Chapter 19 #2
I stare into her eyes, made black by the darkness, but I know it’s not just a trick of the night that banks the fires in those depths. They burn with rage, with a fierce protectiveness, with so much emotion that it knifes me straight in the chest again.
For the first time in my life, including all the therapy I was forced into while I was in rehab, I don’t blank out my face.
I let her see the truth, the raw, wounded, festering ugliness of it.
She might leave. She might be disgusted by me.
She might hate me for even daring to think I was worthy of laying a hand on her, of the joy of being inside of her, marring her purity.
I clench my teeth so hard that my jaw cracks. Loudly. Breathing is a physically impossible task. My heart clenches and shrivels up at the vulnerability.
And then Leena moves. She brushes back the sheets and pushes herself up, looming impossibly large, that avenging, wrathful angel look burned into her usually placid face.
She cups my face in her heated palms, moist against my dry, roughly stubbled cheeks and I already know that I don’t deserve her.
I did nothing to fucking deserve any of this and still she’s here.
She was supposed to be a curse, a punishment that I thought I was going to have to endure, and somehow, she’s the very thing I never knew I needed.
Which is mystifying and strikes terror into my every cell.
“I don’t believe in violence,” she breathes, her lush, floral scent enveloping me when I dare to draw a strained breath into my capsized lungs. “I know I just said that, but if I ever found him I would slaughter him. I would make that pain last for days.”
The vehemence of her words shocks me. A slow warmth spreads through my veins, delicious and bittersweet.
“And here I thought you’d find me repulsive.” I try and laugh to soften the words, but it comes out strained, more a painful sounding wheeze than anything.
“Never,” she hisses. Her nails bite into my skin, centering me and grounding me with the sting of pain.
Pain makes you human. It’s when you feel nothing at all that you really have to fucking worry.
“Never. You could never repulse me. You are my family now. My home. I know it’s only been a few days, and I don’t want to scare you by saying this, but I need to.
I need to, because the words are going to kill me if they stay inside.
I… I’ve never believed in love. I don’t know if it will ever be possible for us.
Neither of us know what’s in the future, but we’re married.
I don’t care how it happened. I didn’t think I’d be able to stomach being your wife, but this has been the greatest surprise of my life.
Finding you. Abby. Being here. I feel safe.
I feel… I feel treasured. I’m sticking with you, Wraith, not because I have to, but because you make me feel like it’s okay to just be me. ”
“I don’t want to bring this between us,” I groan. I’ve never told anyone. A single living soul. My chest squeezes and my stomach sloshes painfully and her nails dig in a little harder just to keep me there with her.
Her lips press into a hard line. “It’s okay,” she assures me, and I actually find myself wanting to believe her.
“It’s okay. I’m not going anywhere. And what someone did to you, against your will, doesn’t make you dirty.
It doesn’t make you broken. It doesn’t make you weak.
It makes you insanely fucking strong because you survived it.
You survived it all, those bullets being the least of it and you’re here now.
You’re here with me like you were made just for me. ”
Her words wrap around me, headier and richer than any drug.
I feel high on them, safe and sheltered, blanketed in her passion, her kindness, and her fierce, fiery soul.
I was drawn to her from the first and now I know why.
Because all along, she was meant to save me so that I could shelter her, be her haven, save her in return.
I’ve hated those scars on my back, old and faded as they are.
I hate what they remind me of, what they make me, what they stand for.
They’re the one thing about my past I was never able to erase.
It fucking amazes me that she knows they’re there, she can trace them with her fingertips without condemnation or disgust. Hope flares, timid and painful as a guttering match in the wind and rain.
“He never touched me.” Those words physically fucking hurt.
My entire body aches, but I force myself to continue.
“He was one of my mom’s boyfriends. He’d come into my room late, when she was passed out.
He never laid a hand on me. Don’t know if he thought that it didn’t make him a molester if he didn’t.
He was violent. Saw him beat my mom a few times, but he never touched me.
