Chapter 69
Quill
Scars on Paper
Loretta’s House
Paul Leonard -Morgan
My exam results were disastrous. What had I expected? That a miracle would happen and the intelligence and discipline of my overambitious environment would rub off on me?
Monica would be disappointed as soon as she found out. And now that there were no more debates in which I could make her proud, I wondered what reason I still had to stay at Maplecrest.
There was no way left to ruin my father. And I’d finished my book three weeks ago, which only reminded me that my other manuscripts were still collecting dust in my father’s attic until I could bring myself to finally rescue them in a long-planned mission.
The Atrianima online forum was slowly coming back to life, which I hadn’t expected, but I couldn’t even bring myself to read right now. No matter how many people claimed they were hot on the author’s heels and that they would find her soon.
Where was my excitement about that?
It had died, along with all the other emotions that had given me a sense of aliveness.
Smother
Daughter
With a heavy sense of inner hopelessness and exhaustion, I closed the Rydells’ front door behind me and pressed my head against the wall next to the mirror for a moment.
I didn’t even have the strength to take off my coat, so I just stood there against the wall, listening to the silence of the house.
It was Wednesday, just past six, which meant Lara wouldn’t be home for another hour because she was still working at the campus newspaper. Davian didn’t seem to be there either.
I was alone.
I’d been thinking about doing it all week. It had been so easy at my father’s house. Everyone had been too preoccupied with themselves, and the house had been too big for anyone to notice what I was doing to myself.
But this house was alive. Even when no one was here, I could feel the photos on the walls watching me, trying to stop me from doing something that was long overdue.
Davian’s presence had been like a substitute for the pain in which I had sought salvation. But that had been before I had shot someone.
I had never had control over my own life. And suddenly, for a moment, I had controlled someone else’s life… and ruined it.
Everything I touched eventually fell apart. That couldn’t happen to Lara and Davian. The reason I holed up in my room and tried to find peace in sleep.
No such luck.
The nightmares didn't stop. The images in my head wouldn't leave me alone.
And I could barely keep any food down, could barely make it from the bed to the shower – where I lingered far too long under the hot water – and swung between emotional numbness and uncontrollable waves of crying, like a pendulum that never found its center.
But at least up there, I couldn't hurt anyone. Kill anyone.
With all my strength, I pushed myself away from the wall, slipped out of my shoes, but didn’t manage to take off my coat until I reached my room, where I let it slide to the floor.
I didn’t know if it was seconds or minutes that I stood in the middle of my room, staring at the mess of clothes that someone had turned into a neatly folded pile.
Lara.
She often came to see me, wanted me to go out with her and Thomas, but I’d told her I needed time, and she’d eventually accepted it.
I didn’t deserve her. I didn’t deserve anyone here.
In a trance, I walked into the upstairs bathroom, left the door ajar behind me, and went over to the brown wooden bathroom vanity with the cream-colored marble countertop.
In the mirror before me, the girl Tony had rescued six months ago from the neglected house two towns over was staring back at me.
He should have let me rot there. But my brother seemed to have a knack for unwittingly triggering fatal chain reactions involving explosive people like Troy and me.
Did my brother know he was surrounded by murderers?
With trembling hands, I rolled up my sleeves, opened the bathroom cabinet, and stared at the tiny box I’d discovered two months ago.
It was a miracle Davian had never used them. He was so damn strong.
Tears filled my eyes.
I didn’t want to do this. It had been so long.
I thought I’d finally left it behind me...
Far too slowly, I reached for the pack, opened it, and pulled out one of the sharp razor blades.
When was the last time I’d gone two weeks without writing? I didn’t know. But it felt so far away. As if I’d lost touch with myself.
How did Davian manage this without dying inside?
I wanted to write, but all I could bring to paper were things I wanted to bury, along with this life.
With an unsteady breath, I brought the blade to my left forearm.
I had shot a person, and yet I was afraid of cutting too deep.
Taking a deep breath, I pressed the metal against my wrist and closed my eyes, hesitating no longer, and pushed down.
A soft, concentrated whimper escaped my throat, but I drew the blade across my stiffened wrist.
“Quill…”
Warmth and Grief
Atli ?rvarsson
Startled, I flinched, snapped my eyes wide open, and spun toward the half-open door, where I spotted Davian, frozen in shock.
