Chapter 51
FINLEY
I can’t… I can’t breathe.
Eli’s last words are still hanging in the air when he exhales and looks at me. All I can do is stare back. I’m waiting for the nightmare to end.
You know? For that moment where his foot will brush mine, and maybe the scratch of his toenail will jolt me awake.
Because this can’t be real.
This can’t have happened.
Not to Eli.
My Eli.
“Fin…”
“No,” is all I squeak out, shaking my head hard enough to rattle something loose. “No. No… no…”
My vision blurs, then blacks, and vomit surges up my throat.
“Finley…” Eli calls as I stumble through the apartment, crashing off corners and doorframes until I hit our bedroom and slam through to the en suite.
Everything is a blur. It’s all an endless void, punctuated by my sluggish pulse.
Horror and fear—feelings I thought I’d learned to keep at bay—come back in a soul-crushing avalanche, and my heart keens. I’m back in the water, the pool cover closing above me, weight pushing me under.
I can’t breathe.
Death is a terrible, awful thing. This is the second time it’s come for me. Except, today, nothing can save me.
I thought hell would burn me, but I was wrong; it’s bludgeoning me from the inside out.
Flipping the shower on, I race inside the large space. The water hits cold, forcing the solid air out of my lungs.
The emptiness it leaves behind is worse. As I brace myself on the tiled wall, my stomach wrenches with a twist that pulls it up into my throat. Retch upon retch convulses my body.
Meanwhile, I watch from the outside. Watch my body desperately attempt to clear itself of everything I’ve just heard. Like somehow, I’ve swallowed each word, and I can purge myself of the ugly truth.
Presley raped my Eli.
My brother. My twin.
Why?
Why did he have to destroy the only part of me that has never been tainted?
My heart. My love.
As my knees buckle, I cling to the built-in shelf with shaky hands and vomit again. And again.
The corrosive stench punctuates all my feelings. It smells like death. Putrid and rotten. Like the blood in my veins. There is nothing left of me that is unscathed or pure. There is no good left in me. I’m made up of all the evils the scriptures warned me about.
Beware of false prophets. Of wolves in sheep’s clothing.
“Sweet girl…” Cool hands grip my hair at my nape. “Shhh…”
Eli’s voice is unbearably gentle—nothing like the cold, steady cadence he used to deliver the piece of the puzzle I was missing.
I hate him for keeping it from me.
I hate myself for not seeing it.
I hate Presley for ruining us.
“Stop,” I choke, shrugging off Eli’s hold. “Let go!”
The shout scrapes my throat raw, pulling another useless heave from my belly.
“Don’t fight me, Angel—”
“Don’t. Don’t call me that!” I lurch out of his hold, almost smashing my face into the tiles.
He saves me.
The irony.
The audacity of him saving me. Protecting me. All this time, he’s given me all this new freedom, but underneath it all, he had me locked away where he wanted.
Scuttling along the tiles, I press to the shower glass. The water cools as Eli tempers it. Meanwhile, I watch my reflection in the mirror on the other side of the steamed-up glass, through the imprint of my hand.
Everything around me is still so pristine. So perfect. It’s a mockery of how fucked up I am on the inside.
Eli moves around me. He’s cleaning the mess I’ve made while I scrub at my skin with my knuckles. I want to clean myself of all the filth that clings to me. All the ugliness I inherited, etched in my cells… my skin…
“Stop,” he orders, closer now.
The fog clears enough to catch his reflection hulking behind mine. His shorts and t-shirt have become a second skin. Everything about him is so damn beautiful it hurts.
I know looking will make everything worse. I look anyway.
“Talk to me.”
My chest wrenches at the plea, suffocating my tears.
“Fin.” The deep croak ripples down my spine.
There’s nothing I can say to make this okay.
So I do the only thing that might keep me from shattering; I turn to him and wrap his arms around me. Because he is, has always been, and will always be the best part of me. And holding him is the only way I can save it.
Water thrums while he rocks us gently. Silent and steady. So strong.
“What Presley did is not on you.” His voice cuts through the patter of the water. “It is not your fault, and it is not your sin. He is the monster.”
I glance through the glass at my mirrored eyes and swallow my tears. “How do you do it?” The question slips out as he inches back and frames my face. “How can you bear to look at me?”
Eli doesn’t have to force my face to stay on his; it’s a natural compulsion. My body is hooked on giving him what he wants.
Dark, abysmal pits drink in my tears. “Because you’re the reason I’m still breathing. The reason I’m still living.”
My heart falters at his certainty. So honest and pure that it could be God’s gospel.
“Don’t you see him? When you look at me? In my eyes?”
