Page 41 of Michael's Awakening
Chapter Sixteen
Gabriel
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Michael’s entire chest was marked with scars. A mixture of burns and deep indentations mutilated his beautiful skin. Tears filled my eyes as I looked at him and reached my hand forward to touch him.
He inhaled sharply at my touch, but remained still. Gently, I ran my finger along a jagged scar below his collar bone.
“Michael…” A tear fell as a sob escaped me. “What happened? Who did this to you?”
I lifted my gaze from his damaged chest and found him staring straight ahead with a pained expression on his handsome face. Retracting my hand from his upper body, I took his hand.
Slowly, his eyes moved to meet my worried gaze. He looked like an empty shell of himself, and it tore through me like a handful of razor blades. Frowning, he stared at me and brought his hand up to wipe a tear from my cheek.
“Don’t cry for me, Angel.” His voice was barely above a whisper and devoid of emotion. “I don’t deserve your tears. I’m hideous, both inside and out… a beast.”
I hated the emptiness reflecting in his eyes. A look of hopelessness overtook him, as if he just lost every shimmer of light in his life. Heaviness weighed on my heart as I stared at him.
This was his secret? Did he think I was going to leave him because he wasn’t perfect?
“Michael, talk to me. What happened?” I needed to know. Had he been in a gang or something similar and murdered people? Was he into kinky sex and all of these scars were voluntary? Numerous possibilities flashed through my mind and I was going to spontaneously combust with the suspense.
“I was five years old the first time my mother beat me so bad that I passed out from the pain of it.” Michael’s words made my heart stop and my stomach turn. “If she beat me before then, I have no recollection of it, but it wouldn’t surprise me if she had.”
Oh my God.
He stared down at our entwined hands as he continued, “I never knew my father. He was living in Texas temporarily for business when he and my mother met. From what she told me, he left her right after she gave birth to me and she never heard from him again. And she always blamed me for it. She thought it was because of me that he left. Which was fucking ridiculous, but people will believe whatever bullshit lies they feed themselves if it makes them feel better.” His voice was packed with venom. “As I got older, I began to look more and more like him and I think it made something snap inside of her. As if, one day, all the wires just broke apart and I became the one thing she despised most in the world. Like I was the sole reason for her unhappiness.”
A cold expression crossed his face as his words took him back to the horrors of his past.
His thumb moved in circles on my hand and I brought his hand up to place a soft kiss on his knuckles. Adjusting my position on the couch, I cuddled beside him, wrapping his arm around my shoulders.
He froze as I slowly laid my head against his scarred chest and his eyes flickered down to me.
“How can you stand to touch that?” He sounded disgusted and my heart broke.
To prove he didn’t repulse me, I placed a tender kiss to one of his scars. “Please continue.”
I laid my head back on his chest and nuzzled into him. Grabbing his other hand, I began caressing my nails against his skin and patiently waited for him to continue talking. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to hear all the gruesome details, but I knew I needed to hear it if we were ever going to move past this.
His heart beat rapidly as I lay against him and he inhaled deeply before continuing his story.
“I’ll spare you the unnecessary gory details, don’t worry.” He leaned down and kissed the top of my head. “The abuse continued for years. We lived in the country where no one could hear my screams when she went on one of her psychotic spells. So no help ever came. I was too afraid to tell anyone about the abuse at school because she always threatened to make the next beating worse if I ever did. I didn’t understand how she could hate me so much, when all I ever wanted was for her to love me. I kept thinking that one day she’d embrace me warmly instead of glare at me with those cold green eyes of hers, but that day never came.
“The older I got, the more her hate for me grew.” His voice shook. “She’d only hit me places she knew I could conceal under clothes. I missed a lot of school because of the abuse. Sometimes I wouldn’t be able to walk for days. She always had an excuse for me, though. She’d call the school and tell them I was absent because I had a weak immune system and was always getting sick. Or that I was an adventurous little boy and was always hurting myself.” He hesitated before continuing.
Tears were already falling down my cheeks as he spoke. What kind of a mother did that to her child?
“The more intense beatings happened in the basement.” His voice wavered on the last word, and I closed my eyes as the tears escaped them.
Be strong, Gabe. For him.
“She chained me to the wall down there and hit me with whatever she could find. The more I screamed, the better it made her feel. I think, in her fucked up head, she felt like with every drop of blood she caused me to shed, a piece of her troubles disappeared. As if I was some sort of vessel to purge her sins on.” Michael’s voice grew cold. “The burn marks came from her cigarettes, occasional cigars, and lighters held directly on my skin. The other scars came from knives, razor blades, sharp tools, whips, and anything she could get her hands on. She was careful not to cut too deep, but deep enough to leave a permanent reminder of how worthless I am. A reminder of how everything was my fault.”
He stopped talking, and I thought he was finished, but when I looked at him, he had tears in his eyes and was staring ahead. For a moment, he looked so young, almost like he was the little boy he spoke of.
“All I ever wanted was for her to love me, and to be proud of me. Whenever I asked her, ‘what did I do wrong?’ she glared down at me with hate-consumed eyes and spit at me, ‘you were born.’ No matter what I did or how hard I tried to be a great son to her, the flames of her hatred never lessened.”
I flinched at the images his words created. In my head, I saw a dark haired, green eyed little boy cowering in a corner as the worst sort of pain was inflicted on him. I clutched onto Michael tighter and tried to control the shudders going through me as I wept quietly against him.
