the end of the day, he meets me at the door holding two drinks, one green, one tan.
The gesture makes me smile.
Until he holds the green one out to me, and after taking a small sip, my joy wanes significantly at the familiar flavor.
“What’d you get?” I ask him, hoping he’ll answer but not expecting him to.
He takes a long swallow. Just when I think he’s not going to respond, he says, “Iced chai latte with almond milk and three pumps of pumpkin brown sugar.”
His first words of the day to me and they’re to gloat about enjoying the exact drink I would love to have but can never actually order for myself.
Staring him down, I walk over to the nearest garbage can and toss the matcha lemonade in. Without taking his eyes off mine, Crue comes right up to me and throws his out, too. He didn’t even want it?
He ordered it just to spite me.
I seethe all the way back to the parking lot, my heart thundering so loud I almost miss him catching up to me in time to get the door.
Inside the Bronco, I practically rip my shoes off my feet and blindly toss them into the backseat. Crue cranes his neck to glare at them, then does the same thing to me, the muscle in his jaw twitching the whole time, but again, he doesn’t say anything. Not one fucking word. Not during the drive, or at the manor when we pull up. So, before he’s even stopped, I reach back and grab my shoes, making sure to swing them wide when I bring them up front and whack Crue in the face.
And when he looks at me, clearly wanting some sort of apology, I give him the same treatment by keeping my lips zipped shut. I’m not sorry anyway. Not for any of it. Not for the bats. Not for sneaking out. Not for the thin line of blood blooming from the new slice across his cheek.
My heels did that? I wasn’t trying to—
I mean, good. Serves him right.
He can impose on every part of my life, even my sleep, but he can’t talk to me?
The bats didn’t have any interest in him anyway, only bugs, so why is he so damn butthurt?
Because he was bested by a girl? He should get used to that now. I’ve done it before—we’re sitting in the pink-flamed proof—and I’ll probably do it many, many more times before his stay at Munreaux Manor concludes.
Or was it because said besting made him look like an incompetent idiot? Well, he is. And technically, he did that himself when he researched how to be a bodyguard his first night being a bodyguard.
Now at my door, Crue’s waiting for me to exit.
“I need help putting my shoes on,” I say.
His gaze drops to mine, incredulity written across his features without him even needing to open his mouth.
“What? I’m serious. I can’t get it. They’re…” I act like I can’t reach the right foot, then do the same thing with the left one. “Ugh. My skirt’s too tight.”
“Go barefoot.”
He returns his attention elsewhere. Anywhere but near me.
“I can’t do that.”
He gives no response, as if I didn’t even speak.
“It’s your job to protect me, isn’t it? What if there’s a screw on the ground?”
Crue examines the driveway halfheartedly but doesn’t budge.
“Then I guess you’re carrying me inside, all the way up to my room.”
Shaking his head, he breaks posture to snatch a shoe from my grasp.
My triumphant smirk dies the moment his hand wraps around my right ankle and yanks my foot off the floor, forcing me to rotate in the seat toward him to accommodate the odd angle. My left leg stays where it is though and I don’t rush to close my legs, so I’m as spread eagle as my tight skirt allows, my panties rubbing against my suddenly aching center.
Crue either doesn’t notice as he jams the expensive stiletto on my foot, his eyes glued to the ankle strap like it’s some sort of puzzle, or he’s pretending not to.
“Second hole.”
That gaze flies to my crotch before slowly rising to my face, his nostrils flaring with each labored exhale.
He was pretending.
And I’m wet, picturing him looking at my pussy without the barrier. Admiring it. Flicking it with his tongue, his lips, his entire fucking face as I hold him to—
“What?” he snaps, breaking the fantasy before I soak my underwear straight through.
“The prong goes in the second hole on the strap.”
It takes him several tries and even more curses, but he finally gets the shoe secured before moving on to my left foot, except I don’t lift my leg for him, so he has to reach over my lap to get it himself. The side of his face only inches from mine, I spy a bead of sweat rolling down his temple.
The temptation too strong, I catch it with the side of my thumb.
Suddenly, there’s a great pressure just under my palm.