He was here.
He was wearing one of his gray-checkered chinos, paired with a white shirt, the sleeves rolled up.
Davian’s gaze slid down to my arm and settled there.
Shame flooded my body.
He immediately started moving, stepped towards me without taking his eyes off my forearm, and I looked down as well.
Small droplets of blood formed along the long wound, and the pain I felt this time was more intense than usual. More liberating.
I had cut deeper.
I let the pleasant burning sensation wash over my body, wanted more...
When I looked up, I met Davian’s gaze. Horror lay in his eyes.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
His voice sounded as if I had done something unforgivable, and I couldn’t stop the guilt inside me from gaining the upper hand.
“I didn’t know you were there…”
He continued to stare at me. With those watery ink eyes.
“If I hadn’t been there…”
“It’s just about pain,” I assured him with a weary smile. “Just about letting all these emotions out of me. Knowing that they have a right to exist. And at the same time… feeling a temporary pain that distracts me from all the other insatiable pains.”
Tears filled my eyes, and it didn’t help that Davian’s distraught stare was literally piercing my soul.
“I couldn’t…”
My voice trailed off, and I turned back to the bathroom vanity with fluttering eyelids, propped myself up on the marble countertop with the blade in my half-closed hand.
“You know…”
Exhausted, I drew in the air my lungs seemed to be begging for, looked through the reflection at my wrist, where the droplets of blood had gathered but decided to linger there.
This scar, too, would fade.
These wounds were like sunburn. They didn’t leave a mark. Only their consequences did. In the form of an addiction that was, nevertheless, more bearable than all the scars in my paper soul.
Davian said nothing, stared down at my wrist as if I’d triggered a short circuit in him.
“Have you ever done it?”
He looked up, stared at me for another two seconds. Then, finally, he responded to me with a slight shake of his head.
“No”
I leaned back, washed the blade carefully, and held it out to him.
“Imagine it’s a cigarette.”
He took the blade from my hand, stared at it, then looked up with just his eyes, raising both eyebrows.
He was so handsome.
“Good thing neither of us ever became smokers.”
With a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes, he lowered the blade and let it fall into the trash can.
His gaze grew more serious.
That was the moment he reached for my hand, and a feeling of salvation danced through my fingers, along with his gentle warmth.
Threnody
Goldmund
“I understand you.” He intensified our eye contact, once again looking deep into my soul. I would always let him in. Without him, it was lonely in there. “But isn’t there a better alternative than a damn blade near your arteries?”
Caught out, I bit my lower lip, where his gaze immediately wandered.
Aware of his proximity, the usual tremor that only he could awaken returned to my stomach.
Triggered by his question, images flashed through my mind. Images I wasn’t allowed to put into words. Alternatives that would render any blade ineffective.
Davian, inside me.
Moths fluttered through my stomach. Heat rushed down to my center.
Before he could have a chance to read the thoughts from my eyes, I looked away.
“I’m broken, Davian. And I’m afraid there’s no salvation for this kind of pain.”
Warm fingers came to rest under my chin, and Davian lifted my head.
“You’re not broken, Quill. You never have been.”
My tears returned, and I wanted to lean against him, but the self-control I always had to force myself to keep in his presence seemed, for once, to be within reach.
Ending up in his arms in my current state wouldn’t be a good idea. I wouldn’t hold back. From whatever.
“I can barely make it to the shower. Look at my hair…” He did, without taking his hand off my chin. “I brushed it before university, but by tonight, it will be tangled again.”
My voice was dripping with exhaustion, and I felt pathetic.
“Whenever Lara didn’t feel like taking care of her hair as a child…” He let go of me, stepped behind me, and I watched him in the mirror as he examined my hair, my senses sharper than usual. “…I braided it for her.”
Motionless, I watched him until our gazes met in the mirror.
“Do you want me to braid your hair, Feather?”
An overwhelming tingle ran down my neck, and it was as if I could feel every inch of his presence behind me.
I nodded.
In his eyes, I saw that we both knew I wasn’t saying yes to his gesture, but to being allowed, for a moment, to be his little girl.
A moment later, I felt him slide his hand into my hair, gently combing through it with his fingers.
In the mirror, I saw his gaze drift toward the cabinet, and I followed it, landing on the brush, immediately reaching for it and handing it to him.