Page 16 of Wicked Things
I wince as I try and sit forward in the armchair. Goddamn, I hurt. I hurt everywhere. Justin only hit me the once, but I seem to have managed to find someone willing to beat my ass black and blue every night for the past week now, and I’m finally paying the price. Everything aches. Everything feels stiff. It’s almost impossible to move.
Kaya stirs, her eyes opening. She watches me silently as I shift myself forward so that my ass is perched on the edge of the chair.
“You didn’t have to clean,” I say. My voice is hoarse. Even speaking hurts.
“Well, it didn’t look like you were planning on doing it any time soon,” she replies. Sitting up slowly, she holds her hand against her face, covering her right eye as she yawns. She stretches like a cat, then gets to her feet. She holds out her hand to me. “You’re the last thing in this place that needs scrubbing,” she says. “Come on. I’ve been waiting for you to wake up.”
“I can manage. Thank you. Thank you for all of this. You can go home now.”
Her shoulders slump. She sighs. “Like hell I can. If I leave right now, you’re going to sit in that chair and rot. You know it’s true. Plus I’ll probably never see you again. It’s not as if you’re very good at answering phone calls, is it? You’re really bad at answering your front door, too.”
These are poorly veiled digs. Every day for two weeks after the funeral, she called me and came to the apartment. She brought me food. She wanted to know if I was alive. She was worried, and she was panicked. I refused to see or speak to her. I left her Tupperware containers of food right where she left them in the hallway next to the door until I started tripping over them when I snuck out at night to buy more booze, and I started throwing them directly into the trash.
When I don’t accept her hand, Kaya reaches down and takes hold of mine, pulling at me, growling under her breath. “You’re such a shit, Mason. You think you’ve cornered the market on grief? You think you’re the only person who’s ever experienced loss? Damnit, let me help you or you’re going to fall. Mas—urgh. Okay. Have it your way.”
I’m shaky on my feet, but I manage to get up without her. She herds me toward the bathroom. She’s cleaned in here, too. I try not to look at the area of cracked tile to the left of the bath, where I used to sit and hold Millie when she wasn’t feeling well. I’ve avoided coming in here as much as possible. I can’t avoid it now, though, with Kaya blocking the doorway, arms folded across her body.
“Do you need me to help you?” she asks.
“No. I’m fine.” Slowly, I take hold of the hem of my blood stained t-shirt, and I try and lift it over my head. It’s impossible, though. A sharp pain lances through my ribcage, blinding me for a second, and I can’t help but hiss.
Kaya mutters something softly. The next thing I know, she’s taking hold of my shirt and she’s using a pair of narrow steel scissors to cut through it. I watch her hands as she carefully shears through the material, and I hold my breath. She works slowly, moving with purpose as the blades of the scissors move higher and higher, until she reaches the neck of the shirt and cuts right through it, exposing my bare chest.
She slides the shirt from my body, down over my arms, allowing it to fall to the floor, her gaze traveling over my bruised and battered flesh. Her eyes beginning to fill, shining brightly with emotion.
“Don’t. Don’t fucking do that,” I tell her.
She dashes her tears away with the back of her hand, shaking her head as if to clear it. “Alright. Fine. I won’t.” Her words are clipped. Hurt. Her hands work quickly, unfastening my belt buckle, then my pants. She pushes them down, pulling them from my body, right leg first, then left. My shoes and socks are already gone; she must have removed those while I was sleeping.
I stand in front of her, naked as the day I was born, and our eyes meet. A vast sea of pain passes between us in the frozen moments that follow. She’s angry with me. Angry that I didn’t let her help me a month ago. She’s angry that I’ve allowed myself to be hurt so badly. She’s angry that I’m still trying to push her away, even now.
And I’m angry, because…
I can’t even say it. Not even in my head.
She turns on the water, grimacing when she puts her hand beneath powerful surge of water that bursts out of the showerhead. I already know it’s cold. Freezing cold. No gas, after all. She shakes her head, about to turn off the water again, but I place my hand over hers, stopping her. “Don’t. I need it. It’ll do me good.”
The next few minutes are brutal. I stand under the frigid, freezing water, shivering, my teeth clenched together so hard it feels like they’re about to shatter any second, and Kaya washes me. I let her do it. It’s quicker this way. Less chance of me slipping and breaking my own fucking neck or something. My dick shrinks to about a third of its normal size and damn near tries to retract back inside my body, but I don’t care. Kaya isn’t even looking, anyway; she works with clinical precision, cleaning my body without any embarrassment. Last, she massages some shampoo into my hair and scrubs hard. I tolerate the discomfort of the water and the soap stinging my eyes, because it feels strangely good to have someone touching me. Some form of human contact that isn’t actually causing me pain.
I didn’t think I’d want it. I didn’t think I’d need it. But by the time Kaya is done rinsing the suds from my hair, I’m silently crying. She doesn’t mention it. There’s no judgment or recrimination in her eyes. She simply does what she needs to do, and I let the tears streak down my face.
My tears flow freely as I allow her to dry me, and they continue to come as she sits me down and shaves me with steady, extremely careful hands. I put on clean clothes, and she guides me to my bedroom, where she’s put fresh sheets on my bed. She climbs in first, fully clothed, and waits there with a challenge in her eyes, daring me to say something to her, to ask her what she thinks she’s doing.
I don’t. I climb into the bed, and she puts her arm around me, so that my head is on her chest, and she lightly strokes my hair. I’ve never done this with a girl before. In my living memory, I can’t actually recall being held in this way by anyone, let alone a woman. Let alone a tiny, five foot two woman. It feels… I can’t even describe how it feels. Despite her size, Kaya as an immeasurable strength to her that makes this somehow feel…normal.
“I get it, you know,” she whispers. “I do. I know that you hate me.”
God.
I close my eyes.
“You hate me, because you were with me. She needed you, and you weren’t at home where you were meant to be, because I talked you into staying with me. She needed you. She was dying, and you weren’t by her side. You were fucking me instead. So I understand, Mason. And it’s okay. It’s okay for you to hate me. I’m strong. I can love you enough for the both of us, until you’re ready to feel something else again.”
My eyes begin to sting once more. She says all of this so easily, like my anger toward her isn’t a vile, awful, spiky thing inside me that is constantly twisting and turning, making me feel gutted out and hollow. She sees it. She can feel it. I’ve been trying to push it down, to stamp it out altogether for the longest time now, but no matter how hard I try, I just can’t seem to make it happen.
My feelings make no sense whatsoever.None. And yet, I feel fucking robbed. I didn’t get to say goodbye to my sister. I didn’t get to hold her as she died, the way Kaya is holding me now. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive myselforher for that.
SEVEN
