“Oh, crap, are you in trouble?” I ask, concerned for my friend.
She rolls her eyes at my question, seeming to think it’s absurd. “Hell, no. He’s probably told everyone he knows by now. Daddy’s a firm believer in jail yard justice. I mean, don’t get me wrong; he wouldn’t tolerate me being some random brawler, but he wants me to defend myself. If someone wrongs me then I should retaliate—within reason, of course.”
“By ‘within reason,’ you mean?” I ask, needing some clarification. Her daddy sounds a little crazy to me, but it’s not as if I have any room at all to throw stones.
She drapes her purse strap over her shoulder and starts walking toward the door. “No killing anyone,” she answers over her shoulder before giving me a backwards wave. “Talk soon, muah!” With those words, she strolls out the door, looking as freshly put-together as usual. Just thinking of how…clean she looks makes my skin crawl. No matter how hard I try, I haven’t been able to feel that way since my attack. I have showered so many times since I got home from the hospital that Lucian had started to ask questions. I try to do it while he’s occupied in his office. I don’t want him to think I’m crazy, but I need just the brief respite, which comes from scrubbing myself.
I walk down the hallway toward his office and hear his voice. Good, he’s on the phone. I quickly make my way to the bedroom and straight into the bathroom. I wrap my hand in plastic to keep the cast on my wrist dry and turn the water on as hot as I can tolerate. I’ve stopped wearing most of the other bandages, as my cuts have healed enough to do without them. I quickly remove my clothes, turning to avoid seeing my reflection in the mirror, and take a fresh loofah from the bathroom cabinet. The rough texture gives me hope that eventually I’ll be able to scrub away the feel of him on my skin. My stomach churns at the very thought, and I quickly jump under the scalding water.
Again and again, I add liquid soap to the loofah and scrub my body. I work the hardest on my stomach, breasts, and the area between my thighs. Those places never seem to be free of the filth I feel crawling back almost immediately. I have no idea how long I’ve been in the shower, but as I start to sway, weak from the hot water and exhaustion, I realize I’m sobbing almost hysterically. When I look down, I see blood on my hands and on the sponge. A scream rips from my throat as the door is thrown open and Lucian stands there looking terrified.
“Lia!” he yells frantically. “What’s wrong?” He looks around the room, as if expecting to see someone else here with us. I’m still in a daze at the sight of the blood…the red against my hands is mesmerizing and it’s hard for me to look away. His voice has lowered considerably when he says, “Baby, fuck, what have you done to yourself?”
I’m so confused by his question that I look to him in inquiry before following his eyes back to my body. I sway on my feet as I really see what he’s looking at. The loofah has dug deep, breaking the skin in what looks like more than one place. My stomach seems to have gotten the worst of it with me possibly breaking open some of the healing cuts there. My thighs and breasts both look bright red and are starting to throb. The most alarming thing is that I don’t remember rubbing hard enough to do that kind of damage, nor did I feel the pain I should have felt. I don’t want him to see me like this. He’s going to know now that I’m not as okay as I’ve been pretending to be. There is no way to explain away what I’ve done to myself. For some reason, all I can do is apologize. “I’m sorry, Luc. I’m sorry,” I repeat again and again as he looks just as broken as I feel.
“Stop, baby,” he whispers shakily as he reaches one hand out to brace me and uses the other to turn the water off. The bathroom is filled with so much steam it’s hard to breathe. I drop the loofah from my hand, unable to bear the sight of my blood on it.
“I just wanted to get clean,” I try to explain. “I don’t know why I can never get it off me.”