A flood of emotion pours over me as I begin to cry. It catches me by surprise. I'm losing her. She doesn't have the will to keep fighting the conflicting feelings that echo inside of me all day.
With no words exchanged between us, he pulls me against him, and then up against the wall. Soap and the smell of damp cedar fills my nose. The contrast of the civilized and the wild. I drift between those two worlds every day now.
We kiss, roughly, our faces twisting and turning, my heart threatening to leap out of my chest. I don't know what this is. I don't understand it. But every part of me wants it. To feel so strongly desired. To be cared for. To always be the singular focus of his attention. He's brutal, but I am the focus of his obsession. Not forgotten, not second place. It's something I have craved since I was a little girl, to be wanted. Even with Carter, nothing could come before his medical school program. Out here, Night may be my god, but I am his angel.
His body reverberates, like he's holding something back, something fighting to escape as he lifts up one of my legs. This isn't like it was out there, dirty and malicious. This is something else.
He reaches down and slips fingers into me. I moan as they send a rolling wave of pleasure up my belly. He drops to his knees, propping a leg on his shoulder, and eats me out. I swallow water and air as I gasp, little tiny streams fall down my forehead, eyelashes, and nose.
He stands before I can come. His nose pressing against mine. His warm breath huffing against my lips. Our bodies locked in on a single breath. Rhythmic, like a heartbeat.
No words. Just the music of our breaths, and the pitter patter of the water hitting the teak below our feet.
We both slide down to the floor. Still face to face, buckling under the weight of this complicated, fierce thing. I lie on the wet surface and he shields me from the trickling of the water.
I wish I could see him, the faceless man who haunts my dreams and waking hours. If I could, maybe I could understand him better. Maybe I could understand myself.
But he's just a shadow. As real as the fantasies I used to make up to draw me out of the monotony of my relationship. Or to pretend to know what it felt like to be something more than everyone else's rock.
The water runs to a slower trickle, the way the droplets fall from the trees after a heavy rain. He enters me. It doesn't feel like a violation. Or part of a bargain. It's hard to reconcile this was the same man who brutalized me not an hour ago.
But logic has no place in my life any longer.
We break the silence with our moans and groans. He rocks in and out of me as I dig my fingers into his taut back. And it's only a few seconds before I am trembling underneath him, tears mingled with shower water so that I'm not sure if I'm still crying.
He lets out a growl as he comes inside of me. Every time he does, it's like he's injecting me a little more with his sickness, making me a little more like him.
He stays there for a moment, hovering over me. I reach out to touch a tendril of his hair. To prove this really happened, that the man behind the mask exists. He lets me for a beat, but then he comes to his feet, standing over me and under the shower head which is now slowly dripping over him like a leaky faucet.
He walks out and I crawl towards the door on all fours, hoping he'll slip and switch on the light so I can see his face, but he just opens the door. The sound of crickets floods the cabin. A hint of moonbeam sneaks through the doorway so I can make out his movements. He simply grabs the heap of tattered clothes on the floor and his boots, holds them at this side, and walks out into the wild, dripping wet and naked.
Then he latches the door.
It's noon, but the house is dark. All the shades are drawn because mom doesn't want visitors. I'm still in pain. They put new skin over the skin that was stripped from my side and it's still healing. It hurts when I move. Mom, dad, and the doctor explained to me that they had to put me in a coma. I always thought comas were bad. I didn't understand why they would give me one on purpose. But they explained it let my brain rest and heal because it was swollen. I guess I'm glad I slept through a lot of the pain. My cheek was torn open, the skin hanging off my face. Scoot said some of the kids threw up when they caught up with the accident.
The man ran over a cop's kid. He's in big trouble now.
They wouldn't show me my face at the hospital. On the way home, I tried to sneak peeks at my reflection in the car window, but the glare made it hard to see. When I got home, I begged Scoot to bring me a mirror. Mom had covered them all with blankets. He snuck in at night and brought me a hand mirror. It was pretty with vines carved along the handle and up the frame. I saw the reflection. A red, raw scar running from my ear to the corner of my lip. The stitches were still in and it made me look like Frankenstein’s monster.