Chapter 7 #2
“When did you do all of that?” she asks through a hiss as I ease the fabric free.
How has she walked in this? Lashes crosshatching her thighs—raw, weeping, angry.
“How did you do it all so fast?”
A different heat flushes my face. “I did it when I bought this place.”
“You’ve been waiting for me.” Her eyes light, and the vise on my ribs loosens.
I nod and finish the other side in careful silence—peel, pause, breathe, peel. She exhales in short bursts, knuckles whitening in the bedding.
When the pants are gone, I work ointment over the wounds, hands steady even as my mind reels. I know the answer to the question before I ask it. I’ve felt the leather kiss bone. I can still feel the ghost of it on my feet.
“Who did it?” I place gauze, smooth it gently. “Can you stand? The back needs cleaning up too.”
She rises slowly, turns away. I kneel again and clean what I can see—lighter lashes up the curve of her hips, across the small of her back, along her sides, fainter below the knees.
“I can’t believe you still make that ointment,” she says, dodging the question. “Surely there are better remedies out here than coconut oil and turmeric?”
“It worked perfectly when you made it for me.” When my grandmother split my feet open so my sin would bleed out. When the strap sang and the world went white.
“I kept that home remedies book after my grandma died,” she murmurs. “That’s where I got the recipe for the bruise ointment, too.”
“You didn’t answer my question.” I wrap a bandage around each thigh.
Her eyes shine. “You already know the answer, and I’m not speaking it so you can add it to your conscience.” Her fingers slide into the front of my hair, gentle. “I like this. Better than the short hair you used to keep.”
“I think so too.” I tape the ends and sit back on my heels. She keeps fussing with my hair like it soothes her. It soothes me.
“It really isn’t your fault, Elijah. I should have left when you asked me. My grandma told me that every day until she passed.”
“She needed you.”
“It got so bad so fast. She couldn’t get out of bed even with the oxygen tank to help her breathe.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, standing to pull her into me.
Maybe a hug won’t be enough later. Right now, it’s everything.
The week goes by in a blur of constant anxiety. Finley’s injuries are looking better, not enough that I can sit next to her on the couch without wanting to hunt Presley down and making sure he never hurts her again.
Every fucking hole.
That’s the one sentence I can’t get out of my mind. It’s fucking with me the same way the night he made that promise has ruined me for years.
A chill shudders through me as I focus on the burn from this morning’s five-mile run as I head back to the apartment. It’s still going strong as my phone starts ringing. With the bag of art supplies I picked up to surprise Finley with in one hand, it takes me a moment to pull it out of the armband.
I wish I hadn’t bothered as soon as I check it. A weight settles in the pit of my stomach.
Mom.
Staring at the screen, I debate what to do.
Accept. Decline. Or maybe I should go for one of those automated responses like: Sorry, I can’t talk right now.
It’s not like I haven’t been expecting this call. In a way, it’s surprising it’s taken my parents this long to reach out. Regardless, the smart thing to do is answer and move on.
I step back outside the boutique, finding a quiet spot off the sidewalk to have the conversation I’ve been running through my head for days.
My gut tells me it’s not going to go any of the ways I’ve imagined it.
Still, I swipe my screen, answering the call.
My teeth clench the instant my AirPods buzz to life.
“Bring that girl back, Elijah,” Mom growls down the line.
“Hello, Mom.”
“You’ve brought shame on yourself. On us.”
“I’m sorry.” The apology rolls off my tongue on impulse. So natural that it’s nauseating. Because I’m not sorry. So, I guess that makes it a lie too.
“Yeah?” Her tone softens to a sickly-sweet coo. “If that’s so, return the girl to her family.”
“No.”
“No?” She scoffs, all the sweetness evaporating in an instant. “She belongs to her family. To the fellowship… to the Lord.”
“Finley belongs to herself.” As true as they might be, the words are bitter on my tongue. Because even the six, almost seven, years we’ve been physically apart, she’s still the only girl I’ve ever wanted. When things get confused in my head, she’s the memory I cling to.
“Oh please, Elijah.” I can hear the ‘stupid boy’ in her austere tone. “A woman owns nothing more than her righteousness. If you care so much about that girl, you’ll give that back to her and bring her home. To the light. To God.”
“Finley’s not going back to Havenview. She’s with me, where she belongs.”
“Matthew fifteen, Elijah: For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man,” she rants at me. “In taking that girl, you are stealing from the Lord himself.”
The grate of her voice turns over my insides, all the emotions simmering at the surface boil over at her overzealous rhetoric. “The Lord will get over it,” I snap.
“Grandmother was right, we should never have let you go out there. You’ve lost your way, and you have taken that girl with you into a world of sin and immorality. A man and a woman cannot share a home outside of the holy vow of marriage.”
“You had the chance to convince the Elders to let us marry when I came to you and father.”
“She is not yours. Not for you. And it is not your choice. The Lord decides who and when.”
“Finley stays with me.”
“She’s promised to Asher Montgomery. She agreed to submit herself to him.”
My gut lurches the contents of my stomach up into my throat. Everything burns as I think through Mom’s words.
The longer they settle, the deeper they burrow, and past all other emotions, anger blazes in my chest, spreading like an inferno through my bloodstream.
Finley’s not theirs to promise to another man. She’s not his. Havenview’s. Or the Lord’s. And I’m not letting her go for anything or anyone.
Finley is mine.
My salvation and damnation all intertwined. She’s my nightmare and my escape.
“Whatever agreement you coerced her into is done. It’s off.”
“Elijah—”
I pause at the mouth of the alleyway as a group of people walk past. I can’t risk anyone overhearing this conversation. You never know who’s listening these days, and the last thing I want is the world looking too deep into my past, where we come from.
The rumor mill is already circulating all kinds of vendetta stories about Fin and I, our relationship. A few days ago Jayden showed me a baby watch article Kailey sent him.
“You don’t want to do this, Elijah,” Mom huffs. “You don’t want to turn your back on God, on your family…”
For years I’ve tried to make sense of my life in that place. For years I’ve given everything asked of me, hoping that one day it would be enough. That I would be good enough.
Except enough doesn’t exist to them.
“Remember this, Elijah. God’s word is certain and clear… Those who turn away from the Lord will be cursed by him. They will be cut off and rest in the congregation of the dead.”
My heart sinks at the underlying meaning of her bible quote.
“Stop hiding behind the scriptures.” Mom sucks in a sharp breath at my directness.
It’s not how things are done in Havenview.
There’s always a film, a veil to cover over the truth of it all—the bullshit.
“It’s cowardly, and I’m certain scripture makes it clear that cowards will burn like the rest of the faithless and the sinners. ”
“Elijah—”
“Goodbye… Mom.” With a hard tap, I end the call.
No amount of breaths can steady my hammering pulse or slow the whir of my convoluted thoughts. Nothing can quieten the chaos my mother’s words turned over.
Finley’s right. The only way to move on. To be free. Is with a clean break.
No more arrangements. No more deals. No more feeding the hand that beats us down.
I have Finley. I’m done, and I’m out.