Page 258 of Like Grim Death: Part One
The last time he beat me…
“Why?” she murmurs.
I swallow down all those thoughts of Malachi, the reason I first let Tomas touch me, but I always found another one. I push back the memory of fucking over Ella with Chelsea. How she cut me afterward, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly fucking enough. Maybe seeing her with that fucker in the bar was adequate punishment, but I don’t think so. I’ve always known I don’t deserve good things. And I definitely don’t deserveElla.Good and bad, she’s the mix of both I’ve always wanted.But I don’t deserve her.
“Why?” I repeat her question back to her, and I’m suddenly wishing I was lying on the floor too. It’s like I can feel all the old wounds along my back. The scars on my spine. “I needed to…”
“A release, right?” Her lips have strings of bile attached to them.
“I don’t believe you.” I push aside everything. The memories. The guilt. Theanger.I try to hold onto facts. The back of my girl’s legs are a wreck, she’s lying in a puddle on the floor. And she’s telling meshehit herself. “Don’t fucking lie to me.” I crawl forward on my knees, dropping down to my palms as I try to get my face closer to hers.
Her entire body is trembling again. “Mavy, I’ll be okay—”
“Don’t fucking lie to me!”I snap the words out and I hate the fact I’m yelling, but she’s not fucking listening and… and…
“The rest of her,” Cain snarls, his words vicious. “While you’re wasting time, I’m going to look at the rest of her.” I glance at him as he steps forward, sinking to his knees too. He slowly reaches for her shirt and my eyes connect with his.
He’s asking me for permission.
“He needs to see, Mav,” Atlas whispers from somewhere behind me. I want to fucking gut him, but I just nod at Cain as Atlas keeps talking. “To know how bad it is.”
“How long will it take?” I whisper over my shoulder, not to anyone in particular, seeing only vague glimpses of the darkened hallway leading to the living room, then the foyer, the entrance. “For the doctor? How fucking long?”
“He’s coming,” Atlas replies, trying to placate me. “He just has to take the elevator up.” But there’s a confusion in his words, and somewhere in the dark recesses of my brain, I understand why.How fucking long does it take to ride an elevator up in an empty hotel?
Aside from that eerie thought, blotting it out, anxiety gnaws at me because I don’t quite understand what exactly is wrong with Ella, beneath her skin. What’s happened to her organs and why she’s throwing up, but I know the doctor needs to fuckinghurry.
Cain lifts up her shirt, revealing the curve of her lower spine over her underwear.
Yellow and blue and black and red and bleeding under her skin.
I feel dizzy. I shift on my knees, tracing my fingers lightly over the marks as Cain holds back her shirt. Some purple and nearly black on the edges, with shades of green in the center, dipping down into the waistband of her underwear… either fingers or a whip or…
“Ella.” Her name catches in my throat. “Who?” My voice breaks, and I hate it. I hate that I'm on my knees and not fixing this for her. Notdoing somethingto protect her. Like I couldn’t with Brooklin running to Jeremiah. Or Malachi running from…
I hang my head, the grief rendering me powerless for a moment, my fingers still pressed lightly above Ella’s bruises.
Why do I always fucking fail everyone around me? Is this my penance for a past life? What did I do when I was a kid, before Malachi, before everything, to deserve this. Much. Fucking. Shit?
What did Ella do to deserve it?
“Mavy,” she whispers, and I press my forehead to her low back, breathing in the clean scent of her and the vanilla she seems to be made of. “I’ll be okay.”
I brush my thumbs over her bare skin and feel her shiver. I keep my touch light, away from the heat of her marks.They’re fucking hot.Like there’s a war under her skin, trying to knit and heal what someone fucked up.
“I’ll be okay,” she whispers again, like she’s reassuring me.
And maybe she thinks she will.
Because…because…
Because you leave marks too.
I want to throw up with that thought. It’s different, isn’t it?It’s different. She wants them. She likes mine, doesn’t she?Where do you draw the line between play and abuse? Is there one, if your partner wants all the bullshit you want to give? Am I taking advantage of her? Nearly six years older with far more life experience, have I fucked this all up?
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
Sorry.