“Don’t. Touch. Me,” Crue grits out, his hand squeezing my wrist.
I hadn’t even noticed. I was so absorbed.
Sticking the thumb in my mouth, I suck it clean.
“Mm,” I moan around the tiny blast of salt against my tongue, my eyes fluttering closed. “If your sweat tastes this good, I can only imagine what your…” I open my eyes to find Crue’s locked on mine. “Tears taste like. You might just make a worthy opponent after all, Major.”
Crue releases my wrist like it caught fire.
“I’m not your opponent, miss. I’m your personal protection agent. And crying’s for pussies.” He nods toward my lap, his top lip curled. “Like yours is doing right now.”
She’s crying all right, absolutely pleading for Crue’s touch, the one he gave so freely five months ago but looks revolted to have to give now… Now that the cloth mask’s been replaced by a less visible yet much more permanent one.
Is it jealousy that has him so worked up today? You can admire a waterfall without ever considering taking a dip. The only thing Crue Brantley seems interested in is becoming my dam.
I watch him work on my other shoe, my thumb still up to my mouth as I repeatedly drag it back and forth across my bottom lip.
As soon as he’s done, Crue drops my foot.
“Goddess, your bedside manner could use some work.”
“How can I ever be at your bedside when you’re never in it?”
“Touché.”
“Also, you locked your fucking door.”
“And got both keys,” I add, quite proud of myself.
“I would’ve given you both.”
He actually looks wounded that I didn’t give him the opportunity, but he would’ve needed to go inside my bedroom to install a new handle and that’s a risk I was unwilling to take.
Now that he’s talking to me, at least somewhat, I inquire about the bats.
“They’re out,” is all he gives me.
“How’d you get them out?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me. Remember that whole speech you gave? What’s important to me is important to you?”
“If they were so important to you, you shouldn’t’ve stuck two dozen in my room before skipping off into the night.”
An unladylike snort rips out of me before I can stop it. “I didn’t skip anywhere. You saw me.”
“I saw Satan’s spawn returning to the hell she belongs.”
“If that’s where I belong, why are you trying so hard to keep me here?”
“Because it’s my job.”
“Do you have to be such a dickhead while doing it?”
“No.” He drops his gaze.
Right as I expect him to offer up another apology, Crue looks at me, and says, “But it feels so much better when I am,” throwing my own smartass comeback in my face.
“Move,” I bark as I pass him, my left ankle buckling almost instantly. What? I glance down to see Crue fastened the strap wrong. He did the first hole, not the second. And if the partially smothered chuckle behind me is anything to go by, it wasn’t accidental.
Dickhead .
I need space. Privacy. I need color and hope in a dull, depressing world. I need to know flight’s still possible even if I’m not the one in the air.
“I’ll meet you in the dining room for dinner,” I call to him.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m staying on the estate.”
“Where?”
Crue’s voice is closer than it was. Than it should be. I told him where, so why is he following me?
“I’m going for a swim.”
“Where’s your suit?”
“Don’t need one. You saw for yourself, my panties are already drenched. A little pool water’s nothing.”
“Miss, you can’t swim in your underwear,” he gnashes in warning.
I ignore that as I round to the back of the manor because it’s not my name. Also, what’s the big deal? My underwear covers the exact same things my swimsuit does. He just did the same thing the other day.
“Ever,” comes out in a growl that sends a shiver up my spine, not in fear, but in…something else. Something that makes my panties even wetter.
“I’m not going off property. Isn’t that good enough?”
“No, it’s not, and you fucking know it. Stop being so difficult.”
“You asked for it,” I mutter because he literally did. More than once.
When I reach the atrium, I pause outside the door and face Crue. He approaches me like a bull in a ring, all snarly and pissed off.
“This isn’t the pool.”
I pat his head exactly like he did mine. Well, I try to. Even in heels, I’m still shorter than him. It doesn’t help that he bats my hand away with one easy swipe.
“Good job, Crue. Maybe tomorrow you can—”
“I need to see what’s in there.”
“No, you don’t.”
