Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Ella
Concrete, screams, footsteps, stopwatch, wash day, sleep, repeat.
“Hey,” a masculine voice says softly. I jerk upright, blinking hard. A nightmare. It was just a nightmare. Linen curtains, white walls, windows, beach photographs on the walls, my fingers rustling over clean cotton sheets. I am still at the hospital. I am safe. I am okay and…
And Tristan is here. That’s not a dream.
He is really here. After ten days of refusing him, of shaking my head every time a nurse asked if I was ready, of staring at my own reflection and seeing nothing but bones and shame and a girl I hardly recognize, Tristan is here, bloodshot eyes, dark circles, rough stubble I have never seen on him, sitting to my left, forearms resting on his thighs, hands clasped against his mouth, a silent intensity emanating from him, calling my attention in all the ways humanly possible.
Black pants, black long-sleeved T-shirt risen enough to reveal his forearms. My hands clench and unclench along my body as panic grabs me by the shoulder. Is someone pushing on my lungs?
“It’s okay. You’re okay,” Tristan says in a calm, deep voice, his hands clenched as if he is trying his hardest not to touch me.
I want him to touch me. Take me in his arms. Kiss the hurt away.
But… Is this the moment he walks away, and tells me I have been a major waste of time?
A fling? His hand rises midair, searching to cup my face, and a primal, visceral fear grips me.
I recoil, shaking my head, using my able arm to cover my face with the back of my palm.
Instead of his handsome, tired face, I see Cole’s.
Instead of this comfortable room, I see the cell.
I blink but the two of them overlap, the walls moving, dogs barking away, screams coming from the wall behind me.
My knees fold, and I hold them tight, hiding my face between them and my chest, humming in my head a lullaby my mother used to sing to me.
“I’m sorry,” I sign above my legs, uncrossing my hands.
For keeping you away. I am so sorry. Tears form, my shoulder burning, reminding me that this nightmare truly happened.
I’m ruining everything. I will never forget the hurt on his face, like watching a mountain shattered by lightning.
I should be in his arms. I should seek his touch like oxygen, and yet…
the thought of him touching me makes me want to scream, cry, and run away all at once.
“Ella, it’s…” He pauses, his voice finding strength again.
“It’s okay.” His voice breaks. “Why…why didn’t you let me see you?
” Pain shines bright in his tone, and I am punctured on the spot by a thousand arrows.
For an answer, I wave at myself, disgusted, sobs at the doors of my mouth, sealed miserably beneath my shaking lips.
“It’s okay. I’m…I’m sorry I-” He pauses again as I lift my gaze from my knees, peeking at his godlike face.
“I saw you the day I rescued you, sweetheart. I…” His voice cracks.
“There is nothing that would have made me walk away. I wish, I wish you knew that. I wish you had let me be there for you.” He does not move, but his veins, thick under his forearms, grow from containment, from the frustration of everything I fail to be.
His stubble is new, but I like it. He is so handsome, and still, I cannot find the courage in me to reach out.
Will it always be this way? Tristan deserves more than this.
“I don’t know how to…” I start signing. “Nothing is the same anymore,” I keep going, tears threatening to fall. “You risked your life for me.”
“And I would do it a hundred times over,” he says out loud, without hesitation.
“I’m so sorry. I don’t know how to… How to be anymore,” I sign, shame wrapping around me with an invisible cage.
“Ella… look at me.” He stands, comes closer, then steps back when he realizes how stiff I have turned in anticipation of his touch.
Both of us are lost in the gap I created, in the space I imposed on us.
Backward. Backward. We are going in the wrong direction, driving to the opposite side of the road, waiting for the inevitable crash.
But how could I live in a world where we aren't talking, signing, and doing life together now that I've tasted it?
How could we do that if he cannot touch me?
My eyes meet his, heartbreak written in their emerald shine, saying all the things we cannot say.
