Page 19 of Make Me Pretty
Look what you’ve gone and stirred up, dumbass.
“You don’t thinktheseare appropriate?” He tugs on the barely visible hem of his shorts.Clearly,he’s not even wearing underwear beneath them. There’s no way they wouldn’t show if he was—that’show short they are.
Why do I even care?My stomach cramps. I went and did it again. I dove headfirst into his lure.
It just tastes so good.
Abel always gets me where he wants me, leaving me scrambling for purchase—anywhere I can find it—but the only opening he ever leaves is yet another place he shoves me into.
Abel’s knobby fingers curl around the frayed hem of his white shirt. The organ in my chest throbs painfully.Don’t do it. Don’t fucking do it.His muscles contract. The fabric rises. Something comparable to internal sweat licks across my forehead and down my neck, burning a path straight through me.
Nausea eddies, paralyzing me. A sliver of his smooth, pale skin is exposed, just near his right hip. He drags his palm across with an audible scrape of his callouses. His fingers trickle through the air, and then the left side of his shirt inches higher. A line of thick, dark blonde hair is exposed directly in the center of his abdomen. It disappears beneath the elastic waistband of his shorts.
I don’t know why the sight of body hair on him draws a surprised inhale from me. He’s just so… gangly and, well, ugly. But fuck.
He’s so pretty, too.
With one hand, Abel keeps the shirt lifted, scarred fist against his chest. With the other, he drags his palm down his bare stomach, blemished in various shades of injury. Large, dark patches stretch across his torso. Skin inflamed and swollen, blurred with shades of blue and green with a deep, reddish-purple center.
He was hit—and hithard.I don’t know who or why, but someone wanted him to hurt. I can relate to that.
I nearly swallow my tongue when Abel drags a finger around the border of a particularly nasty bruise, but he never comments on them. Just acknowledges they exist as he says, “I thought you’d like them.” He fingers the cotton. “I got them with you in mind.”
It takes me ten seconds too long to register the fact that he spoke as I get a whiff of my own body wash emitting fromhisskin. “Got what?” I blurt. “Did you use my soap?”
His eyes raise to meet mine through his lashes, so long they graze the hairs of his brows. “The shorts, of course.” He enunciates his statement by pressing into the pool of broken blood vessels at his hip, sucking in a sharp breath as his finger burrows into the skin. “And I like the smell of yours. I’ve never used such an expensive soap. Apparently, it’s oak and… bergamot? Whatever the fuck that is.”
My lungs contract with every chugging beat of my heart, so strong I feel its thump in my ears. There’s an entire sofa between us, and yet, it feels like there’s nothing at all. Abel’s gunmetal gaze is penetrative. Omniscient and vile. And while I wish the fucking bastard was only that at a surface level, through sheer will and presentation, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Abel Silver invaded my fucking mind, and now, he’s invaded my home, mylife.Filling every minute vacancy with his wraith. The deepest, deadest parts of himself have now infected me, and I can feel the slow crawl of his apparition beneath my skin—a hollow, lonely thing filled with life’s worst agonies. A product of his own making, summoned from the pits of hell to take me with him.
I shove away from the couch, blunt nails slicing through the calloused skin at my palms. My feet are heavy as I rush down the hallway, nearly slamming into the wall as I veer left, beelining for my bedroom.
The one fucking room in this house not tainted by him.
I slam the door behind me, but I barely register the vibrating ricochet over the sound of my own breathing. Harsh and labored. Pathetic and weak.
My bleeding palms finds rest over my sternum, both heels pressing deep into my covered muscles as my eyes scrunch shutas tight as possible in an attempt to block itallout. Every fucking moment I’ve had to endure with him. Memories. Smells that won’t vacate. The stinging leer of his gaze.
What he fucking knows… What he’s taking from me.
I can feel Abel inside me, exactly where he’s wanted to be.
“Is Mom coming?”I ask, looking out at the trees surrounding us. We’re at some conservation park a couple of hours away. I didn’t want to come, but I never have a choice.
He shakes his head, dark hair flopping over his forehead as he hammers a stake into the hard, dusty dirt. “It’s just us, buddy. Our little vacation.”
I swallow against the rush of bile. My stomach contorts, and I stumble over into a tree, fingers clutching against the thick, sharp bark like it could actually keep me pinned exactly where I am.
I’d happily stay here until the week is through. I’d even go without food. Probably even water. I think I could make it.
“Get over here and help me, Peris. It’s going to be dark soon.” I glance up at the sky. The clouds overhead are thick and fluffy, the sun shining brightly through the gaps. It would feel warm against my skin if I could feel anything at all.
Lately, all I feel is numb. Like every move I make is two seconds delayed and all washed in a dense, gray fog.
I like the fog. It makes it… bearable.
“Sorry,” I mumble because I know that’s what he wants to hear. I want to ask him so many questions. Why…How…What I did wrong.