“It’s my fucking job to protect—”
“There’s nothing in there that can hurt me. I promise.”
“You’re a pathological liar. Your promises don’t mean shit to me.”
We hold a stare-off, neither of us willing to back down.
“Don’t follow me inside. I mean it. I’ll stab you.”
He laughs. “With what? Your fucking high heels? You already tried that—”
I stomp on his foot, making sure the sharp heel lands on his toes, hopefully piercing at least one.
“Shit!”
I close the door on his doubled-over form, then lock it. After a couple calming breaths that fill my lungs with the balmy eighty-degree air, I turn around and go through the second door, a genuine smile splitting my face. Dropping my head back, my eyes lift to see hundreds of butterflies flitting about overhead. It’s mostly silent in here, but if you listen closely, you can hear the light fluttering of wings.
Hundreds more hide in plain sight—on tree branches, the floor, the walls, rocks around the koi pond set into the center. There are fewer than thirty indoor butterfly atriums in America, this being the only one in Connecticut. Housing both tropical flora and butterflies from all over the world, these three thousand square feet are not just the butterflies’ sanctuary, but mine as well. I don’t have to be anything other than myself in here. I don’t have to say anything I don’t want to. I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to. It’s one of the few places that I feel free.
A common birdwing lands on my sleeve, using its two front legs to taste me.
“Hi.”
Even though I don’t have nectar, the black-and-golden-yellow butterfly remains where it is, content to hitch a ride for a while.
Tears fill my eyes as I’m suddenly overcome with an enormous sense of gratitude for this insect’s trust in me. Aside from making outfit choices, nobody trusts me with anything.
Without jostling my stowaway, I carefully remove my shoes, then watching where I step, I start checking each feeder, removing any rotten fruit peels and making sure there’s enough sugar water to keep the sponges wet. Weaving between the plumeria tree and some pentas shrubs, I breeze by the garden of wildflowers, slowing next to a Queen Anne’s lace to watch a black swallowtail emerging from its chrysalis.
Since the atrium’s creation eight years ago, I’ve had over six hundred different types of butterfly species in it. With my nanny’s help, I used to order chrysalides from a supplier that imports them from a number of other countries, but I cut back after she left, and now most of the butterflies flying around were laid by their own mothers. From egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly, I’ve witnessed thousands of life cycles in this atrium.
For the most part, I’m the only one who gets to. Even if I did have friends over, I wouldn’t share this with any of them. They wouldn’t get it. Other than snapping some selfies for their feeds, they probably wouldn’t even care. It’s a secret I hold close to my heart.
Crue used to be another. I guess, technically, he still is. Well, our first meeting is. The night he protected me because he wanted to, not because he was being paid to. The night he saw me as something other than my last name. The night he touched me, held me, kissed me, and…cherished me. That’s how Crue’s attention felt. Like I was a treasure all on my own, no price tag required.
And now, after catching a glimpse of that expensive label, he’ll never look at me the same way again.
I’d rather him look at me with hate in his eyes than the same dollar signs I detect in everyone else’s. At least hate is complex, not one solitary emotion but a combination of several.
I’ve never gone hungry a day in my life, yet since my nanny’s “retirement,” I feel just as starved as if I had. If I’ll never so much as get a taste of love again, what other choice do I have but to gorge on hatred? Desperate people take desperate measures, and at this point, I’ll accept anything to fill the bottomless pit in my stomach.
All the chores taken care of, I sit on the bench near the pond. The three-foot-deep pool has its own small waterfall trickling into it, adding oxygen to the water for the fish as well as ambience for…me. Now. More people used to come in here. My mother, for one. And my father when she’d make him. He had this atrium built to not only cheer her up but also get her out of the house. It worked. Until it didn’t. My nanny, Winnie, and I took on the upkeep. Nowadays, it’s just me, unless I’m out of town, then I have to rely on Edwin to check on things.
