Page 60 of Making the King

I gulp, the lump in my throat the size of a melon, as I struggle to stay put and not pull away.

“I think I understand. They took something from you. Something they had no right to take. They raped you, didn’t they?”

My breathing is rapid and my skin prickles with humiliation at admitting this, for the first time, and then, I slowly move my head in a nod.

“Shit.” She cringes, shaking her head like she is disgusted, but not at me. At herself.

“What is it?” I ask as she squeezes her lids shut again.

“I… feel worse now about what I did to you. Forcing myself on you without your consent.”

“No, Killer.” I cup her face right back. “Look at me.” When her gray eyes lock with mine again, I continue. “That’s different. Please don’t compare what we have with the monsters from my past.”

A fat tear tumbles from one of her eyes as she stares up at me. “Are they still alive? The people who abused you.”

I shake my head. “No. Dante and I made sure they were dead years later. He never knew exactly what happened, but he understood enough to know they were scum abusing children.”

“Damn. I wanted to kill them for you,” she says, her tone laced with disappointment. “Their entrails would make for a beautiful trophy.”

I smile at that.

“I have no doubt they would have suffered immensely by your hand.”

She nods in my hands. “Too fucking right.”

I chuckle.

“Your turn, Killer.” I urge, hoping she will open up to me. “Please tell me why you can’t bear to enter a bathroom?”

Her smile drops, and her gray stare falls to my chest.

“Blood,” she whispers, and I release her face and run my hands through the spray of water, down her back.

“Blood?”

She nods. “There was so much.”

“Whose blood?”

“J-Julietta’s.”

My brows shoot up. “Your sister’s blood?”

She nods. “Sometimes, I can still smell it. Feel it as my feet slipped in its thickness on the…”

“On the what, Cara?” I ask, pressing my fingers under her chin to tilt her head up to me.

“On the tiled floor,” she whispers, before squeezing her eyes tight.

Frowning, I run her words through my head before my eyes dart to the tiled floor of my bathroom, and then my mind wanders to the shower room at Dirty Diamonds. Shit. The floor was tiled there, too.

“Do you see it? The blood, every time you look at the tiles on a bathroom floor?”

She nods frantically before burying her head into my bare chest.

Damn. It all makes sense now.

“I don’t want to be like this. But I can’t stop the images flashing before my eyes.” She admits, and I nod as I press my lips to her wet hair, knowing exactly what she means.

---