Chapter 11 #2
His hands came up to each side of my face, but he didn’t touch me. I thanked God for that.
Bruises covered his face, dry blood, too. Probably gifted by his father last night, but the darkness, fear, and wine had prevented me from noticing them all.
His hands sealed me in, fingers spreading on the wall, cold plaster against a colder touch. His knee bent, and his forehead came down, resting against mine.
“Please. . .” I didn’t say more, but he knew what I was asking for. Space. He drifted back for a second, but he couldn’t stay away.
His forehead came back to mine; the cold sweat on his brow jumped from his face to mine.
His hand moved, and my eyes moved with it as it aimed for my waist.
I lost control, my body betraying me for the second time. I felt a warm trail rush down my legs, and I burned as the water vacated my body.
I shook harder, fearful of what I might have just brought upon myself.
My mouth widened, ready to tell him that I’d clean it up, but I couldn’t voice the words. I couldn’t voice any words, my mouth continuously trying.
I stuttered as he looked down at the growing puddle, staining the runner covering the percentage of the floor.
He stepped a little closer, not caring about the mess spreading between his toes. His eyes dropped only for a second, and when he looked back at my face, even with my eyes downcast, I could see the pain in his expression.
His hand trembled, matching the vibrations of my entire body as he took my tight curls—matted in Ville’s phlegm—between his fingers. He tucked the hair behind my ears, and bent, ready to whisper to me. . .
And that was the exact moment I found my words, quiet as they were. “I. . . I. . . I’ll clean it up.” I shook so violently, I thought I’d die.
“Don’t worry about it. Fuck, I. . .” He bit down on his bottom lip—a part of him I’d been too happy to suck on only nights ago.
Focusing on that part of him—on that memory—had me once again needing to rush away, but he stopped me with the hand that finally clutched the small of my waist, pulling me back to him. “I’m sorry.”
He didn’t hold me too close, just close enough to see his apology, to feel it, even as I struggled to push back. “I’m so sorry for all you went through last night.”
“Will you please let me go; I haven’t showered yet.”
He barely nodded, but his grip on my body loosened. I looked down once more to the wet patch between our feet—another stain I’d put on a carpet in this house.
“I got it,” he told me, his words almost silent.
He let me slip away, wavering legs making my night of abuse obvious. Each step hurt us both, for different reasons, born of the same cause.
I clicked the bathroom door shut, my balance dwindling as I moved across the tiles to the shower.
Sunlight was peeping in, making this the brightest room in the house, rivalling and triumphing Nessie’s.
With my hand on the ledge, I tried on unsteady legs to mount the freestanding bathtub. Balance wasn’t my friend, and did nothing to assist me.
I tumbled but I didn’t hit the floor, despite bracing and stiffening for the harsh impact.
Woodrow’s arms wrapped around me as I fell into his body.
I spun quickly, my feet finding some sort of stability on the ground. “Don’t touch me!” I spat in anger, in fear, in pain.
My hands flattened to his chest, forcing him away from me. He held up his hands in surrender, showing me he meant no threat.
I looked to the door, and it was closed. I wondered for a second how he got in here so quietly, but I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to talk to him.
Through the night, I’d suffered a million nightmares. And each one convinced me a little more than the last that I wasn’t strong enough to deal with this.
“Please, leave me alone,” I begged, literally begged. “Please.”
“Please, don’t do this. Talk to me.” He tried reaching for my hand.
“I have nothing to say to you.” I shifted back, tucking my hands behind me as I decided on a shower over a bath.
It seemed like the better option all around. For starters, I wouldn’t have to sit in our combined filth, and it was a tiny little room, just for me, where I could close the door and shut Woodrow out.
I turned and stepped inside, closing the door.
I twisted the shower lever, allowing the spray to hit me in the face while I was still in my clothes. I couldn’t undress with Woodrow in here, his sad eyes still on me.
“Please. . .” I pleaded once more for him to leave.
But the only thing that left was his eyes—they left my face for a second, drifting to somewhere in his own head, as if he was trying to see a replay of what happened last night.
I slipped down the wall, the tiles dragging my wet shirt up in the back, creating more aches on my tired body. I closed my eyes, and sitting in the water filling below me, I sobbed so many tears that I added to it.
I heard the shower door open, and my eyes sprang wide, seeing Woodrow step inside, also without undressing.
I tried to back away, to where, I couldn’t say.
My feet slipped in the water, on the residue of soap from whoever had showered last and failed to clean it.
His gray sweats darkened under the shower spray as he lowered to me, his hands around me, stopping me from smashing my face—the only part of me not hurting—against the wall.
That was a lie. My face did hurt. . . from crying so much. . . from the blemish his brutal fingers caused on my cheek.
“Don’t. Please, don’t.” He pulled me in, and I let him, but only because my options were so limited. And my fight was gone.
Maybe the shower wasn’t such a good idea.
He shuffled me onto his lap, and I tried to shift away, fearing I’d feel the weapon between his legs digging into the abuse it had already caused, and igniting feelings that would have me vomiting all over him.
He gently placed his chin on my shoulder.
Part of me wanted to nudge him and catch him in the throat, so he could feel some level of pain.
But as his fingers spread over my back, his hands still trembling, I knew he felt some kind of pain.
Pain, he wanted to soothe as he nuzzled into the thickness of my hair.
I reared back, but only enough to see the hurt on his face, to see if it was anything close to mine.
He blinked again. Pretty eyes—sad and teary—evicted tears from their home. “I am sorry. . . so sorry, Jolie.” He swallowed hard, his dry throat paining him.
He leaned over me, collapsing against the wall, pinning me to the tiles. His hands barricading me should have made me feel scared, but for the first time today, I wasn’t. Not as his forehead rested on my shoulder.