The common birdwing on my arm flew away at some point, making me stowaway-free. Next to me is a dead owl butterfly though, its large wings open, making it appear like a set of owl eyes eerily tracking me. A butterfly’s lifespan after they eclose from the chrysalis stage is usually only about three to four weeks, so every time I come in here, I find at least a handful of dead ones. While it’s completely natural, it doesn’t make the discoveries any easier. Whenever Winnie and I would stumble across a lifeless carcass, she’d share a different meaning behind seeing dead butterflies. It wasn’t until recently that I learned she only told me about the positive premonitions, hiding the bad omens from me. Once I found out deceased butterflies also symbolize feeling trapped, suffocated in your own cocoon, that’s the one I think about most. It’s kinda hard not to given my current predicament.
A trio of blue morphos flap right past my cheek, their brilliant blue wings spectacular. For how eye-catching they are, they’re nearly impossible to physically catch. After many failed attempts to catch the fast butterfly myself, now I just wait for one to take a rest near me to admire it up close. I have yet to be lucky enough for one to land on me.
The owl butterfly tugs my attention back to it. A sign of repressing your creative side is another meaning for coming across a dead butterfly. I haven’t sketched anything in over a week, since before Nationals. I haven’t drawn an owl butterfly with both wings showing yet. The huge eyespots would look good in charcoal.
I clean up a little more, then head out the way I came, making sure to lock the door behind me. For the first time all day, Crue isn’t waiting for me and I don’t know how to feel about it. It’s positively stifling, having him around all the time. But it’s also…less lonely. As much as I hate to admit that, it’s true. I didn’t have siblings growing up, but I did have Winnie, and I guess my mother—sometimes—so I’ve never felt true loneliness until this past year. The day I turned eighteen, my father let my nanny go, a severance check in one hand, a restraining order in the other. When I asked about the restraining order, he shrugged, like it was commonplace to give them to loyal, longtime employees. Winnie was my sole caretaker from the moment I was brought home from the hospital. Eighteen years later, she was ripped from my life. Poof. Gone. Like she was never even here.
When I begged him to let me call her, just call her, he told me I was an adult and it was time for her and I both to move on.
I wasn’t ready to move on. I still very much needed her. If I’m being completely honest, I still do. My eighteenth birthday wasn’t some special day where I woke up magically knowing everything. Even at nineteen I find myself wishing I had someone to go to for advice, guidance, or just…a hug, a hair tuck and gentle smile, any sort of tenderness whatsoever.
My father wants me cold, hard, a professional with her eye on the objective.
I’m not a sniper. I’m a nineteen-year-old student athlete with interests and needs and wants and…dreams? Once upon a time I had lots of dreams. Dreams of putting some of our fortune to good use. Not anymore though. Now I know better. The only good thing about Arthur Munreaux was his wife, my mother, Alette Munreaux. With her died any humanity my father might’ve had, leaving behind an unhinged version of the man I grew up around. He used to be somewhat decent, but like Winnie once said, “Even butterflies need gravity, otherwise they’d drift into space.” My mother was his gravity, the one thing keeping him grounded. Without her, he’s drifted. After Hide and Keep, I forced myself to stop looking for glimpses of redemption in him. He’s eternally lost to me.
No sign of him, or my bodyguard, I go straight upstairs uninterrupted. The door to my bedroom is locked, yet the moment I step inside, I can feel another presence. While my body freezes in place, my eyes begin moving—rapidly. Searching every square inch of the dark room, I finally land on an outline of a head and shoulders sticking out above my oversized armchair.
Poking my keys between my fingers, I warn, “I won’t make it easy for you.”
A soft puff of humor dances between us until it reaches me, obnoxiously tapping its feet on my chest.
5, 6, 7, 8.
“You don’t make anything easy…”
Crue?
“Except making you drip.” That head shadow quickly tilts, then rights itself. “I did that without even trying.”
Crue’s voice somehow makes the tempo over my ribs increase. He’s in my room.
He’s in my room?
“But, just like your stamina, it was short-lived. I’m all dried up now,” I inform him.
Relaxing my grip on my keys, I spin around and study the surface of my dresser…and all the crap on it.
“You don’t know shit about my stamina.”
“Is that why you’re sitting in my bedroom? Alone. In the dark. So you can prove your stamina to me?”
