With my hands gripped to his shoulders to steady myself, he begins unbuttoning the shirt he put on me. I let go of him, letting the shirt fall to the floor along with my other top and bra that Richard cut with his knife. My body is sore as I help him remove my pants, and he then leads me to the shower.
Hot water rains down on me, washing away exterior grime. If only I could turn myself inside out, I’d do anything to cleanse the grime from inside of me, but I can’t. And I wonder if that rot will always remain.
Declan’s fingers run along the open wound on my cheek where Richard dug his knife in, and I hiss against the sting.
“Sorry,” he whispers, and as I look up into his harrowed eyes, I’m overtaken with guilt, and it becomes too much to hold on to.
Heated tears slip out, merging with the heated water as I let my emotions roll down my cheeks. Declan sees it coming out of me, takes my head in his strong hands, and presses the side of my face tightly against his chest. I curl my arms between our bodies and cuddle into him.
As we stand here under the water, naked and boundless, exposed and vulnerable, I feel the faint line-fracture begin to split. It’s a sharp razor, slicing a jagged line through the scar tissue of my deepest pain. A part of me is terrified, but another part of me is ready to end the war inside. But I’m not even given a choice when I feel it taking a life of its own, shredding the fibers of the walls I’ve spent my whole life erecting.
“It’s okay,” I hear Pike whisper. “If you shatter, he’ll put you back together.”
His voice, his words, they allow the severing to happen, and I rip open.
Tremors quake through me and Declan feels it, banding his arms around me. And when he speaks his next words, “I’ve got you, darling. If you shatter, I’ll put you back together,” I bleed it all out.
Dropping to the floor of the shower with me, he tucks me in his arms, and for the first time ever, I cry for everything I’ve suffered through—I really cry. It’s ugly and messy, screaming and sobbing, bawling harder in an attempt to drain all the misery out of me. Salt burns, sadness scathes, memories devastate, but somehow, his hands alleviate.
I’m tired of being steely and callous. I’m tired of pretending and always fighting against my own skeletons. I’m tired of the uncertainty and hatred that drives the tenebrific evil in me. My wish is that his arms hold the magic to intenerate my heart—to make me good—to make me worthy—to make me lovable. But I doubt any man’s arms are that powerful, and that doubt adds more fuel to my fear of Declan.
So I cry for fear as well.
Because I’m scared.
I’m so scared.
It’s always been there though—the unease, the worriment. It’s lain dormant inside of me since I was five years old, coming to life every now and then, but Pike taught me how to quickly silence it in order to survive. The dormancy is gone now. It’s a live wire of unfiltered anguish that pours out of me and into the arms of my prince on earth while my other prince exists only in the nirvana I’ve yet to become a part of.
Warm breath feathers over my ear with a tender, “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s me,” I blurt out through the unwavering tears, lifting my head to look into his eyes that own responsibility for things he was never responsible for. “I’m the cause of everything, not you. It was all me.”
“You were just a kid. You didn’t deserve what happened to you.”
With his words, I reach out to his chest and run my fingers along the two bullet wounds that mark my deceit and give him my words, “And you didn’t deserve this.”
His hand covers mine, pressing my palm against his scars, saying, “I did. Because without it, I would’ve never found the truth in you.”
“But my truth is so ugly.”
“Like I said before, the truest part of a person is always the ugliest. But I’m ugly too, so you’re not alone.”
As the water cascades over us, I feel weighted down in guilt for what I’ve put this man through. Because none of it mattered when all I truly cared about was simply him.
“Tell me how to make you forgive me. I know I’m not worthy of your forgiveness, but I want it.”
“I wish I knew, but I don’t,” he tells me. “We’re broken people, Elizabeth. You can’t expect me to not have my issues, because I have thousands of them. But just because I hold a hate for you doesn’t take away from the love I have for you.”
His words might not make sense to most people, but for me they do. I just have to choose whether or not to risk handing myself over to him.
“Come here,” he says as he stands to help me up.
I take a seat on the built-in slate bench, and allow him to wash me as I sit here, drained to depletion. Closing my eyes, I relax into his touch while he washes my hair and cleans my body. But it’s when he opens my legs and curses under his breath that I open my eyes and tense up.
“What?” I ask, looking down at him as he stares in horror between my thighs.
Shifting his eyes up to mine, his jaw grinds before demanding, “Tell me exactly what happened.”
I look down to see the nasty collection of bruises.
“He raped you?”
I nod.
“What else?”
His hands remain on my thighs, spreading me open, when I admit, “He used his gun.”