Chapter Twenty-seven
Rowan
I’m awakened by a slight knocking on the locked bedroom door.
Sitting up confused and sleep-hazed, I grab the robe hanging on the bathroom door, covering myself with it, while tiptoeing to the knocking, silently removing the chair I had forced under the nob.
Creaking it open, my eyes widen when I see Clover standing so small in the flickering LED lanterns they have displayed as hallway lights.
“Clover,” I sleepily whisper to her.
Meekly, she says, “Hi.” God, she looks so sad.
I open the door the rest of the way, allowing her to enter. Closing it, I turn around and startle when Clover is right behind me. “Sorry,” I tell her as I watch her jump.
“Are you okay?” It’s a stupid fucking question, but my sleep-riddled mind can’t come up with anything else.
In an instant, she throws herself at me, and I catch her, wrapping my arms around her as she melts into mine, crying.
Leaning my head on her, I’m surrounded by the scent of roses. “Shh,” I try to soothe her.
We stand there for minutes, her sobbing, body shaking, crying. I rub her back, whispering down to her. She’s so much smaller than me; she’s tiny. So fragile. Figuratively and literally.
“Hey, come. Let’s sit down.” I pull away from her, and her arms stay around me as I guide us to the bed.
Once I finally have her sit down, I look at her. “You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to; we can just sit here in the quiet.” I shrug my shoulders, letting her know either one she picks is okay with me.
The way she looks up at me breaks my heart. All I see is pain.
I try to keep my face nonreactive, but it’s hard.
Clover picks at the bedspread. “I tried to kill myself.” She says it like it’s not a big deal.
“I know.”
Her blue eyes look at me. “I wanted to succeed so badly. I’m angry that I didn’t.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.” I hope she knows my words are so very true.
“Sometimes the pain is just too much, you know. And he treats me like I’m so fucking breakable.” Hearing her cuss doesn’t sound right, not from the small body it comes from.
“I have one of those, too. But,” I pause, “I think he’s coming around to that. If anything, we’re made of fucking steel, impenetrable. And these men are too damn bullheaded to realize that.” Because occupying this room are two survivors.
Clover nods her head in agreement.
“My goal after the tomb was to die. But I decided I needed to take them out first, then do it…but then I met Luca. He was not planned. He’s walked with me in my darkness.
Guided me with his own light, even if he doesn’t know that.
” I smile at myself, realizing how far I’ve come because of this man who loves me.
“It won’t lighten, no matter what I do, Rowan. The nightmares are constant, my fear is roaring every day, and my worth has diminished. I want to be the girl I was before all this. The girl Matteo fell in love with, not this broken shell of who she is now.”
Grabbing her hand, holding it in mine. “Clover, I can promise you, Matteo loves every version of you. The healed and the broken.” I know that with every fiber in me. Seeing him talk about her, being around her, he is in love.
She looks at me, tears running down her cheeks. “I don’t know how to stop the thoughts. How did you?”
“They’re still there; some days they’re louder than most, but they’ve become quieter.” I think when David is gone, they’ll become mute, but I don’t mention that to her.
I sit up straighter. “I can tell you how.” I look at her, and her eyes are pleading with me to fix her. I can’t fix her, but maybe this will. “An eye for an eye.”
Her eyes widen, shocked. She shakes her head.
“We all got those who hurt us, but you.”
I see her eyes roaming the room, thinking, when it hits her. “She’s my sister,” comes out in a tiny whisper.
I could lie and say I wasn’t referring to Catherine, but a bit of me was, but I was thinking about her mother. A woman who let this all happen. A compliant woman who willingly gave her daughters to the wolves.
“See, that was your own vengefulness wanting to rear its head. I was leaning more toward the woman who birthed you for the world you were in.”
Clover lets out a gasp, standing up. “That’s my mother. I don’t hurt people, Rowan,” she says in disbelief as she paces the floor.
“But it’s okay for people to hurt you?” I watch her feet stop before she turns around to face me.
“Would it make this all stop?” Her voice is pleading.
I stand and make my way to her. “I don’t know. I’m just telling you what helped me, what will help me.” Fuck! I squint my eyes, realizing what I had just done.
She cocks her head a bit, and I pull my robe tighter around me. “What did that last part mean?”
“I meant what did help me.”
She tsks me. “No, you didn’t.”
Looking up at the ceiling, the antique globe dark, I say, “Like I said, an eye for an eye. I can hurt people, Clover.”
“But you don’t want to.”
“No, I don’t, but I need to,” I tell her honestly. “Please keep this between you and me.”
She opens her mouth and shuts it. “Okay.” I want to believe her.
“I’m glad you’re still here, Clover. That your monsters didn’t win.” I see she doesn’t agree with me when her only reply to me is a weak smile.
“Thank you for talking to me and coming here.” She closes the gap, engulfing me in her rose-scented hug.
“Always.”
Once Clover leaves after we talk a bit more, I lay on the bed in the now dark quietness, David's name repeating over in my mind.
Forcibly, I turn onto my side, wanting the voice to shut up and knowing it won’t until he isn’t on this earth anymore.
I stare into the darkness as my stomach cramps, forcing me out of bed, stumbling blindly to my tote, shaking it. I hear my pain pills rattle, giving me a clue where they are.
I swallow them down with only my spit, praying they kick in fast. I’ve been able to stay on top of my pain, but sometimes it comes out of nowhere, and I know why the bitch reared her head tonight.
My FaceTime with Luca. But I’ll never tell him, nor give in to the pain to not feel like I did tonight as he watched me.
I sit on the bed, still cloaked in darkness, when I know Niko was right, to feed that part of me that looks for pain, I need to let Luca have it; him be the one to feed me with it.