Chapter 11
11
LUCY
D irty. It doesn’t matter how many times I wash. Whether I scald my skin or scrub it within an inch of its life. I feel dirty. Angry and confused.
I’m a traitor.
Tossing one more time, I turn to face the full-height windows. The sun is coming up tediously slow, as though the night is trying to desperately hold on for just that bit longer. Long enough to taunt me with the shadows darkening the corners of the room and distorting the painting above me. Gods and angels caught between righteousness and sin.
It’s impossible to ignore the ache of my muscles as I roll onto my back. A long sigh pushes from my lips, something between a groan and hiss, as my foot throbs along to the burn in my limbs.
“Fuck,” I spit, pushing myself up with a shuffle into the headboard as I peel the cover off me and look down at the bandage on my toe.
That’s what you get . The voice in my head bites at me at the same time as I recall one of my headteacher’s favourite sayings: Every sin has a price. Every wrong has a penance.
I hated Catholic school. Hated that it encouraged us to fear the darkness rather than pushed us to see the goodness of the world. It always confused me that they would constantly reference sin, punishment, and eternal damnation instead of hope and light.
The bedroom door swings open, and I half expect Tomasz to stand in the open doorway instead of the maid that comes to deliver my breakfast and fresh clothes. Her steps falter when she finds me naked, but quickly, she shakes the surprise off and wheels in the cart with the same austere-looking rye toast and boiled egg as always. The smell alone makes my stomach turn. The thought of eating anything right now, however, has me leaping out of the bed and stumbling to the toilet.
Nothing comes. Heave after heave. Doesn’t matter how many times I wretch, I’m fucking dry. Inside and out.
Clearing her throat, the maid walks in with a sheet held up in front of her as though she’s preserving my dignity even though she’s seen every inch of my body. Twice a week, she shaves my legs and any other unwanted hair. Not once has she shown me any sympathy, except for right now, as she gently drapes the sheet over me and stands beside the toilet, waiting while I stare into the bowl.
“Thank you,” I tell her as I push up onto my feet and head over to the vanity, trying to remember if I’ve ever heard her name. Instead of adding to the already rampant mess, I ask her, “What’s your name?”
Feels wrong that we don’t know each other’s names. This woman has scrubbed me clean and groomed me. Knowing each other’s names isn’t what’s going to make things weird or even make us friends. She’s still the servant taking care of her master’s pet.
Ignoring the sting of my thoughts, I tell her, “My name’s Lucy.”
“Elif,” she whispers back, as though our verbal exchange is forbidden.
Quietly, she goes about picking up the broken pieces of the china soap bottle along with the other debris from last night. Meanwhile, I stand in front of the mirror looking at myself. As my heart picks up its rhythm at the memory of everything that happened, my belly lurches. I keep waiting to feel sick again, but while I examine the marks Tomasz’s hands left on my body, I shiver at the cold that assaults me. My stomach twists at the ghost of his touch. I can still feel his hands on me, hot and rough. Unforgiving. The echo of his presence inside me is inescapable, making my body wring itself that bit more so that it tenses and clenches.
Fuck, it misses him.
The discomfort of feeling so empty has never been this overwhelming. Pressing my legs together, I edge flush to the vanity until the marble top grinds into my hip bones. Like when he was standing behind me. For an instant, I swear I can feel the heat of his body pressed to my back with the pain fizzing from my hips to my pulsing core. Hard. Strong. Unyielding. Tomasz is impenetrable. Even when he unravels, there is something so forthright about him that makes me question all the things I know.
Grasping the edge of the sink, I pull myself harder against the cold stone. The ache bubbles up my body, simmering at the back of my eyes.
“Sweet tea,” Elif coos lightly, putting a teacup down in front of me. “Makes everything better.”
She means well, I’m sure of it from the way she softly strokes down my spine. The scent of sugar, cinnamon, and cloves warms through me, reminding me of Christmas and all the candles my mother lights in every room of our home. It makes me wonder what she’s doing right now. How she’s doing. I imagine she would be devastated.
“It will be better,” she breathes, looking down at the vanity before she adds, “Things can get better.”
There’s a lilt to her voice and her tone that makes my heart stick for a second. It’s almost as if Elif genuinely cares. Like my mother cared and my grandmother used to care too. It doesn’t take much more for my thoughts to wander, and before I can stop myself from going there again, I wonder if anyone else misses me. My father…but really Freddie.
We weren’t an official thing, but we were as official as anyone could ever get with him. He had all my heart on a platter. I loved him enough that I would do anything for him. I would do whatever it took to show him I was it for him.
Still, it’s not his voice that whispers to me at night or his touch that lingers on my skin. It’s not him that makes my heart beat to within an inch of its life. It used to be. Loving him was suffocating. It hurt and scarred beyond reason.
