20
Bruises trail my shins – blooms of deep purple and mottled greens that string together like constellations. I have no recollection of their cause, of their arrival, and yet they’re there, marring my legs as memories washed away in sorrow.
My fingertips brush against the aged brick of our home, silt slipping away beneath my touch as my gaze draws to a figure approaching across the drive.
He saunters with determination, gentle smile breaking across his face as he stops ahead of Isabel.
She lowers her broom, halting her chore as she takes him in.
“Good morning, I picked these for you,” he says, holding out a lackluster offering of pale pink hellebores, their petals wilted, stems bending in the wind. Not in season, their previously beautiful blooms now washed of vibrancy.
“What do you want, Cole?” Isabel questions, eyes narrowed. The sun shimmers on her jaw, a new hollowness of her cheeks startling.
“I came to pay my respects,” he says, dropping his hand, petals dancing to the earth as they fall from the flowers.
“Why bother?”
“I’m trying to be kind, Isabel,” he soothes, false sincerity dripping from his voice. The rough, dominating rasp is there, but he’s layered it with honey – smoothing the edges as he sets his trap.
Isabel exhales sharply, swallowing as she draws her eyes from the flowers to his face.
“Well, thank you, I suppose,” she says wearily, drinking him in.
“Is there any news?” He steps toward her, loosening more petals from the posy at his side.
“The police have arranged to come and talk to us tomorrow,” she replies, eyes cast to the ground, hands clenched around the broom handle as her knuckles blanch.
“What about?” he questions, brows drawn.
“Just following up, I suppose. Why does it matter?” She narrows her eyes, fixing him with a stern glare. Theres a hesitant edge to her voice, uncertainty as he stands before her.
“It doesn’t. I just like to be informed,” he says with a shrug, eyes lingering on her lips.
I step forward, intending to alert him to my presence, but it’s as though they’re locked in a vacuum – nothing else penetrating their interlocked gazes.
He reaches for the disheveled length of her wavy hair, rubbing a thumb across the end with a slowness that makes my skin crawl.
The fox in a trap. The forest sings to me, making dread creep up my spine.
“I like your bow and arrow,” Isabel purrs, nodding to the bow strung across his shoulder. I realise as my eyes linger on its carved riser, that it’s her bow. Her bow, she used to practice with in the forest all those months ago.
“Thank you, I found it in the woods,” he says with a wolfish grin, the corners of his eyes crinkling, betraying his age. “It needed mending but she came up good as new.”
Isabel’s eyebrow rises as her lips tighten, a knowing evident in the sharpness of her gaze.
“Lucky find,” she mutters plainly, devoid of emotion.
I inch closer, unsure whether to intervene.
This man, this wolf, is a predator. The knowledge of it settles in my chest like a smouldering stone.
He doesn’t move like other men – there’s a calculated patience to him, the terrible slowness of something that knows it will be fed, eventually.
I see it in the calm assurance of his voice; in the way he doesn’t bother with who might be watching.
“Indeed,” he agrees, thumb brushing Isabel’s lip.
He leans closer, her neck tilting to allow him space at her throat.
I edge forward, nausea beginning to roll through my torso, my gaze darting to the pathway should Mother return unnoticed.
I don’t want her to get in trouble, my sweet young sister, now in the honeymoon of adulthood.
I don’t understand the game she’s playing.
But there’s something calculating beneath her own composure, something dark as it weaves through her expression, turning her eyes malevolent as she allows him closer.
Closer, and closer, and closer, until his lips linger a breath from her mouth, his hand trailing the small of her back possessively.
“Would you like to take a walk with me, Isabel?”
He asks it gently, his hands settling against the back of her stained house dress.
There is no beauty in it – no careful stitching nor colour to draw the eye.
Only the quiet plainness of an ordinary girl, the way I was once.
Unremarkable. Unassuming. Yet that’s precisely what he favours.
The unbroken ones. The girls still soft with innocence, whom he might take slow pleasure in wearing down, thread by thread.
“Isabel–” I warn, stepping from the veranda, eyes focused on the way Cole pulls her against his body. But she closes the gap between them, running a hand across Cole’s chest with a sensuality I’d have not expected from her.
“Sure. But we can’t be long,” she coos, grasping his sun blemished hand and leading him through the gate with an unfamiliar smile.
My stomach knots as I watch, awestruck at her forwardness – aghast that she doesn’t seem to care if I overhear. As though my presence is of no consequence at all.
Yet I can’t move. Something has fastened itself around my ankles, rooting me to the veranda while slow, crawling dread sinks its claws into my mind.
It had begun with good intention, only the winter just passed.
A girl blooming with womanhood, alone and cold in the woods as she digested a new flush of feelings she was gripped with. A darkness beginning to weave through her marrow where glittering joy once overwhelmed her.
He had approached from the shadows, his foot fall near silent through the raindrops that echoed within the trees.
“Are those tears, Miss Rhodes, or is the rain simply bothering you?”
His voice was smooth as honey, laced with concern as he lowered himself to a crouch beside me.
Bark bit into the backs of my legs as I sat cross legged on a fallen trunk, my fingers twisting in my skirts. The rabbit mask lay discarded beside me – soaked through – a token of childhood thrown away in temper.
“I’m fine,” I assured him, wiping my cheeks and sniffling with embarrassment.
“Where is Francesca?” he asked, glancing around us should she sneak out from the thicket.
“We had an argument. She went home,” I admitted, tears welling again.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he soothed, brushing the tear from my lashes with a gentle hand. “What was the argument about?”
“She told me I needed to grow up.”
A sob shuddered through me as I recalled the dispute to him.
Telling him how Francesca insisted it was time to let go of our masks, time to move on, become women.
How she had wrenched the paper mache totem from my hand and thrown it to the earth with a ferocity I’d never witnessed.
How anger gleamed in her eyes, the tension of her brow so deep I worried she’d remain that way forever.
I was merely seventeen when I first met him in the woods. He was many years aged beyond me. Yet in that moment, with his thumb across my skin and the gentleness in his eyes, I realised Francesca was right. It was time to grow up – to become a woman – and I was going to prove to her I could.
So, as I laid myself in the leaf litter, bugs scurrying noisily around my head while he pressed himself into me with unexpected force, that’s all I could focus on.
Her. The light in her eyes as my toes began to curl and my fingertips pressed into the rough skin of this strange man’s back.
Francesca and the way her friendship made me feel fearless.
I was going to prove to her, to myself, that I was brave and worthy of her love.