I wasn’t scared of him. Not in that way.
It would have been better if he did hit me.
I was scared for my mom. I thought he’d kill her if I didn’t do what he said.
It was just understood,” I pause. I’ve never told this to a living soul. Not even to the therapist.
“He’d watch me touch myself. Sometimes it would be months in between, but it always happened.
He’d instruct me. I’d obey, even though I wanted to die for it.
One night I finally stood up to him. He took his belt to me.
Used the leather side first before he switched to the buckle.
That’s where those scars are from. It took me weeks to heal. ”
“I’m so sorry.” Leena’s hand caresses my cheek gently while tears glisten in her eyes.
My stomach tightens painfully. Bile splashes up in my throat, but it’s tempered by those tears.
Tears not of disgust or revulsion, but for me.
For me, a man who has never shed one tear for himself.
I need her to know. I don’t want to tell her, to poison her, and sully her, but I need her to know everything.
“My mom never knew. Next time he came to my room, I refused him again. He went into that same dark rage. Though he could control me, but I’d just fucking had enough.
I was older. Stronger. I ripped that belt away from him and beat him fucking senseless with it.
I thought I’d killed him, but I checked and he was still breathing.
That night, I packed everything I had and left. I never went back.”
Leena doesn’t say a word, but she’s listening intently.
“Found out a few years later that my mother died of an overdose, but then again, I always knew she would. Don’t know what happened to the bastard.
Don’t want to. I survived on the streets, bounced from one place to another until I fell in with a bunch of punk assholes.
We started the club. I was a mean bastard because I had to be with enough skills to survive so they made me their Prez.
The rest, you already know. I did that for a few years, until we messed with The Riders like the asshole pricks we were.
I got in with a bastard who promised me a lot of fucking shit.
Was too coked up to realize that I never should have listened to him.
He had a vendetta with Steel. Wanted to bring the club down.
The Riders came in, shot the place up, nearly killed me, but they didn’t.
They spared me and made me one of them and I’m here now.
Here with you. If you still want me, knowing that I’ve never been worth anything my entire fucking life. ”
“Yes. Yes, you have,” Leena insists viciously.
“I never graduated high school. Was an addict for years, though I guess they say that shit sticks for life, in a way. I never had the courage to face any of the shit that was done to me. I tried to drown it out in any way I could. I’ve spent the last two years of my life trying to be worth something, at least for my brothers and for Abby, as stupid as that sounds. ”
“It’s not stupid. It’s not stupid at all. She doesn’t have to be human to be worthy of the biggest kind of love.”
Leena runs her thumb over my bottom lip and suddenly, the bridge of my nose is on fire. It extends up, those flames, licking away at my sinuses until the backs of my eyes are burning. I blink hard when I realize what’s happening.
“I don’t know what love even means,” Leena says again, her voice as raw as the entirety of my body feels.
I feel flayed alive, the pain worse than that whipping I got as a teenager or the bullets I took.
“But I think we could love each other, if we give it a chance. Not the stupid romantic kind of love that sends flowers and cards and wine and bullshit like that. The dirty kind, from one soul to another, the kind that brought us here now. The kind that never fucking lets go. Because I know your secrets now and I know your truth and they’re not the same thing, and I’ll keep them here.
Always.” She slams her fist over her chest, to the left, where her heart beats.
I have no words to give her. I have nothing but the shreds of me, but when I wrap a hand in her hair to guide her to me, she comes eagerly.
Her lips seal over mine, hot and relentless, searching, tasting, starving.
I kiss her back just as hungrily, desperate, with all the anguish and pain, joy and what might even be love, though I have no idea- in my soul.
I kiss her sloppily, our teeth clashing, tongues warring, breath stolen, filling each other’s lungs.
I finally realize that I haven’t been alive until now. I’ve been this thing, walking through life, stumbling blindly.
In just these few short days, she’s given me back my breath.
My heart.
My life.
She’s everything.
And she’s mine.