Chapter 24
Papa’s blood won’t come off my hands. I’ve been scrubbing in the hospital bathroom sink for ten minutes, the water scalding hot, but it’s dried under my fingernails, streaked across my palms where I pressed against his wounds trying to stop the bleeding.
This is your fault. The words I threw at Gunner replay as I scrub harder, skin going raw under the harsh soap. But what I meant was: I shouldn't have wanted you.
He almost died because I let you into our lives. My voice had cracked on 'died.' But what I meant was: He nearly died because of me.
Stay away from us. The final verdict, delivered while standing in my father's blood.
My hands shake as I turn off the water. The blood is mostly gone but I can still feel it, can still smell the copper tang.
The men came for me and found my father instead.
Hallstein's operators, sent to grab me as leverage against the man I love.
The man whose real name is Brian, though I can't think of him as anything but Gunner.
Because I let myself want despite knowing better.
Because I forgot my mother's lesson to be small and not take up too much space.
The corridor wall of Pristine Memorial Hospital takes my weight because my legs won't. Papa is in surgery, his arm being reconstructed with metal while Gunner's blank, empty eyes swirl through my mind.
My wrap skirt still carries his blood, dark streaks dried stiff into the fabric.
I should change, should go home and shower, but I can't leave.
Can't move except to sign consent forms with hands that still shake.
The ride here fragments across my memory.
Paramedics asking questions I answered in monosyllables, Papa's face gray under the oxygen mask, my own hands pressing uselessly against wounds I couldn't heal.
My phone weighs heavy in my pocket like a stone.
I pull it out once, see the missed call from Gunner.
Made from his truck as he drove north, four rings before voicemail, no message left.
My thumb hovers over his number. My body screams to call him back, to hear his voice even if it's cold now, to take back the words that sent him away.
Instead, I set the phone face down on the seat without returning the call or deleting it.
Finally, he is out of surgery and awake. His eyes find mine and for a moment I see him searching for answers I can't give.
"Daphne," he says, voice rough from the intubation.
"I'm here, Papa." The words barely make it past the tightness in my throat.
He asks for water. Nothing else. Doesn't ask about Gunner or why the men came or what I did to bring violence to our door. He knows already. Of course he knows. And he's choosing to protect me from having to explain.
The surgeon makes afternoon rounds. The arm is healing well with its new metal, ribs taped but stable, no internal bleeding. I log each piece of good news while my mind wanders to Miami, to an apartment above a nightclub.
Friday afternoon they discharge Papa with prescriptions I memorize, care instructions I take notes on, the arm in its white cast that will be there for eight weeks minimum.
I drive him home in his truck while Gunner's security men follow from the hospital in their dark sedan, resuming their perimeter at the cottage corner without acknowledgment. Their presence makes my chest ache.
I set Papa up in the downstairs spare bedroom where everything is easier. Bathroom access, no stairs to navigate with broken ribs and a reconstructed arm. Move his books from upstairs, his glasses, the small radio from his studio that plays the classical station he loves.
That first night I press my face into my pillow and finally let myself cry. Not the pretty tears of grief, but ugly sobs that wrack my whole body.
The weekend passes in careful routines that keep my hands busy while my mind spirals.
Pain pills every four hours that I never miss, setting alarms that wake me from dreams where Gunner's hands are on my skin.
Soft foods progressing to proteins as Papa's appetite returns.
Helping him to the bathroom those first days, his pride struggling against necessity until he can manage with the walker.
I don't speak of Miami. He doesn't ask. Through the kitchen window, the security men maintain their shifts at the corner, changing every twelve hours with the precision Gunner would demand. Professional, like ghosts of the man who sent them.
At night, the dreams are worse. Not nightmares but memories turned torment.
His hands mapping my body, his mouth at my throat, the weight of him pressing me into his bed while I begged for more.
I wake with my skin burning, my pussy wet and aching, reaching for him across sheets that smell wrong.
Lavender instead of cedar, soft instead of rough.
I remember every place he touched me in my skin, not my head, phantom sensations that make me press my thighs together against the persistent ache that won't fade.
I touch myself once, fingers sliding between my legs in the dark, but stop immediately. It feels like betrayal. Like my body doesn't deserve the relief. The ache remains, constant and punishing.
Sunday morning I return to Miss Macie's, and the normalcy feels like walking through a dream I've already woken from.
The wrap skirt feels like a costume over my leotard, fabric that knows it's lying about who I am now.
Hair scraped into the teacher's bun so tight it makes my temples throb.
Voice carrying its soft careful uplift that tastes like ash in my mouth.
"Beautiful, Lily. But remember, your toes should point even when you're not thinking about pointing them.
" The words come automatically while my body remembers other movements.
Grinding against Gunner's hand while he called me perfect, arching under his mouth while he worked me with his tongue, dancing naked for him with paint on my skin while he watched me like I was art.
The mothers in folding chairs offer sympathy about the "break-in.
" The Pristine Sentinel reported four men attempted robbery, Nicolas defended his home, men apprehended.
Such a terrible thing, they say. Thank goodness he's alright.
Is there anything you need? My mind knows the truth.
Hallstein's men sent for me, found Papa instead.
But I accept the cover story like everyone else, grateful not to explain the real danger I brought home.
I don't ask how a sixty-three-year-old painter with a shattered arm "defended his home" against four armed men in the official record.
I don't ask why the county detectives stopped calling after the second day, or where the two men who survived were transferred before anyone local could question them.
The Delgados have lawyers the way other families have cousins.
Somewhere south of here, paperwork is being made smooth.
I accept their casseroles with smiles that crack my face, teach ninety minutes while my body moves through positions it memorized before my heart learned to break.
Madison needs to hold her arms like balloons, not bricks.
Sophia carries tension in her shoulders.
The corrections flow while my mind counts days since I've seen him, since I've been touched, since I've been myself.
Sunday afternoon in the shower, I scrub the last bougainvillea leaf from my shoulder.
It's faded to barely a shadow, ghost of the paint that marked me as his.
Removing it feels like tearing off my own skin.
The paint swirls down the drain, pink-gray water carrying the last visible evidence of what we were.
My fingers shake as I wash it away, as I erase the garden he grew and I wore.
The black t-shirt from Miami. Gunner's shirt I'd carefully folded and brought home like a talisman.
I hold it to my face first. Breathe him in so deep my lungs burn.
Cedar and gun oil and that scent that's purely him, male and dangerous and home.
For a moment I let myself remember: wearing this shirt in his kitchen while he made coffee, the way it fell to my thighs, the way he looked at me like I was wearing diamonds.
Then I fold it smaller, put it in a box, slide it under my bed. Not thrown away. I'm not strong enough for that. Just hidden where it can't destroy me every time I open a drawer. Where it can wait like a secret, like evidence of a crime.
The portrait above the couch becomes invisible by degrees.
The first day after the hospital I stop before it once, seeing what Gunner must have seen.
Me at nineteen in the garden. The girl he saw and decided to take.
By the third day I've stopped stopping. By the fifth day my eyes slide past like Nicolas's have for years.
Jarrod visits every day like clockwork, and each visit feels like another nail in the coffin of who I was in Miami.
Thursday with groceries, even before Papa was home from hospital, and his cologne made me nauseous.
Too sweet, too much, nothing like cedar and danger.
Friday with his mother's lasagna in a glass dish, the cheese bubbled golden on top, the kind of meal that speaks of family dinners and small-town futures.
Saturday mowing the lawn while I watch from the window, his methodical back-and-forth nothing like the controlled violence in every movement Gunner made.
Sunday with overly sweetened coffee before my first class, the gesture thoughtful and wrong, wrong, wrong.