Page 88 of Moth
Chapter Twenty-Two
“He’s never hit you in the face before. When he abuses you.” He makes it sound normal almost. As if he’s so familiar with the ins and outs of such a dynamic. Abuse? A part of me cringes from the word, and the soft surface beneath me makes for a fitting hiding place from the reality of it all.
His bed. He’s sprawled out beside me, his fingers in my hair, his eyes on the ceiling.
“He keeps it all concentrated on your arms,” he continues. “Your legs. Back. Places that are easier to hide. Easier for you to ignore. But when it’s on your face…” He sighs, bringing his hand to his right temple. His thumb traces the length of his eyebrow, bringing attention to a tiny scar slicing through it that I never noticed until now. “Thatmakes it real. You can’t ignore it then.”
“Like you?” I tilt my face against his chest, just enough to make eye contact. “Your father?” I ask, recalling something Mara mentioned.He went to prison, though I’m not sure why. Murder, I think.
He stiffens, and I don’t expect an answer. His fingers are in my hair again, distracting me with their soft, gentle motions over my scalp. “He’ll do it again,” he tells me, ignoring my question. “You don’t want to hear it, but he will.”
Of course, I already know as much. I’ve made peace with it in a sense, but the fact never alarmed me before. My chest clenches at the prospect, my limbs trembling.
Why?
Because it’s getting harder than ever to shut the pain off? Because the moth drifted too close to the fire, burning up her fragile shell. Now she feels everything.
And it hurts.
I hunt for another distraction and find one as I shift over scarlet silken sheets. “I’m in your bed,” I point out, my voice broken and raspy. The change in subject makes him stiffen this time. “Your sheets will smell like me—”
“You have a boyfriend,” he counters, his answer to every inch of his control he’s let me take. “This doesn’t count.”
“No, I don’t,” I confess, feeling my throat thicken. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”
He grunts as if he’s not sure how to process that statement. In the end, he just sighs, letting his fingers slip through my hair. And in the gentle motions, I lose the last bit of myself I’ve kept restrained.
“He hurt me.” It’s so surreal saying it out loud. Hearing my voice form those words I’ve expressed through my writing so many times. Through deception and prose. Through lies. “Bran hurt me. He’salwayshurt me…and no one has ever cared.” Not our parents, who found it easier to let Branden oversee my life than do it themselves. Not my classmates, who overlooked the girl who always wore sweaters, even in the summer. Not his wife.
“My mother made excuses for my father,” Rafe says, his voice so soft I barely hear him. “She always fell or tripped. She said she was clumsy, not that he’d smacked her with his fist when he didn’t get his way or hit her with a wine bottle. Not when he left for three fucking years, fucking around while she did whatever she could to care for me. No matter what it cost her, she did it.”
I brace my hand against his chest, feeling his heartbeat raging beneath my palm. He eyes the ceiling coldly, his teeth gritted, body rigid.
“And she always loved the fucker, though I don’t know why. She always took him back, no matter what he did… No matter how badly he hurt her, she let him return again and again.”
I shift against him, watching as those dark eyes flash with rage at the memories.
“One night, he got too rough after showing up again out of the blue. He shoved her around, but she didn’t get back up. The asshole just laughed and passed out. She would never call the cops on his ass…”
“But you did,” I whisper when he trails off.
He nods, his chin jutting proudly. “I did. Not that it made much of a fucking difference. She wasn’t able to make excuses for him that time.”
My gaze falls over his arm and the flames licking down the length of it—but I don’t see a dragon’s fire in the design for once. I see a little boy breathing out his rage in a world that ignored him. That hardened him, turning him into a monster who snarls at those around him with his teeth bared and guard up.
Anything to protect himself.
His art speaks for him in ways my writing never could, put on display for everyone to witness.
“What tattoo would you put on me?” I ask him, eyeing my bruised and battered limbs. “A rabbit?”
“No.” He eyes me with an odd expression, pursing his lips in deep thought. “Roll over.”
I do gingerly as he rises onto his knees beside me. Warm fingers lift his borrowed shirt and prod between my shoulder blades, testing out the quality of his canvas. Softly, he traces a path down to my hip, sketching an invisible design.
“I don’t think I’ll tell you, bunny,” he decides, returning to my side and drawing me close. “You’ll just have to find out.”
“When?” I ask.
