Chapter Fifteen #2
“When’s the last time we did this, hm?” He lifts his head slightly to meet my gaze, his lips only a breath away from mine. “Didn’t you used to say I was the only one who could get those pesky thoughts out'a your head?”
I did. Louis was an expert at making you focus on nothing but him. His lips on your skin, his fingers between your legs, his moans in your ear.
And did I not come out here to find answers?
To figure out why something in my chest felt so wrong, so heavy, at the thought of Azizi looking at me with those knowing eyes of hers?
Had Louis ever looked at me like she did?
Had he ever kissed me like she did? With a savoring hunger that felt all too much like she wanted to consume me whole?
What made her feel so much different from Louis? I have known him my whole life, have been kissing him for nearly half of that. He is familiarity; he is comfort.
So why, when he leans forward to press our mouths together, does it suddenly feel so foreign?
Why does his clever tongue on mine not wipe the thoughts straight from my head like it usually does?
Why do his hands slide up under my shirt and not leave trails of pleasant heat behind like they once did?
What has changed?
I try to kiss him back, to lose myself in him like I used to whenever my head got too full and heavy to focus. To think. I open myself to his attentions, arch into his touch, but still that heat does not come.
“Hey,” he whispers against my lips, pulling back just enough to meet my gaze. His brows pinch together; a frown twitches at the corners of his lips. “Are you alright?”
I am—or I was, and that’s the problem. For once, I feel like a real person, like a normal person. My stomach doesn’t ache, and my hands don’t tremble. My vision isn’t playing tricks on me in the shadows, and my mind is full to the brim with ideas.
And he’s ruining it.
It’s not his fault of course, not entirely. He doesn’t understand, and I know that. Sweet, stupid Louis with his wholesome smile and his caring words, always asking too much from someone who never had anything to give in the first place.
I don’t know what to tell him. Don’t know what to say that is safe. I cannot tell him about Azizi or Kolfina—if there was anything to tell at the moment. I certainly cannot tell him about my lack of gnawing hunger. He just wouldn’t understand, and I find myself tired of wishing people would.
“I am fine,” I assure him, fingers clutching in the fabric of his coat. I want to pull him back to me and demand his silence, demand he forget his worry, because it is useless to me. I have pretended well enough before when there is little interest in my bed partners. But this is Louis.
Louis, who does not have his mother’s magic eyes and yet reads me all the same. Louis, who I have never been adept at lying to. He is just too good. Too sickeningly kind and gentle that I know lying to him about something like this would fracture him, crack him right down the middle.
“Theo?”
I push at his shoulders, and he allows the distance, sitting up to give me as much space as our precarious position allows. His hands stay on my hips, fingers tucked up under the fabric of my shirt. I suddenly feel filthy, like my skin is caked in mud and is staining the purity of him.
“I am fine. I just—”
“Lou! You still out here?”
The booming voice below runs through my veins like a shock of ice water, and if not for Louis’ strong grip on my hips, I might have slipped right off the branch in my haste to look down.
A small group stands a short distance away from our tree, huddled together until the shape of them forms a strange, amorphous creature in the shadow of the schoolhouse. Three? Maybe four men, judging by the amount of heads the beast appears to have.
I do not have to guess who they are. Louis is popular in our little village, and the other rakes and bachelors seem to enjoy flocking to his side whenever they have the chance.
It’s not uncommon to see him surrounded by the others, shoving each other around and shouting loud enough to hear over the echo of church bells.
Oh, there goes Louis and his band of troublemakers, the old men would often grumble.
Now, they’re good boys, their wives would chide, smacking them on the shoulders. Let them have their fun while they can. You’re just jealous your old knees can't keep up anymore.
Dread pools in my stomach as the shadows grow closer, shifting and separating into more distinct features.
“Merde,” Louis curses under his breath, quickly pushing me off his lap as he slides as far away from me as he can in our admittedly limited space.
Had we been alone still, I’d have teased him for using such language, maybe threatened to tell his mother. But the air between us has grown sharp and still, the beast on the ground threatening to swallow us up at the slightest hint of weakness.
“Lou!” that voice calls again.