He pulled back quickly, pushing away from me, realizing it wasn’t his pain that was important.
It was mine.
My hands came up, touching his shoulders, fingers digging into his shoulders, preventing him from drifting away.
My touch dropped to his torso, spreading to the beat in his chest. To his heart, broken like my own.
My struggle in the past few minutes had undone another of my top buttons, allowing my small breast to peep out. But his morals—that he could only feel as his authentic self—had him tucking me in.
“I wasn’t ready,” I whispered.
“I know,” he said, almost silently. I wasn’t, either.
He dragged me forward, and I crashed into him. Our hearts raced against each other’s chests. My arms wrapped around his purple skin, and I squeezed too tightly, causing him pain that I felt guilty for. And, for that, I cried harder.
I sobbed into him, almost soundlessly. He stayed quiet, too, holding me as I fell apart, giving all my broken pieces to him.
“I’m sorry,” he told me, again.
“He hurt me, Woodrow,” I said, hidden by my hair, my head still against his body.
“I know he did, and I’m so sorry. I wish I could make it better.” His fingers moved, drawing small patterns on my back and arm that felt like love-hearts.
“I know you say it’s not you.”
“It isn’t. I don’t remember any of it. Jolie, I’m not him. I’d never hurt you.”
“But it was your body. Your touch. . . and I don’t know if I’ll ever feel it differently now.” My hand moved back to his chest, to the heaving rise and fall.
“Please. . . I’m not him.” His voice broke while trying to convince me. “You told me that I was worth it; let me show you, I can be.”
“But you can’t control him, so this could happen again, right?”
His silence answered.
“Let me show you that touches from me can feel good?” he asked, guiding us apart slightly for me to see his plea. “Let me make the pain go away.”
He didn’t touch me for as long as I didn’t answer.
My tongue moved around my mouth, grating against the dryness there. I needed a drink. I needed water. Leaning back and looking up, I opened wide, letting beads from the shower spray drop into my mouth.
I pushed myself from his lap, and without the dryness in my mouth, I said, “I think you should go.”
“I can’t. . . I can’t. I can’t leave things like this between us.” He looked away slowly, with just his eyes, not his head. His hand left my body to wipe a tear from his eye, and he didn’t return the touch, respecting that I’d said no. Respecting the distance.
I wiped away my tears, too.
“How do you know what happened?” I asked, eyes down, staring over my wet clothes, and the pain of last night still seeping through the mint-colored fabric of my shorts. I’d been lucky, that in her groggy state, Nessie hadn’t noticed it.
“He wrote it down. He gloated.” Woodrow’s eyes moved back to me, bloodshot, to match the flushing on his pale cheeks. His long fingers played with the rosary beads around his wrist. I thought to myself he had a cheek to wear them. “He told me our father watched.”
I swallowed the evil comment rising from my voice box. There was no point bringing that hatred out into the world, not if I was giving it to the wrong person.
“Please, forgive me, Jolie. . . I know it’s a lot to ask. And if I can’t forgive myself, how can I expect you to?”
“What if I can’t, either?”
His nostrils flared, taking in deep breaths he felt he didn’t deserve. “Can you try?”
“It was my first time, Woodrow. My first time and that was how it happened! That isn’t how it should have happened! I told you I wanted it to be special.”
He swallowed again. Swallowed the sick climbing his throat. His hand moved to cover the action, feeling that he had to, now that the trust between us had been destroyed.
“I wish I could take it back.”
I nodded, wishing for the same impossible damn thing.
Minutes passed by with neither of us speaking.
And then, he broke the silence. “Can I have this moment with you? …even if it’s our last?”
I didn’t say anything, but I didn’t stop him from touching me when his hands reached for me. I let him guide me back into his arms, my head against his chest as he washed the faded stains from my legs.
I could feel his stomach twisting from this position, every nerve bubbling.
He reached for a sponge and soap, rubbing delicately at the tougher grime.
I no longer cared that he was here. I no longer cared about anything, needing to be out of the clothes that prisoned the dirt to my skin. I shimmied out of the shorts and began unbuttoning my shirt.
His hands lifted for the material to pass, but his eyes stayed in respectable places.
Placing the garments to my side, I took the sponge from his hand, my fingers vibrating as they brushed his.
I ran more water over the sponge, squeezing off the excess before bringing it between my legs. It was a little cold, and the chill did little to soothe the lingering burn, granted by the flames of Hell. I shuddered back, deeper between Woodrow’s parted legs.
He moved his hands from their position of supporting him, to a position of supporting me, placing them on my shoulders. He pulled back my hair and washed it for me in the sweetest strawberry-scented shampoo.
He used a little more than I’d usually use, but I didn’t object. Better to have a few knots than my own blood, sweat, tears, and whatever Ville had hocked up, clinging to my scalp.
His gentle fingers massaged my head, and then he reached for the portable shower head, adjusting the temperature to a slightly warmer feel, to wash away the bubbles.
He kissed into my hair before placing the shower back on its stand, still raining down on us. “Thank you,” he whispered, and my mouth voiced the same words.
He turned to leave, pulling open the door, but by the time he closed it, I was on my feet, chipped toenails mocking the fact I hoped to be a beautician as they stared up at me from the puddle I stood in.
My fingers splayed the glass, steamy from the higher temperature. And when he turned back to me, he did the same.
I shook my head, a silent beg. . . “Don’t go.”
And he didn’t.
Gripping a clean towel from the rail, he opened the door, and let me fall into his arms, the towel wrapping around me to keep me warm.
And then we fell to the floor together, sitting in a different kind of puddle—one caused by both of our tears.