Chapter 21
CHAPTER 21
L akeshia
A somber air surrounds us as we enter a luxury hotel suite. The solemn mood has dogged us ever since I shrugged Shinji’s question away without a response. He takes our bags and unpacks everything into the closet and dresser while I watch in silence on the couch.
No matter what I say to myself, I can’t block out Shinji’s words. They bombard me at every moment, forcing me to reflect on trauma I thought long healed. The lessons I learned to protect myself are embedded deep within my psyche. So, why do I feel so unsettled?
After a terrible experience in college, I abandoned any hope of meeting someone who sees me for who I am instead of what I can do for them. I’m not supposed to want to wake up every day with expectations of never being alone again. I’m not supposed to envy Shinji and Takeshi for finding each other when there is no future for me. I’m also not supposed to look into their eyes and see the hopes they pin on me that have more to do with me than with the baby they want from my womb.
Shinji and Takeshi are supposed to be like everyone else in my past, but they’re not. I accepted being their surrogate, but anything deeper threatens the barriers I’ve erected to protect myself.
Recalling Shinji’s warmth surrounding me, demanding nothing of me but selflessly giving his support and comfort leaves my body shaky. At any moment, I fear another kind word or gesture from Shinji will plunge me back into my painful past.
“I’m guessing you never talked to anyone about what happened to cause this reaction in you.” A blurry image of Shinji’s warm brown eyes confronts me as he wipes my cheeks with a tissue.
I raise my hand to touch the area and find it wet, realizing I’m crying again. Even this is something I don’t do often. Usually only when physical pain overwhelms me and I have no other outlet. Yet, I’ve been with Shinji and Takeshi for less than a month and I’ve cried more often than I have in ten years.
“What would be the point? I can’t change what happened.” I take the tissue from him and dry my face.
“We’ll find you someone when we get home.” He stands, his posture firm and undaunted.
“You aren’t going to make me talk it out with you?”
He cups my cheek, a sad whisper of a smile ghosting his face. “I’ll always be a willing ear. What I won’t do is demand you tell me what’s bothering you before you’re ready.”
“What if I’m never ready?” I crumple the tissue in my hands.
“We’ll find a way to cope that you can live with.”
“It’s that simple for you?” I scoff.
The hint of a smile disappears from Shinji’s face. “Not even a little. Whatever is eating at you is going to consume you if we don’t do something about it, and it will break my heart to watch you struggle. I don’t know if I can do anything to help, but I will be ready whenever you are to attack your problems with you.”
He sighs and drops beside me and stretches his legs onto the center table. “One day, you’re going to have to decide if you want to keep living in pain or find the medicine that will either cure it or alleviate it.”
Tears begin flowing again, an uncontrollable outpouring as his words sink in. No one has ever fought for me to help myself before. I’ve always been the lone warrior on my side. And… I’m so fucking exhausted.
I deny myself everything outside of what I need for my vengeance. It’s easier to do when I don’t have hope dangling before me every waking moment. How am I supposed to stay strong when Shinji and Takeshi have already made a space for me in their lives that doesn’t feel temporary? A space I want to grab hold of and never let go.
Shinji laces our fingers together. The warm gesture, so innocent and undemanding, nearly unravels me again.
“I had a boyfriend once.” The admission escapes the prison I’ve kept it in, barely a whisper, yet the five simple words loosen the locks, and more words escape.
“We met in college. He was the first guy I got close to. Fell in love with. For two months, we dated and every day felt like… hope. I began to believe in a future with him. In having a family…” With each word, my stomach cramps. I can’t keep the confession at bay any longer, but disclosing the truth hurts.
Shinji wraps me in his arms. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Don’t you want to know?”
“Yes, but for the right reasons. Don’t tell me something because I’m pressuring you. If I am, just tell me to fuck off. Only you get to determine who knows your story.”
A broken chuckle bursts from my lips. “Yeah, but once I tell you, you’ll tell Takeshi. You don’t keep secrets from each other.”
After a few seconds of silence, he pinches my chin and forces me to look him in the eyes. “Only you get to determine who knows your story,” he repeats with a fierceness I seldom attribute to Shinji. “What happens between us can’t affect what happens between you and Takeshi or me and my husband.”
“But you’ll want me to tell him.”
“And he’ll want to know how not to remind you of the pain you keep bottled inside you. Despite what we want, your needs come first.” He presses his lips against my forehead. “People in hell want ice water. Doesn’t mean they’ll get it. That applies to me and Takeshi, too.”
“You say the right things to appear accommodating.”
He exhales a long, audible breath. “I do the right things to be accommodating, too. That’s why whatever happens between us stays between us until you’re ready to share it with Takeshi. I expect you and my husband to share experiences I’m not privy to as well.”
His response surprises and comforts me. I don’t know if I’ll be able to relive the night that cemented my path all these years, but I also don’t want Takeshi looking at me with pity because he heard of my ordeal secondhand. But right now, I need to get through my first retelling. In sharing, I’m hoping to lance a wound and drain it of poisonous pus accumulated over the years.
“The guy… from college… He made promises, too. Said he loved me and understood my need to wait because I was a virgin. He made me believe in a real future, you know? He gave me hope for the days after I dealt with my father’s murderers. He lied. About everything. His sweet words and soft caresses were all a ruse to get what he wanted from me.”
At my confession, Shinji’s body turns to stone under my touch.
“What did he do?”
I shrug without looking at him. “He gave me a glass of wine.”
“That’s why you never drank anything Takeshi or I gave you unless we tasted it first?”