Cole said something about Tristan giving him money to get me, but how much loss did Tristan suffer? How much pain have I inflicted on us?
“Ella.” His voice snaps me into the present, guiding me away from the darkness I have sought comfort in these last ten days.
“None of this is your fault. This is all on me. I…” He stops, breath turning rough.
“I messed up. I should have taken his threat more seriously from the start. I should have…” His voice catches, the rhythm foreign, so out of his natural, calm, composed character.
Despite the desire to press my palms to his chest, I refrain, signing, “It’s nobody’s fault but mine. I should have stayed home. I should have waited for you.”
“You thought your dad was about to die. I understand. You did what you could.”
“I should have known it was a trick. I should have done better.”
“When I saw you had left, Ella…” His palm covers his chest. “The ground disappeared under my feet.”
He says it as I keep signing, guilt eating me from the inside out. “I’m so sorry.”
“I’m the one who’s sorry.” Grasping the back of a wooden chair, he moves it closer and sits, forearms on his thighs, watching me like I am the sun and he cannot look away, despite being burned on the spot.
Blood vessels have taken home in the white of his eyes, aging him ten years older. Was he as badly affected as me?
“You should resent me, for losing so much-.”
“Don’t.”
“You should.” I wipe a tear, startled that he hasn't signed once since getting here. Backward, always. Looking down at my hand, I sign, “How’s my dad? Is he…” What if he had succumbed to whatever trick Mara was playing in my absence?
What if I am now all alone in this world, unable to even say goodbye?
“He’s alive and stabilized,” Tristan says, calm and measured.
Thank God. So perhaps all my prayers worked after all.
Perhaps someone, somewhere, was listening.
“I… Things developed, and I had to take measures, I hope you’ll forgive me for.
When I realized what Mara had done, I took it upon myself to move your father into a medical facility in my neighborhood.
He’s getting the best care in the city and all his personal belongings have been moved too.
I had people, professionals, make sure everything was where it needed to be.
I couldn’t afford the risk of him being in harm’s way with your stepmother. I hope…”
“Thank you,” I say, letting out the faintest smile, my first in weeks.
“Thank you so much.” Grateful, my heart rises for half a second, an invisible defibrillator bringing it back to life with a shock of hope.
Tristan really took care of my dad while I was away.
Made sure he was safe and well taken care of. How could I ever thank him?
“I know how important it is to you.”
“Thank you,” I say silently, pulling a strand of hair behind my ear.
“Ella, I…” He starts, looking down at his palm as if observing his lifeline, unable to look at me.
“What happened down there?” Neon light. Wake up, little birdy.
Stand. Eat with your hands. Dogs barking.
More barking. Neon light. Branding. Cold.
So cold. Screams. Panic slides under my skin, and I cover my eyes with my palm, humming silently.
I am okay. I am at the hospital. With Tristan.
Dad is okay too. Everything is perfect, perfect, perfect.
I shake my head multiple times, wishing I could disappear.
Some nights, I prayed to God. Please, make me invisible.
Turn me into nothingness and let me fly away, but please, do not leave me here.
“Ella, it’s all right. I’m sorry. You don’t have to talk about it now.
It was stupid to ask so soon.” He runs a hand through his beautiful, disheveled hair.
I know he is not used to waiting, to not getting what he wants from the get-go.
He waited ten days outside this room because I asked him to, because I could not bear the thought of his eyes landing on my too-thin body.
I can see the frustration tracing lines at the corners of his eyes, making him look so much older.
A question glows in the room, one I have been waiting to ask ever since the door opened on him in that basement.
“Will you leave me now…?”
“Leave you?”
“Yes, now that I’m…broken.”
“Ella,” he sighs, carrying the weight of the world.
“We’re not… we’re not a couple. We never said…” I keep signing. “You could have any woman you want. Was I worth all the losses you’ve been through? All the pain I’ve forced upon us?” His face shifts to the left, and I see him blink a few times.
Is he… Is he getting emotional?