Eli rests his forehead on mine. “Yes.” I flinch, lungs forgetting their job. “But they’re not his eyes, they’re yours. Your pretty eyes that make me feel all kinds of beautiful things. I feel you… Your fucking wonderful heart beating for me.”
“Elijah—”
“Eli.” His nose nudges mine, and I drink the salty droplets that slip from his jaw into my mouth. “I like it when you call me Eli.”
When I nod, he swaddles me in his arms. He holds me tight, my face buried in his chest as he lets me cry.
I don’t know who I’m crying for. Whether it’s for what he’s endured, or that my DNA will always be the same one that hurt him. I can’t change who I am.
“My brother… he’s…”
“Presley is nothing,” Eli states. “He’s nothing but a scar, Fin. A reminder of what happened that will fade into insignificance over time.”
“It will always be there. Every time you look at me—”
“I see you. I feel you. I want you. That has never changed. It will never change.”
I want to believe him. I want to look up and see it on his face.
When I try to pull back, he tightens his arms around me, like he’s done so many times. Most of them, I can’t get enough of him holding me hostage to his broad chest. Then there are others where it feels like he’s holding me closer, not to push me away… or… or to hide me from the truth.
There it is. The seed that feeds my despair. The click that unlocks all the memories of him shutting down when it got heated between us. Kiss upon kiss that escalated until he ripped away.
Every single time… until Jayden.
“It did change. When you came back after… after he hurt you.” His arms loosen, and I pull back. “You didn’t touch me, didn’t kiss me… You left…”
“Fin—”
“It changed. Even after you brought me here.” My mouth is dry as I wrench myself from him.
The stench of vomit infiltrates my nose as I pace the length of the shower. My pajama tank is stained with sickness and glued to my skin.
Every turn I take about the enclosed space, my thoughts escalate. Free-falling into a pit of rejection.
“You didn’t fuck me until Jayden did. You only fuck me when he’s here… when he’s there… when…” Oh, God.
“Stop,” he snaps. “That’s not true.”
“Tell me the last time it was just you and me.”
His face falls because he knows it’s been years. He knows it as well as I do that it’s the truth, and that’s why it’s fucking killing us. Because, in spite of all the words he’s saying, reality doesn’t back them up.
My ragged breaths rasp around his. “What if—”
“No.”
Taking a step forward, his hand grips my waist. When he yanks me close, I slam my hands into his chest.
“I can’t bear the thought of hurting you. Of making you relive what he did to you every time you look at me.” With a hard shove, I push him away, only for him to pull me closer.
A growl twists his pretty mouth. “That’s not true. You don’t. You’re not him. Y-yo-you’re perfect, Fin.”
This time, when he attempts to tug me into him, I brace my hands around his neck, keeping him at arm’s length.
“Liar,” I spit. “You’re lying and—”
The words slam back down my throat with a choked cry when his hand cuffs my wrist and lifts both my arms overhead. I’m on my toes, his other hand clawing into my waist.
“The only lie I ever told about us was that I could resist this. That I could bring you here and not have you.” Pushing me up against the wall, he pins me to the tiles.
“Your eyes, his eyes… What I see doesn’t change how I feel,” Eli bites out, pushing his throat deeper into my hands.
“Doesn’t change that I want you. I need you so fucking badly that I feel sick with it sometimes. ”
“Eli…”
His face drops inches from mine. The hot spray beating down on us as he grips the straps of my tank top and tears it off me with a grunt, followed by my shorts.
“What-what are you doing?”
“Making you see and feel what you do to me. How I see you. How I feel you in every goddamn cell of my being.”
Each of my breaths comes harder and faster. Jamming at the back of my throat in hoarse whimpers with every second Eli stands flush to my naked body.
His eyes burn into my chest, straight through to my pounding heart.
The water shuts off at the same time as his arm wraps around my torso, and he buries his face in my neck.
“At first, I saw him all the time, and I was afraid of what you would think of me if you knew. I’m still afraid that when you realize I love you more today than I ever have, you’ll look at me and—” He swallows the rest of his sentence with a shake of his head.
“I don’t want you to look at me differently. ”
My heart is freaking out. Starting and stopping. Pinballing between my ribs.
Eli finally looks at me again. “I know I’m not the same person I used to be.”
“Neither am I.”
“I’ve never stopped loving you, Fin. I’m never gonna stop.” Tears glaze his eyes. “And Jayden isn’t a distraction to take my mind off you.”
“I know that. I know you love me, too.” The stricken lines of his face wreck me. “It’s… I… You’ve been with him, Eli. Just him. You told him. Just him…”