Chapter 22
?
Yours.
Lukas
If meeting the scum of the earth on Saturday wasn’t enough to infuriate me for the rest of all time, reading Clara’s trauma rainbow is doing the trick.
Heavy breaths rake through my lungs as I turn the adorable pages littered with little pictures and stickers and glitter.
Sunday, Clara baked. So much. I’m still trying to figure out who we can pass the majority of the treats out to so nothing spoils. Silent and still, she mixed batters, kneaded dough, frosted cookies, and sat on the floor—holding back tears while waiting for the oven timers to go off.
Monday, I couldn’t bear another day of her wearing herself thin in the kitchen, so I lured her to the store and bought her the brush pens she held up for me beneath pleading eyes.
Today, Tuesday, she has me on my stomach while she uses her new pens to color in the dragon looped around my waist to my back. The cold strokes inspire ecstasy, but the pages in front of me boil my blood.
I know it’s good for children to help around the house. I do. I don’t mind helping. I don’t even mind doing everything, but when my everything isn’t good enough, when instead of “thank you,” I get shown the spots I’ve missed, it wears me out.
I don’t understand why I get yelled at for failing to do what’s expected of me fast enough when the same expectations gain no consequences for anyone else even if they’re ignored completely.
Why is it my job to pick up after three adults?
I wish I were as strong as Morana. She doesn’t even pick up after Lukas when it’s her literal job to handle the housework here. She makes him put his clothes in the hamper, or she doesn’t wash them.
In contrast, I get reprimanded after doing everyone’s laundry because I’ve folded the shirts incorrectly, and I’m supposed to know how my father wants them folded, even though no one has shown me how that is.
I’m exhausted.
This isn’t right. This can’t be right.
No one can be this wrong when they’re trying this hard to be right. All the time.
I want to be confident and graceful like Crimson.
I want to be talented like Maelin.
I want to embody chaos like Crisis.
I want to find the strength to speak my mind like Morana.
But, most of all, I want to love without fearing my love will be taken for granted.
I want to communicate effectively and feel heard, appreciated, worthy of compromise and respect.
I want to be safe.
Is that really so much to ask for?
No. It isn’t. That is the bottom line. The most basic human right.
Heart aching and furious, I turn the page.
Lukas loves me.
Breath escapes my lungs.
Lukas makes loving me seem so easy.
Loving Lukas is easy, too.
Maybe some people will always be harder to love.
Yeah, or maybe some people should be sent through a wood chipper.
I blink and force my eyes back up a few lines.
Loving Lukas is easy, too.
Loving…me?
Clara loves me?
“Cupcake?” I murmur.
Her coloring halts, and she looks my way when I twist to see her. Sniffling, she smudges quiet tears off her cheek. “Yes, Lukas?”
“Did you mean for me to see this?” I offer the page to her.
Her damp eyes scan it. “Yes? I gave it to you, didn’t I?” Her gaze halts as she catches the line I’m talking about, then she stiffens. “Oh.”
So, she didn’t mean for me to see this. She forgot this was in here.
She pulls her lip into her mouth as she caps her pen and turns it over between her fingers. “I thought I kept all of that sort of thing in my other notebook.”
There’s another notebook? Filled with thoughts about me?
Her attention slashes to my eyes. “Before you ask, no, you can’t have that one.” She reaches for this one. “Actually, I should make sure the rest of this is kosher, too.”
“It’s paper, cupcake. Trees. No pork. Perfectly kosher. Vegan, even.”
“Kosher definition number two. We’re not discussing Jewish law, but if we were, I’d need a rabbi to bless that in confirmation of its pork-free-ness, so…”
I roll when she stretches, and she tumbles against my chest.
Flushed, she pushes herself up, looks at the notebook I’m holding out near the headboard, then finds my eyes. “Please, Lukas?” she whispers.
“Again.”
“Please?” Her damp eyes whimper, droplets clinging to her blonde lashes. “My King.”
I cup her face, brush the pad of my thumb down her pink lips. “I hate to see you hurting like this.”
She swallows. “I’m sorry.” She drops her face against my chest, wrapping her arms around her head.
“I’m grieving. And I feel so…stupid…that I let them take advantage of me for so long.
I gave everything, over and over again, as though anything would change.
I begged for scraps of affection, approval, anything.
I said at least they don’t hit me in my mind constantly—as though the brutality of the spankings I received when I was little didn’t count.
I once… I once thought the only reason they weren’t hitting me was because I was hanging my head, pleading for forgiveness, and promising to do better.
But I…I can’t believe I was right. I’ve thought my life was full of arguments.
I never realized I hadn’t had a single one until Saturday night.
They treated me like a slave, used me for their power highs, made me responsible for the peace while wrecking mine.
There is not a thing about myself that I like.
The only consistent almost compliment my family has ever given me is about my chest, which hurts me every single day and has absolutely nothing to do with me.
I feel like an object, and I don’t know how to grieve for a relationship that was only good when I acted like one. ”
Placing her notebook at my side, I comb my fingers through her hair and have no idea what to say.
Grief is a journey that each individual makes in their own way.
I can’t feel the process with her. I can’t relate my own experience with losing my parents to hers.
I can only be here, and hope that doesn’t make anything worse.
“Say something,” she whispers. “Please.”
“I love you. For you. Not what you can do for me. But if it is easier still to think about your worth in quantifiable actions, everything you do for me is perfect. It’s appreciated.
It is treasured. You are not an object. You are beautiful in ways that need no correction to better the quality of your life.