He’s not here to rape me. He’s one of the good guys. Unfortunately, I have to treat him like a bad one, otherwise…
Otherwise.
I light one of the candles with thick drips down the sides, not only to see better but also because beeswax candles cleanse the air by releasing natural ions and Crue’s negative energy is practically palpable. I’m not sure I would’ve sensed him so quickly if it wasn’t.
“No. I’m in here for other reasons.”
“Which are?”
Using the low light, I sweep my dresser’s contents, searching for anything embarrassing. I already hid the mask from Hide and Keep, so there shouldn’t be anything incriminating out. Clusters of crystals, more candles, several sets of tarot cards, my most recently pulled oracle cards, a stack of books, a moss-covered fairy door. The door itself isn’t embarrassing but the story behind it is. I used to take it out to the woods and pretend it opened to other places. I’d mentally escape to fantastical worlds with kind princes, skies full of dragons, oceans you can go right up to and touch. I don’t know why I kept it. Maybe as a sign of hope? Looking at it now, it only makes me sad. And yes, a little embarrassed. Not because I used to have an active imagination, but because I ever believed there was a way out of the world I was born into.
“To figure out what’s in that building that made you threaten me.”
Now my humor escapes me. It wasn’t just a threat.
“How are your toes, by the way?”
I turn back around to face him, my palms on the dresser behind me, the candle to my side flickering out a nice hazy glow, enough to highlight Crue…and the object in his possession.
Any trace of humor evaporates in an instant, that tiny dancer on my chest turning to a hundred-pound boulder, making it difficult to draw in air.
“Where did you find that?” I choke out.
Crue doesn’t blink. “It’s a conservatory. A butterfly conservatory.”
“Where. Did. You. Find. That ?”
“Oh, this?” My bodyguard lifts my sketchbook off his lap and regards it like he forgot it was even there. “It was lying around.”
“It was under my bed,” I snap.
He nods. “It was lying around…” His head stops moving. “Under your bed.”
I was worried about a childish fairy door, meanwhile my floor held one of my worst secrets of all. He was never supposed to make it inside this room. The lock on my door—
The lock.
“How’d you get in here?”
“Same way you do on the nights you sneak out. Through the window.”
I…never considered that. I never considered the possibility of someone other than me coming through my window.
I’m lucky it was only Crue.
Although, this feels like a different kind of invasion. That’s my intellectual property and I did not consent to him so much as touching it, let alone…seeing it. Did he look inside? He must’ve to know about the butterfly atrium.
He looked inside. But how much?
“I thought you’d be happy finding me in here?”
He saw it all. Oh my fucking Goddess. He saw .
“Why’s that?” I ask, playing dumber than dumb.
In answer, Crue opens the book to a sketch of his full torso, his head turned to the side, a hand on his rock-hard abs, and I let my shoulders droop, my breaths finally coming easier.
It’s the newest sketchbook. The one before this had sketches of him in his costume from Hide and Keep. After a while though, that got old, so I started focusing on different parts of him, trying to see if I could imagine what he looked like without the costume.
He starts flipping the pages, lingering momentarily on sketches of butterflies, the atrium, and the sea, all between every angle imaginable of Crue.
I drew all parts of him, which is mortifying, yes, but not incriminating. Nothing in this sketchbook puts me at Hide and Keep. I can act like I crossed paths with him somewhere else.
Eyebrows nearly touching as he continues perusing my private artwork, he questions, “How are there so many? Is this all you do once you close your door?”
He thinks these were all drawn in the last couple days.
I don’t date my drawings. That’s my one saving grace here. I don’t care if he thinks I’m a manic stalker. It’s better than him knowing the truth.
I force my feet to move in his direction.
The sputtering flame the only noise in the room, Crue hears my shoes against the hardwood floor and lifts his head to watch my approach.
“I’m sure you’ve noticed…” I gently slide the book out of his grasp and start thumbing through the pages myself, his gaze from below merciless. “…that I have a fascination with the underprivileged.”
I snap the book shut, and using both hands, slap him across the face with it, making his head whip to the side viciously, his cheek already looking as inflamed as mine feel.
