16. 1994
BUNNY
The water turned cold fifteen minutes ago. Now it’s freezing. Trembling underneath the heavy droplets, I sit in the cracked porcelain tub with my knees tucked under my chin. For the first time in what feels like forever, a semblance of peace settles in my bones.
Underneath the ice-cold spray, sleep begins to pull me under. I almost let it, but then I remember who’s waiting for me outside the door. He was kind enough to let me clean the filth and grime from my pores, but there’s no telling how long his kindness will last.
Knowing I have to get out and face him, I tip my head back, letting the pellets splash against my skin. With my eyes closed, I pretend I’m standing in the barren field behind Denise’s house.
For a minute, there are no worries. It’s just me and the rain.
I get so lost in the fantasy that I don’t hear the door open. I only realize I’m not alone when the water stops pouring.
“That was freezing.”
Instantly, my eyes spring open, and my hands rush to cover my nakedness. “Shit,” I hiss, scooting as far from him as I can get in the tub. He doesn’t seem to care, watching my huddled figure from his place by the knob.
Now that I’m clean, the injuries covering my body appear much clearer. The blues, purples, and reds of my bruises are vibrant against my ivory flesh, and the wounds that were once scabbed over bleed fresh scarlet. He follows the trail down my calf, fixated on the little splash it makes when it hits the porcelain.
For a while, we sit in silence, letting it stretch so all that’s left is the dripping showerhead. I don’t know how to behave. Blade, as violent as he was out in the ring, doesn’t fill me with the same terror as the men before. Call me a fucking idiot, but I want to know the man covered in scars.
Minutes pass before I find the nerve, leaving me with a missed opportunity. Carrying the silence with him as he walks out the door, I sit and ponder. “What the fuck?” I ask myself, confused as to why I even fucking care. I should be glad he left—that he didn’t force me like all the others. I should be happy.
And yet?—
Maybe I’m lonely. I didn’t have much back home, but I had some friends. I had Missy. I was never truly alone, not physically, at least.
Tracing the trauma painting my skin, I can’t help but think, what if he’s lonely too? There’s an emptiness that followed him when he walked out the door. It lingers in here now, mixing with mine. He hasn’t hurt me. Even as he held my jaw in his hands, I felt no pain. Maybe we could find some comfort in this misery, at least for tonight.
Feeling like the dumbest bitch in the world, I stand from the tub and wrap myself in the scrap of a towel he was wearing before. Its coarse material rubs uncomfortably against my sore skin, but I prefer it to the gown I was dressed in earlier. That was a gift to them. This…this sad, tiny towel…that’s a gift to me. So I savor it until my body is dry and then ruefully slide back into the blue velvet.
With my hair dripping down my back, I take my first step out the door, holding my breath as I walk into the darkness. The dark is terrifying as it is, but the quiet makes it that much worse. It reminds me of my childhood and the memories I’d like to escape.
When I emerge from the hall, I freeze in my steps, eyeing what looks to be his sleeping form lying on the ground. Cautiously, I glance around the room, questioning whether I should try the door. My feet decide for me, taking two strides forward, when his voice calls out, “It’s locked.”
I don’t care. I try it anyway, jerking, tugging, and pounding until my throbbing arms quake and my tears burn.
“Fuck!” I shout, kicking the bottom with the tips of my toes. I ignore the pain that shoots up my leg, hobbling back into the main room. Staring at his closed eyes, his motionless form, I feel my rage become too much to swallow.
“So you’re just going to lay there and not bother to try?” My tone gets his eyes to open, and they aren’t as kind as before.
A body as big as his should make a sound as it moves, a creak—a crack, but there’s no noise in the room as he approaches me, only my terrified exhale.
“What do you want me to do? Hm?” he asks, bending to look directly into my eyes. “Tear it down with my bare hands?”
I can see the swelling turning black around his socket, the popped, red vessels that swirl around cerulean irises. “I saw you in that ring,” I breathe, inhaling the iron undertones remaining on his cleansed skin. “It’s not like you can’t.”
He doesn’t deny my claim. Even if he can’t pull it out, there’s enough strength and rage rushing throughout his body to bust through the thick wood. So I challenge him to do it with a tilt of my chin, and he meets my response with a touch of my skin.
“You don’t want to go out there, Bunny,” he mutters, a broken fingernail trailing down the fingerprints embedded into my bicep. “They’ll eat you alive.”
He leans in close, as if he wants to, brushing his nose on the edge of my jaw while his finger explores the delicate bones in my hand. They twitch against the roughness of his skin, jumping in tune with the beat of my heart. I open my mouth to ask what’s been on my mind, but it’s hard to focus when his attention turns to my hip.
“You’re not dressed like the others.” It almost seems like it bothers him. My own brows pinch at the divot forming between his, wondering why he cares so much about a scrap of fabric. I planned on asking him what the issue was, but something else comes out instead.
“What’s your name?”
He doesn’t stop his exploration, but it does slow, lingering lightly on the dips between my ribs. He grazes the hollows softly, subtly pulling me in until our lips are inches apart. It isn’t butterflies I feel when that touch glides to the back, pressing against the curve in my spine. Butterflies would be too kind. Instead, I feel the heat that burns in his gaze. It penetrates far past my bones, becoming the substance that makes up my marrow.
I feel his touch in the deepest part of me, as if I’ve felt him in another life.
Suddenly, my question takes on a new importance, and his name is no longer a want, but a need. “Tell me your name…”
“Why? What does it matter?” I understand the hesitance. Up until him, I was tentative, too, but that was then. “It matters.”
I see his internal struggle while his eyes scroll across mine. I feel it in the pressure he puts on my skin. Leaning into it, I find a strange comfort in the force of his hand.
Whatever it is, he feels it, too.
Trusting me as I did him, he finally says, “Cade.”