Page 85 of Black Sheep

“Harmony. Fucked up.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I thought I had it. The perfect balance right there in my hand. Turned out I was wrong.”

“When…when did you think you had it?”

“Time and dates no longer matter, but as these things tend to happen, it was right before my life turned to shit. After that, I hated the sight of it. It was either cut it out or burn it. I chose the burning flames of hell.”

His scorching gaze suggests those flames are nowhere near abating. That the subject is still a precarious one. Leaving it alone, my gaze travels up his chest to the ink peeking from his collar. I want to know about those too, but I decide to leave them alone for now.

“Why a ‘punishment’ club?” I ask instead. That’s more in keeping with the man he is. I tell myself that I’m not asking because I want to understand. There is no understanding. There never will be.

“Because everyone sins. Everyone deserves punishment. Why not make a killing off it?” Stark, soulless answers that should explain everything but are nowhere near enough.

“What are yours?”

His eyes meet mine, and all I see is an endless landscape of nothing. “Ah, baby, they’re too many to count. But rest assured, I’m getting everything that’s coming to me.”

My breath catches, and my heart bleeds despair. “You sound sure about that but who are you to decide what your punishment should be? Surely, it’s the right of the wronged party to decide what penance their tormentor gives?”

For the first time, he can’t meet my gaze. His hooded lids sweep down and shut, and the muscles in his bent arms bunch until he’s cradling his head, his breathing growing ragged as if he’s fighting a demon from within. When his chest rises in a deep, long exhale, the sound is sub-human. “Not if they are no longer breathing.”

The shock of hearing the admission fall from his mouth sucker-punches me so hard, I’m certain I’ll never be able to take another whole breath. The blood drains from my head, and my hands fly to my mouth.

In every single way this played out in my mind on dark, rage-filled nights, not once did I imagine Axel confessing to his sins.

Now that it’s out, now that it’s writhing at my feet, I don’t know what to do with it. I want to pick it up and shove it back into him, to have that obtusely hopeful kernel that never died inside me, the one that hoped that all this was one giant mistake, to have been worth me doubting his guilt.

I thought I hated him before. That emotion is nothing compared to what I feel for him now. And I’m agonizingly aware why that is.

Dear God…I feel sick. Bile rises, fast and acrid.

I jump off the bed, striking blindly for the bathroom. The sheet tangles around my legs, and I yank desperately at it.

Behind me, the bed creaks. “Where the hell are you going?” His voice is pulsing with something coarse and alien. I hope to God it’s all the demons in hell flaying every inch of him.

“I going to the bathroom,” I spit out without turning around. “And I’m going alone! Surely I’m allowed that dignity?”

Whether he agrees or not, he lets me go.

I slam the door, turn the lock, and rush to the bowl. But the nausea is gone. So are my tears. Everything is shut down.

I close the toilet lid and sit on it, shaky hands pulling the sheet around my trembling body.

What is wrong with me? I’ve known the truth for eight years. Have meticulously plotted an eye-for-an-eye reckoning while sitting at my mother’s bedside, watching machines breathe for her.

And now I’m almost…sorry he confessed?

Chapter Twenty-Four

ATONEMENT: PART ONE

Axel

She knows who I am. She knows what I am.

I know who she is.

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