Chapter 12
Raya
I swear my heart is skipping beats every couple of seconds. I’m naked. He’s naked. And we’re under the covers of this big bed together.
He purposely scooted closer to me, but once again, he’s not touching me. It’s the threat of it that scares me so much.
He seems completely engrossed in the show playing on the television. I know better than to think that he’s not paying attention to me. It’s weird how attuned to me he seems.
With him this close, it’s easy for me to dart my eyes to the left and take in his features. I do it cautiously, my eyes darting back to the television screen repeatedly.
I take in his facial features first. His eyelashes are long, brush the apples of his cheeks when he blinks. The blue of his eyes would almost be mesmerizing. It’s a color a woman could easily get lost in.
If things were different in my life, I know I’m the type of woman that would get lost in such spectacularly blue eyes. It’s impossible to do that now that I’ve seen the monster behind those eyes.
My second glance lands on his jawline. The stubble there is a golden brown no more than a quarter of an inch in length.
It makes me wonder how long it’s been since he shaved. Three days, five days, a week? I have no idea.
It’s not often I see men in the process of growing a beard. Either they’re clean shaven or the beard is always in place. The process of it is fascinating to me.
I clench my hands in my lap, the movement concealed under the blankets. The tips of my fingers tingle with some weird urge to touch his face, to see what that stubble feels like against my skin, hitting me harder than it should.
Maybe, I’m fascinated by him. Maybe, it’s my inability to understand how a person can do what he’s done to me and sit there, acting as if he has no cares in the world.
That’s all that it is. It’s not attraction, it’s intrigue. It’s that feeling people get when they see or hear something they could have never imagined knowing about until that very moment. It’s surprise and shock and it’s eating away at me.
I have so many questions. I want so many answers.
My third glance is at the pulse pounding on the side of his neck. I take the time to count them. His heart rate isn’t erratic, it’s steady, strong, while mine pounds in my chest as if I’ve run ten miles.
I swallow, looking back at the television when I realize that my own breathing and my own pulse are starting to increase.
I spend long minutes watching the television without actually seeing or understanding what’s going on.
I guess I can be glad he didn’t stop and purchase one of those pornographic movies he spent so much time perusing.
The next look lands on the mangled patch of flesh on the back of his neck. It looks painful and I know it had to have been. As evil as this man could possibly be, I know he would feel pain.
I want to ask him about it. I want to know how he got that scar.
I don’t know how I missed them at the surf shop.
I shake my head, rejecting that thought.
I know exactly how I missed it. I didn’t pay him any attention.
He wasn’t worthy of it. I see them now and a little explanation of why they’re there would go a long way in helping me understand who he actually is.
It would help me understand that he is either evil or he’s a product of something society made. Did he get them there because someone hated him? Did he get them there because he’s always been an evil man? Are those scars what caused him to be evil or are they a result of being evil?
I shouldn’t care to know why he was hurt. It shouldn’t make me wonder who hurt him. Those marks on the back of his neck, the circular scars, that could either be bullet wounds or burn marks.
They make me scared of him even more. But they also make me a little sad.
The pain he must have gone through. Did he deserve it at the time?
I dig deep, wondering if he would deserve them now.
If I could stomach someone coming in here now and marring fresh skin in retaliation for what he’s done to me.
The thought of witnessing that makes my stomach turn. And that’s terrifying on its own.
Shouldn’t I want him to hurt?
Shouldn’t I want him to feel terror?
Shouldn’t I want him to be scared of me?
A fresh round of tears burns the back of my eyes because now I’m making excuses for him behaving this way.
Someone hurt him badly, and that’s why he is the way he is. I just can’t wrap my head around him being this way because he was born this way. Something created him. Someone made him into the person he is today.
The other half of me, the part I honestly do not want to acknowledge, makes me wonder if he can be turned into that if he can also be turned away from that.
Can you de-create a monster?
What would that even take?
Why am I even thinking of that?
It’s not like I want to save him. I don’t want to help him.
He’s holding me captive and I can’t ever forgive that.
But making him into something that he’s not, trying to convince myself that he’s behaving this way because he can’t help himself, as if him taking me hostage and holding me here against my will, as if making me get myself off in front of him is the only viable outcome.
As if it’s always meant to happen that way.
That can’t be possible. He can’t be the type of person who hurts others in retaliation for being hurt himself. How sick does that make someone that they channel that energy and that pain and do horrible things to good people because horrible things had been done to them?
I don’t open my mouth to say these things. He wouldn’t listen. He wouldn’t come around to my way of thinking. A light bulb would not go off in his head and him think, you’re right. I should only hurt bad people because bad people hurt me.
I press a hand to my chest, saddened even more to think that it might have been done by someone who was supposed to love him. That’s the ultimate betrayal. My life isn’t fun but my life has never consisted of pain, physical pain.
I shake my head, the argument inside making me want to close down completely.
I’ve never been one to look for the good in people.
Words stopped meaning anything early in life.
Promises get broken, people get manipulated, and lies are told.
All to further an agenda. All to get a vote.
All to get a donation with the hope that those promises will be forgotten when it comes time to pay up.
“When will you let me go?” I ask, my words weak, my voice low.
“Never,” he says without hesitation. He doesn’t even look in my direction when he destroys my world.
I nod because deep down, I think I always knew that would be the outcome. Hoping for things has never been one of my strong suits either. I’m terrified once again at the thought of staying here until he decides differently.
Never doesn’t mean he isn’t going to hurt me and end things. Never could mean a lot of things. Never could mean he’s going to get tired of me and kill me, and I’ll never see the light of day again. Never could mean the rest of my life and it could still be a long life.
My mind wanders back to everything that’s happened, choosing to focus on the fact that he hasn’t really hurt me, other than leaving me here in the room alone last night and having to sleep on that uncomfortable couch. It honestly hasn’t been that bad. I know people have had worse.
He’s not making me sleep on the floor. He’s not making me crawl around on hands and knees and beg for food. I’ve gotten to shower. I’ve gotten to eat.
I have to laugh, no humor in the sound, but he still ignores me. Is it possible for Stockholm syndrome to hit this quickly or is my life outside of this captivity just so bad that this doesn’t seem as terrible?
“Do you love me?” I ask, feeling stupid the second the words fall out of my mouth.
This gets his attention. He slowly rolls his head on his shoulders to look in my direction. “Do you want me to love you?” There’s a sinisterness in his words, as if the type of love that he could give wouldn’t be anything a sane person would wish for.
I shake my head no because that’s absurd. Good love, bad love, his kind of love, I don’t want anything to do with any of it.
I don’t know what emotion he reads on my face but a slow smile, a sinister grin, pulls at the corners of his mouth. It’s the same one he gave me when I came in the shower that says he thinks I’m lying.
I want to argue that fact. I want to tell him he’s insane if he thinks I will ever fall in love with him.
I may not know true real dedicated love but I know it looks nothing like this.
Love doesn’t start by getting taken from the beach.
Love doesn’t start with a needle to the neck.
Love doesn’t start with being forced to expose my body.
Love doesn’t look like any interaction we’ve had thus far, but arguing isn’t going to change anything.
Just like asking him about his scars isn’t going to make him see me as more of a person. For a man who gets pissed often and rattles on about assumptions, he has to know that he’s guilty of it just as much as I am.
Without even thinking about it, I drop my eyes to his lips, wanting to see when that smile fades away. It isn’t until he growls and throws the blankets off the both of us that I realize I’ve made yet another mistake.