And this time Louis answers. “Yeah! Don’t wake the whole forest, I’m here!”
He jumps down without a word or glance in my direction, and I shiver at the lack of his heat and the sudden influx of cold wind that shifts the branches and leaves around me. The dread in my stomach rumbles, sharpens its claws as if it knows something is coming.
“Your ma’ said you were out here,” the man in front says when he finally gets close enough to see.
I recognize the coil of dark hair pulled back behind his head and the ugly bend of his nose where it never healed straight after falling off his horse ten years ago.
Fitzwilliam Ponteif, the tanner’s son. “We were thinking of going to Renard’s for a drink. Join us?”
“Of course,” Louis is quick to answer, a friendly laugh trailing along at the end of the word.
He runs a hand through his hair, a nervous tick of his that looks as natural as breathing to anyone other than me.
“Will Barbier even let you in after last time? I recall a threat to cut that pig tail off your head if you ever stepped foot in his tavern again.”
“Bah! The old man loves me, he just doesn’t know it yet,” Fitzwilliam says loudly. “Come now, we’ve been looking for you everywhere. What were you all the way out here for, anyway?”
I should have stayed in the tree, I know that. I was hidden there in the leaves and the night, tucked away in my safe place where no one could see me. Where no one could hurt me.
I should have stayed.
But I don’t. Because Fitzwilliam has always made that monster inside me rise and howl like a wild thing, and a pitiful part of me enjoys watching his face twist in disgust and confusion when I drop from my perch and land behind Louis.
“Fitzwilliam.” The greeting comes out weaker than I expect, uncertainty brimming beneath my skin as they all stare at me that same way they always do. With disdain, pity, and a little bit of wonder.
Look at this strange creature, they think to themselves, eyeing me like a bug behind glass. What sin must have been used to create such a wicked thing.
It does not bother me as much as it probably should.
I have heard it all before—spat in my face by the Father and his congregation, whispered on the edges of the streets as people pass me by, crooned to my father in false platitudes and understanding.
No, Fitzwilliam and his cronies do not bother me.
I am used to their taunts and their jeers, they no longer hurt me.
It is Louis who does.
The way he lets them pull him into it all, with too-wide smiles and too-ugly laughs, hands slapping shoulders and arms looped around necks.
He has never spoken ill of me like they do, but neither does he stop their cruelty and insults.
Every time I think I am used to it, and yet every time it hurts anyway.
“Is that Dora?” Fitzwilliam squints his eyes in the darkness, as if I am not close enough to see just as clearly as he is.
His nose twitches and scrunches, yanking the entirety of his face up with it like a wrinkled old dog.
“Don’t tell me you’re still pulling her along.
Thought you would have gotten tired of her by now. ”
Louis’ shoulders tense slightly, but he shoves his hands in his pockets and rolls his eyes as if the words do not bother him.
Perhaps they don’t. I have never been able to truly read Louis when he is around his friends, never been able to understand the strange mask he puts on for them.
“We were just having a conversation. People can talk.”
“People will talk,” the other man says in return, “if you keep letting her follow you around. You know what she is. She’s just trying to soften you up to make you docile. Better to sink her teeth into if you let her. That right, Dora?”
You know what she is.
Whatever confidence I might have felt standing in front of Fitzwilliam now evaporates in the wake of Louis’ silence.
His indifference, feigned or not, carves through my chest in a way it hasn’t in a very long time.
Like a dull, serrated knife piercing the skin and forcing its way past the muscle and tissue, not quite sharp enough to cut clean or quick.
I am used to it—used to him not speaking up, not standing in their way.
I have always preferred it even, because in the end, I know Louis is going places I never will.
I know he has a life to live and that I am nothing more than a chain weighing him down as he struggles to stay afloat.
My friendship has always been a stain upon him, and yet no matter how often I try to wipe it clean, try to tear myself away from him, Louis manages to find his way back without a care in the world.
I am used to it.
So why now does it hurt so badly?
Why now did his kisses not take my breath away? Why now did his hands not feel warm and safe? Why now does everything feel so drastically and unequivocally different?
What has changed?
“She’s not going to sink her teeth into me, Fitz,” Louis finally says, once the silence has grown too long and the wound in my chest too bloody.