Without righting his head, he says, “It must kill you.”
That I’ll never know if you’d like me for me?
That I’ll never know if anyone likes me for me?
That my father will never let anyone like me for me?
That I can’t grab your face and kiss you until my lungs give out?
Yes. It kills me. It all fucking kills me.
“What?” I ask, staring at the lips I’d give anything to feel on mine again.
Slowly, he rotates his head back to look at me. “To know you’ll never actually be able to see what my cock looks like hard.”
“Because you’re impotent?”
He shoves to his feet, putting us only inches apart. I have to crane my neck way back to meet his gaze, but I do it, because I refuse to be intimidated by him.
With his eyes flicking between mine, he says, “Only around you,” then brushes past me.
“That’s gonna make for a dry three years,” I mutter just to rub salt in the wound while I can.
“For both of us.”
I can’t help my chuckle at his arrogance.
“Not for me. I—”
“No longer have a way to sneak out and get dick.” Crue doesn’t break stride, only sticks an arm out to his side, pointing at the window he came through. “That was another reason for being in here. I put sensors on both your windows, along with your door. You so much as tap one of the surfaces and it’ll alert my phone.”
He drums his fingers on the door on his way out, then holds his phone up over his shoulder for me to see the screen light up with a notification.
With a screamed, “Stay out of my fucking room!” I throw my sketchbook at the back of his head. Unfortunately, it hits the closed door a second too late before falling to the floor, sheets of paper strewn all around it.
“Ugh!” I stomp into my bathroom and grab the edge of the granite counter with both hands, pulling like I’m able to rip the whole thing off. Strange noises gurgle in the back of my throat as I attempt to keep it all in.
I am an animal.
This is my cage.
I’m being herded exactly where he wants me.
I don’t have a choice. I don’t have any choices.
I never have.
I never will.
This is my life.
This is my life.
This is…
I bow my head and sob as silently as I can, that boulder from before so heavy it’s hard to stay upright, making the floor seem like a really, really nice place to rest.
If I let myself though, even for a moment, I will never get back up.
Slowly, I lift my head, then my eyes, all the way up to the top right corner of my mirror, to the sticky note there. I mentally repeat the affirmation…
We can’t change what we were born, only what we become.
Then I move to the next note, reciting that one…
I deserve good things to come to me.
And each one after it…
I’m doing my best, and that is enough.
I stand up for myself.
I am inherently worthy of love.
I will live in the moment today and not stress about my past or worry about the future.
My needs matter.
I matter.
…until I’ve read the entire frame of affirmations.
With my breathing regulated, my grip on the counter relaxes enough for my hands to fall away, limp at my sides.
I can’t focus on what’s coming, only what’s happening right now. In this moment, I need to relax.
I turn the handle for the bathtub to Hot, then light white beeswax pillar candles and place them around the rim. Something…off…catches my eye and I look down to see the water becoming whiter and thicker?
Bubbles?
It’s not foaming.
Epsom salt?
But mine smells like lavender. This smells like nothing really. Maybe a hint of cardboard. Kind of papery.
I drag my hand through it, noticing something’s definitely wrong. The water’s not even liquid. It’s more of a…paste.
Ew.
I turn the handle back the opposite way with my clean hand.
“What the…” I mutter while studying my mush-coated fingers.
Semen?
No. This is way too dense, not to mention it just appeared. Semen, especially this much of it, would’ve been here before I started the water and it would’ve gotten thinner, not thicker. Nothing was in here before I turned on the water.
I don’t think…
I didn’t inspect the bottom of the tub, but I would’ve noticed this .
Bringing it closer to my nose, I inhale again. It’s almost like…
Against every ounce of good sense in my brain telling me not to, I stick my tongue out and taste it. Oh. My. Goddess. It’s potatoes. Bland but creamy, mashed fucking potatoes.
But why? How?
Crue. He didn’t specify how many reasons he had for sneaking into my room, just left out putting dehydrated potatoes in my bathtub being one of them.
That…
Genius. I wish I would’ve thought of it first.
Damn it.