Page 159 of Ominous: Part 1
I think of his phone. His passcode. Him on his knees.
All I manage to get out is, “Don’t fuck with me again.” It’s half-hearted. My voice is even distant. I’m barely here.
He studies me a long moment. Then he says, like he means it, “Okay.”
“Don’t forget your stupid phone.”
He smiles, shaking his head, then he drops his hands from me, turning to grab his phone and push it into his pocket.
My mind jumps to Dominic and deviousness as he turns to face me again. If Eli is lonely, how far could I push him? Could I make him…needme?
As we walk to his car, hand in hand, the family going for a stroll in the park giving us shallow head nods, the man glancing at my skirt and Eli parking his hand on my hip and pulling me into his side, I can’t help but agree with him, about the torture of ignoring him.
No matter what we do to each other, hearing about everything he let Luna do, it’s all preferable to not speaking to him at all.
It makes the thought of the future hurt that much more. I think I’d let him get away with anything at all, stabbing me over and over and over, if only he would beg me to come back, over and over again, just like this.
The torture kind of makes life worth living. The power makes me feel loved.
It’s why we won’t make it.
You can only survive so many knife wounds before you simply… bleed out.
27
Eden
I sketch out,in words, the backstory to my main character of the book I’m working on. Sitting alone in the darkness of the library, earbuds in and my phone face down and on silent, I think about my heroine’s trauma.
We put so much emphasis on it. The worst things that ever happened to us. Like an ugly, red wax stamp sealed over our foreheads, marking it for life. My heroine has a past, sure, but much like my own, she doesn’t spend every waking moment thinking about it.
After I finish up the two sentences it takes to sum up the low point of her childhood, I drop my pen to my notebook and my head into my hands. Spreading my elbows, knocking intoThe Light of Egypt, the black tome sliding across the table, I massage my temples as BANKS plays in my ear.
But inside my head, I hear Eli’s words from yesterday morning, in the park. Touching on my own trauma.“You don’t like anyone to touch you, except me.”
He hasn’t asked, but Nic did. Another of my exes too. I always stumbled over the truth.“I just don’t like to be touched.”
It’s true. Fingers on my skin make me feel trapped. Stuck. Sweaty. It’s not painful or emotionally loaded. It’s just… I like to be in control, and with a hand on my body, I don’t feel that way.
Is there trauma?
I press my thumbs over my eyelids. Who cares? We all have it.
Sighing, I sit up, snatching up my phone and curling up in my chair. I’m wearing ripped leggings, the destroyed jean jacket I keep hidden from Mom over a tied white tee I think used to belong to Sebastian.
Eli has texted me.
I don’t even read it, despite the fact I want to. I know what I told him yesterday morning in the woods. I know he thought when he got on his knees for me, he absolved himself of his sins.
But the more I’ve imagined his dick in someone else’s mouth, the more I’ve distanced myself from him.And the more he’s chased me.
I open up a message from Manda.
Her: Maybe we can get together soon?
A pang of guilt courses through me. Even after what happened, she was on my side. I was escorted down the hall, and she walked beside me, stride for stride. I remember wishing she hadn’t. I remember hating the pity rolling off of her in waves, even as she glared at people snickering on the sidelines, crowded around lockers, discreetly snapping photos with their phones.
I’ve left Amanda on read for a few days now, and in that time, she’s sent three messages. I don’t know why the fuck I’m like this.