It is only decades of practice that keeps me from flinching at the incorrect pronoun.
I watch with sick fascination as a cocky smile spreads across his lips—familiar and yet not, real and yet not. “Not unless I let her, at least.”
That dread twists and tightens in my gut, stretching clawed fingers up my throat. I swallow the bile that pools beneath my tongue, the blood I thought comfortable in my stomach now acrid and heavy.
One of the other men—édouard, whose mother runs the schoolhouse—snorts loud enough to make me jump.
“You jest, Lou! She’d sooner kill you before she fucks you.
Unless,” he pauses after dragging out the word, his teeth on display in the moonlight as he leers at me.
“Don’t tell me you’re softening her up. Trying to tame the beast, Lou?
Maybe you’ll have better luck than Father Thompson. He’s been trying for years.”
The implication makes me recoil, makes the bile in my throat try to resurface again.
“éddie,” Louis says, his voice quiet but with a hint of warning. “Father Thompson is a good man. You shouldn’t speak ill of him like that.”
Father Thompson is a good man.
Not, Theo deserves better than that.
Not, Don’t speak ill about Theo.
Father Thompson is a good man.
I know he does not mean it that way. I know, as I have always known, that Louis cares for me, even if he keeps it hidden in front of others. I know that he truthfully does not think of the damage his words could do.
But that is the problem, is it not? They never think it hurts, even as I am bleeding out at their feet, and they are left begging forgiveness from my corpse.
Fitzwilliam chortles, slapping Louis on the shoulder and tugging him beneath his arm. “Don’t be a downer, Lou! It’s just a bit of fun. Dora gets it, right?”
I clench my jaw to keep the swirling maelstrom of anger and hurt locked away. I swallow the claws and the bile, forcing my eyes up to Louis’. They meet mine easily enough, though I can see the awkward apology swimming through them, begging me not to hold this against him later.
I do not know why he worries so much. I never have before, why would I now?
What has changed?
“I will see you later,” I tell him, grateful when my voice does not crack on the emotion I am battling behind my teeth. “Thank you for keeping me company.”
Louis winces at the cold words, but I cannot find it in myself to regret them.
The wound he carved into my chest is still bleeding, though sluggish now with the realization that something about me is different.
That something has allowed that wound to happen, has allowed it to bleed and befoul the earth at my feet.
There is a weakness in my carefully crafted armor, and I am too distracted with trying to find the reason for it that I cannot be bothered to feel remorse for Louis’ own fragility.
“I think we’ve hurt her feelings, lads.” Fitzwilliam elbows édouard and jostles Louis, laughing with the others like a pack of hyenas on the prowl.
“Don’t worry, Little Dora, if Louis doesn’t put out, I’ll be happy to soften you up.
Just so long as you don’t bite. I think I’ve got a muzzle ‘round somewhere—”
“That’s enough, Fitz,” Louis interrupts. “Didn’t you say we were going to Renard’s? Leave Dora alone and let us go. We’re helping Monsieur Bissette tomorrow at the farm, and I’d rather not do so with the Devil fighting the inside of my skull and no sleep.”
Louis’ words should comfort me. It is his way of sticking up for me where he can, redirecting Fitzwilliam’s attention and giving me the chance of escape.
But there is no comfort in the face of fear. In the weight of a nightmare that's haunted you your whole life and wraps around your jaw like too-stiff leather, forcing it shut, cutting into the skin as you thrash and scream.
Louis and the others are gone, but I did not notice them leave. Awareness flickers around me like dying fireflies. The air grows thin in my lungs until I am sure the earth has opened up and swallowed me whole, burying me within its possessive grasp.
I flex my jaw, feel leather biting into my cheeks and blood dripping down my neck.
In the darkness of the forest, I hear the laughter echoing against the trees, harmonizing with the chanted prayers that haunt my memories. I claw at the straps that keep my mouth shut, praying for Louis to come back and pull me from this grave I have been tossed in.
He does not hear me; his voice drifts farther and farther away, until it is nothing but an echo in my mind.
I grasp for the last, fragile shard of my sanity.
And I run.