“Drinks from anyone, honestly.”
“I get the picture. If you don’t want to say anymore, we can stop here.”
I bark a sarcastic laugh and leap out of his arms to pace the confines of the suite. “You are so fucking annoying with that shit.”
He quirks his brow.
“Being so accommodating. Telling me what I need to hear even if it’s all bullshit.”
He raises a shoulder in a fuck if I care gesture. “Get used to it. This is who I am.” He spreads his arms across the back of the couch. “And to be clear, I’ll never bullshit you. What we have only exists with trust.”
The little fight I had in me flees with his matter-of-fact manner.
Trust? I wish I could laugh in his face about not trusting anybody, but I’d be lying to myself and him. Despite knowing Shinji and Takeshi for such a short period, they’ve shown me through their actions that I can trust them. I want to trust them. Deep down inside, I yearn to for the feeling I don’t have to keep my guard up twenty-four hours a day.
I hug myself tightly. “I think the worst part about what happened to me is I couldn’t fight. He took that from me. My ability to say no, to push him away, or even slap his face. I was completely powerless. And when I woke the next day, I couldn’t even blame him for being rough and hurting me because I don’t remember the act itself, only the violation after waking up naked beside him and the used condom he’d discarded. Oh, God, I’m going to be sick.”
I rush to the bathroom, everything I ate and drank races each other to escape my narrow esophagus.
I don’t know how long I stay in the bathroom, but when I join Shinji, he has a sealed bottle of ginger ale and crackers ready for me. He twists the cap so I can hear the seal being broken and sips before handing me the drink. I take it gratefully and swallow a mouthful, welcoming the burn as it goes down.
“How do you feel?”
“More emotions than I know what to do with.” I sit in a chair facing the sofa. By doing so, I take away the opportunity for Shinji to wrap me in his arms and provide more of his comforting embrace. In my current state, his gentleness is a threat to my stability.
“What do you need from me?” He kneels at my feet, beseeching me with his eyes and silently pleading with me to let him in further and give him a chance.
“I don’t want to feel anything. Can you help me numb the pain?”
Doubt and confusion enter his gaze. “I’m not an expert, but I don’t think what you want to do is healthy.”
“It may not be, but it’s what I need right now. Will you help me?”
“That depends. I won’t give you drugs if?—”
“I need you to fuck me like I’m a stranger. Someone without a face or a name.”
He balks, nearly falling on his ass. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do. I need to detach, and this works best for me.”
“But… I don’t know how to look at you and not see you or not want to connect with you. I don’t know how to turn off my feelings.”
I stand, looking down at him, determined for him to understand exactly what I’m saying although it will hurt him. “Shinji, if you can’t do this, I’ll have to find the solution on my own. Neither of us wants that.”
“Lakeshia…” The light in his eyes dims, tearing at my heart.
I suppress the urge to retract my words because I know this works. Meaningless sex got me through the worst of what Paul did to me, and I’ll grasp at anything to make this pain go away again. On top of everything I’ve endured, I’m just not strong enough to endure this right now. One day, I want to be.
I want to be the woman Shinji and Takeshi can stand beside, not the one they have to shore up with weak stilts buried in quicksand.
Shinji nods, defeated in a way I never want to see him. “Okay, for you, I’ll try.”
I dip my head and strip off my top. “Lie on the bed and don’t touch me.”
Although he doesn’t say anything, his Adam’s apple bobs as if he’s swallowing words to talk me out of my current course. While approaching the bed, he undresses.
His hard muscles react to every movement but I avert my gaze. Falling into the trap that is Shinji’s beautiful body will not get me to my goal. Being enraptured by him will only make things worse.
I remove the rest of my clothes and mount Shinji without delay, grace, or ceremony. Impaling myself on him gives me a tenth of a second of relief before I stare into his face.
However, what I’m seeking isn’t there. He slams his eyes closed, cutting me off from him like I asked. I ride him, chasing some unknown relief that won’t come no matter how hard I work his body. The usual numbness is so distant as to be impossible to reach.
What is near, however, adds to my torment. Shinji fists his hands to stop himself from reaching out to me. He’s a fuck doll beneath me, neither encouraging nor discouraging me from taking what I need from him; an act of pain for him in his rapidly flexing jaw and quivering nostrils.
What have I done by asking him to do this? Nothing about this coupling is helping me. If anything, I’m only hurting myself more. And Shinji…
He suffers in silence to give me what I told him I needed because of my unfair ultimatum, and witnessing his torment is somehow worse.
I fall off him, nowhere close to coming, and hug his neck tight, hiding the tears that flow more freely than they ever have. “I’m sorry,” I whisper the refrain over and over, unable to articulate what I actually want to say. That his pain only feeds mine more. That I’m a piece of shit for ever suggesting he lock off his emotions to give me something meaningless because that cure-all no longer works. But I don’t know if I can manage the level of intimacy he craves from me without traumatizing the both of us.
“Please hold me,” I beg, abandoning my pride and the brittle shell I put up for my protection. My sobbing is no longer quiet and my body convulses in his embrace, making a mockery of my attempt to hide how affected I am.
Shinji’s body slowly loses its rigidness and he wraps his arms around me. “Whatever you need, I’ll give it to you. I swear on my life.”
I dip my head, knowing he’s being honest. But how can he give me what I need when I don’t know? I’m in the same position as when we first entered the room, maybe worse. Because now there’s a desperate craving for the connection he wants us to share but I have no idea how to accept it.