Wiping the tears that threaten to escape me, I pick up the tea and take a sip. It tastes even better than it smells. The sweetness has a tang to it. The flavour of lemon and pineapple lingers on my tongue along with the bitterness of the black tea and the heat of the spices.
I’m about to put the cup down and gather myself so that we can continue with the morning ritual when she holds out a blister packet. The one pill looks small and harmless. As I take it from her, I recognise the name of the active ingredient beneath the Russian script.
My eyes flit to hers, and she smiles with an encouraging nod for me to take the morning-after pill. “It’s going to be okay.”
Is it?
Glancing between her and the packet in my hand, I try to calm my thoughts. It’s impossible when they’re already in overdrive. I keep thinking back to how everything played out with Tomasz. I pushed, and he pulled. He warned me, and I baited. I knew it would happen eventually, and maybe a part of me wanted it to be over and done with. To rip the plaster off and let him do his worst so that I could find something more to hate him with because the longer I’m here, the fuzzier all the reasons to loathe him become.
The more he hurts me, the more I think about him. Of how he also takes care of me afterwards. Sometimes when we’re amid our wrangles, he looks at me, and I feel his gaze course through me as though it is a physical thing.
“Take it…” Elif murmurs while nodding at my hand encouragingly.
“Did he give it to you?” Not that it makes a difference.
Or maybe it does because the question leaves a soured note in my mouth. If he’s going to kill me in the end, does it really matter if he takes precautions?
This is probably just another of his games. Pretending he cares enough to take care of me after he mangles my spirit a bit more. He thrives on mind games. Tomasz pushes me to the very edge of my limits and then pulls me back closer to him and further from my sanity. Consequently, the closer we get, the harder it is to resist this inexplicable tug between us.
It’s a vicious circle, and slowly but surely, it’s grinding me down. Even if I am disintegrating his control, along with my resilience, Tomasz has an escape. The safety net of freedom and distance while I’m here, stuck inside these walls.
“Did he give it to you?”
“This will fix any trouble,” she tells me, peering down her nose at my belly.
“This?” A laugh bursts from me as I hold up the blister packet between us. “This fixes nothing,” I snap at her, using my thumb to one-handedly push the pill out of the packet before I throw the orange-foiled plastic at her.
“It doesn’t fix shit! And this? This…” I hold up the china cup by the delicate handle. “It doesn’t make any of it okay.”
The teacup falls to the floor with an ear-splintering crack when I release it from my grasp. The longer I look down at the broken pieces, the cloudier my vision becomes. My anger roils inside me in a way that feels as though I might physically explode if I don’t scream. There’s nothing I can do to stop it from happening. The air in my lungs is so hot that as I shriek, it burns up my airway, scorching my mouth and lips as she tries to silence me.
“Quiet. Please…the guards… Please… shhh…shhh…”
“It’s not okay,” I finally murmur. “He… Tomasz…he…”
I know what I want to say. What I should be saying. It’s what I need to so that I can make myself feel better about the constant longing of my body for his. Even now that he’s sent his minion to take care of the lesser of his problems. The urge to maim him is as powerful as my need to feel him.
“Your master…he?—”
A part of me hopes that if I can say it, it’ll somehow erase my guilt for not fighting him. The truth doesn’t allow it though. The words that I keep trying to force out congeal in my throat because they’re a fucking lie. One that I hate myself for.
My grandmother once told me that I was too honest for my own good. That I had to learn to lie through all my fucking teeth if I was going to survive this world. She was right, and I failed at that too.
Turning back to the mirror, I find the bruises Tomasz’s fingers left on my side. As I touch my fingertips to them and press, I can still hear him telling me, I will be your last.
Perhaps he’s right. All this time, I’ve waited for him to make his killer move. Maybe he’s already made it. He’s filling me up with all this guilt that I don’t know whether I’ll be able to live through. All along he’s made it clear that he wanted to break me, and right now it feels like he already has. He’s cracked my shell so that he can watch me split open for him.
“He fucked me.” And I let him.
Elif meets my stare in the mirror, nodding her pity. It should anger me, but it just hurts. It physically makes my body ache with every second that his breaths echo in my head. Grunts and curses that make my skin break out in goosebumps while the emptiness inside me swells. All that’s left is longing so deep and so strong that it smothers me.
“Tomasz fucked me.” The words slither from my lips, warming me from the inside out.
It’s wrong. My need for him is immoral. A transgression for which there is no penance or price to right. There’s just this endless pit of guilt and disgust and want.
“He fucked me,” I repeat, the sob ripping through me without mercy.
It chokes my insides, making the gaping absence he’s left in his wake starker and torturous.
I begged him and implored, and not once did I try to stop him because when he looked at me, he was just a man looking at a girl. And he wanted me too. He saw, he wanted, and he took.