19
Secrets, the forest threads into my thoughts, the trees groaning through my body with understanding.
My blood chills as I watch her spin in circles, her skirts billowing, feet skipping merrily over abandoned garden beds.
Your secrets belong to her now. The trees echo through my skin, a warning, or a promise.
Isabel rounds the side of the house, approaching the chicken coop with a glazed smile, daydreams clouding her every movement. She disappears inside the pen for a moment before heading back to the kitchen door, her skirts bunched at her hips.
The hellebores are gone, vanished, and I wonder whether I had truly seen them at all.
“Where have you been?” mother questions sharply as Isabel slips into the door, the sun now spilling rays across the cabinetry. I hadn’t heard her sneak in behind me, my attention unwavering from my sister’s good mood.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Isabel states, smiling. “So, I went for a walk and collected the eggs for breakfast.”
She hitches her skirt front, pulling the fabric over the bench top before unraveling the folded fabrics to reveal half a dozen eggs, each speckled and crusted with dirt and stray feathers.
I smile, despite myself – proud of her forethought. Every act of rebellion, no matter how small, tells me she’s found her strength.
Mother rounds the bench, placing the old copper kettle on the hearth with a gentle ting.
“Right,” she says, eyeing the eggs with a furrowed brow. “Good girl. Now run along and wash up while I prepare tea and toast.”
Mother nods her head and offers a flick of her hand, urging us to the hallway bathroom with quiet insistence. Cleanliness is next to godliness, after all.
I turn, intending to walk with Isabel, to question her – but she’s slipped ahead of me, locking the bathroom door behind her without a word.
I had never known that feeling. The way Cole’s gaze unbottled something unkempt deep inside that could never be recorked.
The urgency that came alive in my fingertips, when his own explored the length of my spine.
The deep thrill of doing something I knew would never be spoken of with another.
My skin would pulse beneath the spearmint residue of his kisses.
The winter breeze across my shoulders caused both a discomfort and pleasure at once.
When it began, months before, the pain was sudden and startling – my insides repelling him. But through persistence, the ease of it was tolerable. And through more time, more experience, it became a pleasure I’d never be tired of.
Our meetings were scarcer than I desired. Our dalliance refined to the deepest hours of the night, hidden in the trees, when the world slept around us.
Cole would bring me a single hellebore, picked fresh from the weeds and hold my hand, guiding me through the forest with determination. Soon though, he would capture me with his mouth, his haste and hunger making time slip away as our bodies unified.
There’s a sharp memory of that final evening – where his fingers became firmer, his movement becoming less playful and more forceful.
He began to grip my throat, tearing buttons from my blouse as his hands roamed my chest.
I remember the look in his eyes when he found the tattoo marked on my sternum.
The pleasure and hunger that grew fierce in his eyes.
“I like this,” he said, hand still pressed to the soft ligaments of my neck.
“Thank you,” I rasped, chest aching for air.
“What is it?”
His fingernails buried into the line work, pain ripping through me so sharp my breath catches.
“The hellebore. Francesca and I gave them to each other last week.” I said with haste, hoping the answer would relieve the pain of his fingertips.
His smile faltered for the briefest moment, a look of disgust glimmering in his eye for just a heartbeat before the smirk rose again.
“And now you are one,” he had said, and all air left my chest.
How could he have known?
“I like your tattoo’s too…” I said, glancing at the pentagrams etched on either shoulder, their points sharp against the moonlight.
“Yes, they’re a symbol of rebellion. Religion is vapid and controlling, and I chose these to show everyone here I won’t be swayed. They can’t indoctrinate me.”
He smiled, tilting his head as he awaited my response. A sickening unease began to weave through me, as he watched me. Predator meets prey as his fingers clench tighter and tighter.
“A-are you a Satanist?” The words came broken and panting as I twisted beneath his grip.
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. That isn’t the point.”
“What’s the point?” My skin began to tingle where his fingertips pressed into my throat. Spots began to flash through my vision.
“That I’m not one of them,” he said, grip loosening only enough to draw a small breath.
“R-ight,” I choked out, gripping his wrists, trying to loosen them from my throat.
He glanced at my hands, smiling again
as he pressed a thumb into my artery, my head swimming. His watch scraped against my skin as I writhed and squirmed, panic heating my nerves.
“You’re hurting me,” I whispered, tears beginning to prick in the corner of my eyes.
“Pain is the price of pleasure, Rabbit,” Cole purred in my ear, the hand around my throat tightening, his other tearing at my clothes as the moon watched us in disappointment.
And I knew then; he had been watching us. Francesca and me.
That was the last time I saw him alone, the final time his hands grazed my skin, his sweat laced my tongue.
I fled the woods that night, torn blouse in hand, Cole’s hooded coat now protecting me from the frost as I ran.
I clenched it over my bare chest as sobs rattled my ribcage.
Regret twisting with every breath. The rough weave of his stolen coat scraped at my skin as a searing reminder of what I had volunteered, what I had offered without thought.
And now I felt stripped bare, flayed and bleeding as the tears began to sting my cracked lips.
I knew that night he was not what he had promised. Not my protector, not my savior, and assuredly not my hope. But I let him have me, clinging to the belief that if I could convince myself to want him in return, it might quiet the sin that stirred whenever I thought of her.