22. Ethan
TWENTY-TWO
Ethan
Levi tries to pull out of my grip. I’m probably hurting him where I’m squeezing tight around the rough cuts on the inside of his forearm. I grab his other arm to look, and it’s the same.
My brain whites out. Levi says something.
I hear his voice, but the words don’t register.
For a second, I can’t even see him. I see nothing, but in the nothingness I see her, reclined in the reddened water, dark hair drifting, that one arm draped over the side as though, in the end, she reached for something.
When I can see Levi again, I push him against the side of the car. He’s shaking so hard that he would fall if I weren’t pinning him there to search his pockets.
I find it, the thing he hid from me when I found him. It’s hard and curved, but I can’t tell what it is until I rip it from his pocket. It’s a shard of broken white ceramic. It’s porcelain white. Bathtub white. But only in places, where it isn’t stained red.
My mind whites out again, but I’m angry now instead of scared. I’m absolutely fucking furious, so this time I hear him when he says my name. This time, I snap back into myself.
I hurl the bloody shard into the street.
“Ethan—”
“Get in the car.”
“Ethan, I didn’t…”
Whatever Levi sees in my eyes makes him trail off. It makes him shrink from me. He slinks toward the open door and crawls into the seat.
My anger burns so hot that it feels cold. I don’t even slam the door. I just close it and walk around to the driver’s side. I get in.
Levi is sitting in the passenger seat with slumped shoulders, staring down. His hands are pressed together and sandwiched between his clamped thighs.
I start the engine and drive.
At some point, Levi asks where we’re going, but I don’t reply. I just keep driving, leaving the city behind.
It’s 6 a.m. by the time I pull up to the property gate. The night is fading enough to reveal the sprawling brick wall on either side of the headlights, which illuminate the cast iron bars of the gate as it opens, triggered by the car.
The tires crunch over pea gravel as I drive the long, sweeping path to the huge house, which looms ghostly white in the dimness. I don’t look at Levi because I just fucking can’t, not yet, but I feel his tension on the other side of the console. I’ve never told him about this place. My real house.
The headlights sweep over the front with its columned porch and black shutters, but I pull around the side to the cellar entrance. I get out, but Levi doesn’t budge, so I walk around to his door and open it.
His voice is small and soft as he asks, “Where are we?”
“Home. Get out.”
“You’re scaring me.”
“Good.”
Levi draws a shaky breath and gets out. He follows me to the black cellar door. I get it open and hit the light switch, flooding the old stone steps with harsh light.
“Go on,” I tell him.
His eyes jump from the stairwell to me, but I give him nothing. I am aware, on a certain level, that something has broken in my mind, but I can’t do anything about it.
I did warn him, after all, that he wasn’t safe with me.
He accepted that in the beginning, and he accepts it now. He heads down the steps.
What he hasn’t accepted is his sin. His arms are crossed tightly over his ribs like he can hide what he did. But sin cannot be hidden from God.
I pull the door shut behind me and follow Levi down to the sprawling, cold, gritty space of the cellar.
The house is old, and the previous owner restored most of it, but she didn’t get to the cellar before she died. Though I didn’t intend to finish her work, I also didn’t intend to use the space.
I intended to ignore it.
In fact, I didn’t really plan to spend much time at this house at all. It was an investment, in the beginning.
But this fucking cellar.
It was all I could think about.
I would come down here compulsively. It was so private. It was so dark and cold. It was so familiar. It would make images flash through my head—so I started to draw them. Then I started to create them, perfect them, paint them.
They’re my confessions.
Levi halts a few feet into the cavernous space.
I could turn on more lights, but I like the way the harsh central one is blazing down from the heavy beams of the ceiling, making a spotlight on the old stone floor.
The mirrors, varied in their frames and sizes, catch gleams of the light from the shadows.
Levi’s eyes are bouncing around. There’s a lot to see.
The old shelves and wine racks hold supplies: pencils and paint, brushes, and everything else needed to write my confessions.
Then there are whips and shackles and ropes.
There are pieces of furniture too, more brutal versions of what I have in the playroom at the penthouse, plus other props.
This space, though, is not for play. It’s for atonement.
That’s why I’ve brought Levi here.
To confess.
To repent.
I will make him understand his sin. I will show it to him.
I’ve never drawn any sin but my own. I’ve never brought anyone here. But Levi is mine. And his sin is mine too.
I take off my clothes, dropping them on the floor. My right shoe is bloody inside, and my shirt is torn. There’s dirt and debris all over my sweats. I’m not wearing the cock cage. I haven’t for several days. I don’t even know where it is. But I’m not hard. Maybe that’s broken too, like my head.
“Strip,” I order Levi.
“Why? What’s happening?”
“I’m going to draw your atonement.”
“My atonement?”
“Yes.”
Levi swallows hard. His eyes are huge and confused, but he’ll understand by the end.
Repentance is necessary.
There’s not much for Levi to take off, just his sweats and blood-smeared T-shirt. His hands are shaking the whole time. I feel my eyelashes flutter, like I’m having a reaction to him, but I don’t know what it is. I don’t register any particular feeling.
For a moment, I’m frozen, and Levi, with no direction, sits on the floor and draws up his knees. He hooks his arms around them and drops his head.
Despair.
It’s so perfectly and simply expressed. The hopelessness. The utter aloneness. I recognize it at once—I feel it. But I’ve never painted it, not like this.
And yet I see that this is the truth, far more than what I intended to paint—and it’s not a sin.
Something breaks in me again, so sharp and sudden that I sway on my feet. Something is pouring through me, washing out all my strength, washing out all my anger.
I don’t want to paint him like this.
I don’t want him to feel like this.
I crouch and hook my arms around him. As I haul him up, he turns toward me. As I lift him, he latches onto me like he did in the park when I found him. As I carry him to my pallet in the corner, he starts sobbing.
I lie down with him. I slide my leg between his, hooking him in, pulling him closer. His face is pressed to my throat. The sobs wracking his body wrack mine too. I shudder through them, and I don’t let go.