Page 59 of Make Me Pretty
I gasp.
CHAPTER 19
ABEL
I’m panting,face buried in a fluffy pillow as reality oozes back in, muddled with the hazy fog of inebriation. I breathe into the cotton, drawing my focus to the scent of lavender over the lingering tendrils of dope burning the hairs in my nose.
The dreams don’t come around often anymore, but when they do, they’re memories of what I went through for Mo. The one person I would have—and did—do anything for. Ones that leave me aching and panting and disoriented when I wake with a hard dick, gagging with revulsion when I realize that every man still had power over me, even when I made it achoice.
To protect. To love.
Only to never see her again.
My Adam’s apple glugs as I swallow the protruding lump in my throat. It sticks at the apex before it slowly crawls down my esophagus to accompany my thrashing heart. Tingling fingers twitch against my abdomen, readily avoiding my arousal as I focus on the murky beat of my heart against my sternum. Feel as the pace slows with each controlled breath, gaze locked on the moonlight shining through the drawn curtains. Overwhelming proof I’m not trapped in a dark room with nothing but damp,mildewy walls at my back and rough, plywood floors beneath my feet.
But here—in a clean bed meant for me.
I wonder if Mo ever made it out… If she’s somewhere safe and happy.
A breath escapes between my pinched lips as I blink into the luminescent, white light of the moon. It comes back into clarity, big and round and nearly full.She is—she has to be.There’s no other reality I’ll accept.
A hoarse cry ripples through the darkness, and I shove myself up, swaying as the blood rushes to my head, a heavythwompin my eardrums. The comforter pools around my hips, exposing my sweaty torso to the fan’s cool air. Gooseflesh prickles, making me shiver as the noise sounds again, louder and more pained than before. A cry I recognize.
As I walk to my door with trepidation trickling down my spine and limbs that feel too heavy, I realize I’m still way too stoned. I watch my fingers curl around the doorknob, my grasp weak and leaden as they finally find purchase against the shockingly cold metal.
My shoulders roll with a shiver down my spine as it creaks open, and the warm air from the vent a foot away breezes over my face. Peris’s voice screaming for me to get out echoes in my mind as I push his door open and step inside.
My skin crawls as inky, black darkness swallows me—skin I nearly jump right out of when an ear-piercing shout breaks the sound barrier. Heart hammering, I shuffle closer, ignoring the pins and needles in my brain. Fight or flight, I think it’s called, but I’ve never listened to it before, so I’m not gonna start now.
I haven’t died yet, so I must be doing something right.
Peris rolls, and the shift of his arm reveals the red luminance of a clock at his bedside. The haunting glow gives me a dim path to his bed, which I crawl into with trembling arms. Peris is onthe opposite side, lying on his back with his head turned away from me. The blanket has been kicked low, wrapped around his calves in his struggle against his dreams, exposing most of his bare body, which is clad in only a pair of dark briefs.
My head rolls onto my shoulder, too heavy to keep upright as I press a palm to his skin, finding it slick with perspiration—much like my own—and hot to the touch. I smear his sweat around, listening to his cries and jumbled words with sympathy, my own tumultuous evocations still frothing.
No, stop, it hurts. Stopstopstop.
Please.
It’s that word that sinks like a barb.
I never, not once, said it aloud to them. I knew it would only make things worse, get someone hurt. And as much as I’ve fantasized about dying—how mucheasierit would be to justlet go—I have dreamed of the day I’m finally freemore.
To have the satisfaction of proving themallwrong. And I’m nothing if not stubborn.
Feeling more grounded in my new reality, I scoot closer to trail my fingers—to drag my hands—over Peris’s body, digging deep into his muscles in hopes of easing some of the ache after he wakes.
We can be whatever we are another time. Right now, it’s just this. Verities spilt, sweeping us into a vortex we can’t escape. Opaque smoke, smelling of ozone and salt. Atrophied muscles and paralyzed vocal cords tangled in a screaming silence.
I feel his agony because it’s my own. Intricate and erratic and disconcerting, tunneled into sweat and screams and a rock-hard cock.
Too real. Too honest.
Who we are.
I’m cumbersome but somehow manage the maneuver of each limb until I’m on my knees against the slight curve of his waist.The tips of my fingers now skim lightly over his bare, sculpted stomach. The muscles contract, and my touch ripples like a surfboard over a wave.
I take in his face, contorted in his restless sleep, deep creases lining his forehead, beads of sweat reflected in the red glow—barely visible yet somehow luminous. He’s truly a paradox. And the game we’ve been playing for months has been the best time of my life. The push, the pull. Pain and resistance. Regret and gravitation.