I can’t make the hurt go away, sweetness, but I can hold you through it.
I can give the power of your life and your choice back to you.
I can tell you it does get easier, even if it never goes away.
I can promise to fight at your side whenever the battle rears.
Trauma is a lifelong war, but the seasons of peace, I’ve found, do get longer. Eventually.”
“I’m so tired.”
“I know, Clara.”
“I just want to sleep, so I won’t have to think.”
“Think about me when it’s too hard to sort through things about them. Keep your eyes on me when the rest of the world is too much.”
Frail, she hums the starting melody of the song I wrote for her, then—broken—she sings the first few lines.
My heart quakes for her, surrounded in her spell.
Then, she alters the words in the chorus: “I’m the endless blue on a sunny day,
The golden moments you tuck away.
I’m the only thing in your field of view,
It’s me, just me.
And I will always love you.”
My heart stops altogether. And I really need to read her other journal. “Clara?” I whisper.
Sniffling, she lifts her face and meets my eyes.
“May I peek inside your other notebook?”
Her cheeks redden, and she shakes her head. “No.”
“Please?”
“It’s silly.”
“I love silly.”
“There’s…a calendar.”
“Hilarious. A calendar? Silliest thing I’ve ever heard of.”
Her lip juts. “It’s a days since incident calendar…”
My brows rise. “What manner of incidents are you tracking?”
Her gaze moves off me. “Assault.”
A…ssault?
She chews her cheek. “You’ll be happy to know there have been no incidents. Also, I might need more rabbit stickers.”
“Rabbit stickers?”
“Every day without incident gets a rabbit sticker.”
“I was wondering why your trauma rainbow seemed primarily frogs.” Sweeping back my hair, I ask, “Who…have you been afraid might assault you?”
Her big blue eyes flick to me, off me.
“Me?”
“If it helps,” she murmurs, “I’m not afraid anymore.”
I would certainly hope not.
She nestles in, refusing to meet my eyes. “I’m disturbingly eager now…”
Ah. My. Frick. Roughly, I clear my throat. “You don’t…say.”
“These days, each bunny is a testament of sorrows.” She sighs, despondent. “Ravish me, maybe? Ravish away all the bad feelings.”
“I’m not positive that’s…healthy? I can’t kiss you into submission every time you don’t want to think. It would be cruel to stop you from processing what you need to.”
She lowers her pout, to my chest, where her lip grazes my skin with her every word. “I thought you were toxic, and selfish, and commanding, and—”
“I’m very grateful you think better of me than all that, cupcake, but you will forgive me if, especially right now, I’m hesitant to use you in any way that might leave questions in your brain about where your worth comes from.”
“Must you be so good to me? All the time? Always?”
I dry her face with my knuckle. “I’ll certainly try to be.”
She presses her wrist to my mouth.
Obedient, I kiss.
“You need to sign me again. It’s washed off while I’ve been mourning.”
“At once, my queen. Where’s one of your fancy new pens?” I slip my touch down her arm and kiss again, feel the flutter of her pulse beneath my lips.
“I want permanent marker. I want Zakery’s tattoo gun in your hand.”
I am not comfortable with that. I’m pretty sure wrist tattoos hurt more than many others, and I’ve never once held Zakery’s tattoo gun.
He spent hours upon hours learning how to use the thing.
I simply do not possess the skill. “Are you sure what you want isn’t the familiarity of abuse while your system is disjointed? ”
She winces. “Is that why I like you? Because you taste similar without all the pain?”
Studies show there’s such a thing as an abuse cycle, that’s for sure. “Maybe.”
“I don’t like that. You don’t remind me anything of the hurt I’ve experienced.”
“I’m glad.” I kiss her wrist again.
“You’re not even demanding enough to stand in the same ring as my mother. It’s a little pathetic, frankly.”
“Verbal abuse, cutie pie? Spoiling me today.”
Her forehead lands on my chest. “I’m doing my very best manipulation, and failing miserably. I’d really appreciate it if you’d crawl inside my chest and scoop out all the things that hurt right now.”
I stroke my thumb across her pulse as I move her hand down and kiss her palm.
“Keep asking. I love hearing you desperate for me like this, even if it’s for all the wrong reasons.
I love the idea that you think I can fix everything for you.
I adore how you trust me to consume you.
Who knows if I’ll stay strong the longer you keep pleading… I am only human.”
She shivers. “I love you. Maybe not enough to drown you yet. But. It’s growing bigger every day. I’ll have an ocean soon.”
My body and mind react viscerally to that, and I clutch her hand to my mouth. “Will you now?”
“Yes.”
“Even though I won’t ravish you?”
“Despite your single flaw, yes.”
Single flaw. She’s petting my pride like a dwarf baby rabbit. I can’t get enough. Unless, of course, I can, and I am. I hate seeing her hurting. I love being here, with her, like this. Having her choose my arms to fall into when she needs someone to catch her is everything I have always needed.
Offering to her what she offers to me is enough.
Her attention isn’t kept in a leaking pot. It saturates all my limbs, pressing on the seams of my skin, threatening to burst from the entirety of my body.
Huh.
I wonder.
Maybe I’ve not been starving for attention so much as I’ve been famished for a heart that loves me beyond the image I’ve cultivated for the public. Maybe I lost myself in the shine and needed someone to remind me that I’m human.
Knowing this woman who loves with her whole soul, to the detriment of her entire being, is an honor I intend to cherish.
So, as her breaths slow and the exhaustion takes hold, I sing her to sleep, content in the knowledge she is safe, and I will protect her, because I am hers.