Colour Series Box Set (11 page)

Rowan held me tonight as I cried like a baby on the floor for what seemed like hours. His athletic arms were strong around my body but gentle they didn’t harm me just held me, I hate being touched but his touch didn’t send me over the edge into a full blown panic attack. I feel like my tears have purged this petulant child in me. His body felt so strong, so safe, and so warm. He smelled so clean and manly there was nothing sweet about his smell. I felt safe for a few minutes in his arms. For those few minutes, I didn’t want to die. I felt my will to live spark just a little bit, the black hole of my life won’t go away I know that but for a few minutes I was able to think maybe I can actually live, here, with Rowan. His anger earlier had scared me; I felt the fear cripple me even though I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. Well he wouldn’t hurt my body but I know who he is and what he does so I know he could hurt me so many other ways. Just being near a murderer was enough to hurt, I should know.

Rowan says he wants to fix me. I don’t think I can be fixed but I think I need to try. I want to stay here I want to be home and start again, I have no one except Rowan so I have no choice but to trust him with my life. My ugly, rotten, broken life. I have no desire in me to leave this place and if I’m going to hang onto this tiny scrap of will I have to live now, it needs to be here, at home.

I wonder if he’s still awake. My watch says it’s three in the morning. I’m never going to get any sleep the nightmares are too close to the surface tonight biting at me every time I close my eyes. I want to tell Rowan the truth; I want this new beginning to be a clean one. If I want to live here, I need him to let me and he’s not going to let this go.

I open my door as quietly as I can and walk towards to Rowan’s door; at least he never came and locked me in. I knock quietly. I can still hear the music so if he’s sleeping he won’t hear me. I knock once more before losing my bravado fast. I turn to retreat back to my room. Halfway there, I hear his door crack open and as I look back he looks around the corner at me. “Can we talk now Rowan?” He looks at his watch. I look at his naked chest covered in ink. It’s almost completely black with intricate artwork and script. Wow. I hold my breath waiting not looking at his eyes I can’t peel mine away from the human canvas in front of me. His hair is a mess and his eyes give me an idea of how tired this man is.

“Sure, come in,” he grumbles. I was really thinking like in the kitchen or the lounge but my brain can’t function past the work of art I just saw. I follow him into his room; the smell of him surrounds me as I step in the door almost taking my breath away as I breathe it in. He grabs his T-shirt and covers his beautiful painted chest; I am almost disappointed because I wanted to look closer. I wonder to myself what Rowan’s story reads like? Is that his story written on his skin, mine is written on my skin by way of horrendous scars. He breaks my brain fog by grabbing my hand and dragging me down onto a small couch at the bottom of his bed where he already sits. I flinch at his touch and he lets go immediately. My heart is pounding so hard it’s all I hear and I can feel its drum beat in my eyeballs. “Talk, I will listen Ellia.” He is almost harsh in the way he says it but his eyes give a different message a softer one. Those blue eyes that betray his emotions every time he opens his mouth to speak.

“He hurt me Rowan.” I manage to crack out in a rough croaking voice that reveals just how close to the surface my tears still are. I don’t want to cry but I know I will. I can’t switch it off anymore because I don’t need too.

“I know.” His answer is swift and clipped. He tries to get himself comfortable in the seat next to me. He seems awkward and fidgety tonight. He wanted to know and if I don’t do this now I never will.

I suck in a long breath before I can begin to retell the horrors of my marriage.

“No, you don’t Rowan. You don’t know at all.” I slump my shoulders forwards defeated and ready to let him hear what has been my reality for the last eight years.

I retell the story of my wedding night the beating and rape and as the words flow out of me, I feel lighter. Like it’s wiping it out of me, but as I let it all go I see the pure rage building behind Rowan’s eyes, they are no longer soft. They burn with all the fire within him. I know he is not a good man and his eyes betray him now showing me the fires that burn in his soul are hotter than those in hell. His big hands are fisted in front of him as he leans forward on his knees trying not to look at me, trying not to snap and break with burden of my father’s sins. I explain to Rowan who Renzo is and why he chose me to be his wife, that my suffering was penance for him losing his mother and her unborn child. Rowan doesn’t say a word as I relay the countless ways in which I was broken and beaten and stripped of my humanity, he doesn’t need to say anything I can see the anger winding every muscle in his body tighter with each word I speak. I don’t tell him about my babies. I cannot share that with anyone. Their little hearts are my sadness to carry alone.

“He burned me, scared my skin, stabbed me, beat me and kicked me every chance he got. Never my face, hands or below my knees so no one could ever see how broken my body was. But the scars will never be gone they may fade a little but they will remind me of that devil forever.”

I stop talking and we just sit there in silence I feel like the weight of ten trucks has been lifted off my soul. Now my torment is not only my own but I can see that all I have done is make it Rowan’s. He sits with his head cradled in his hands looking down at the floor between his knees he has moved as far away from me as the couch will allow. Even though there’s distance, I can feel the heat of his anger burning off him from where I sit. I close my eyes and let a few last tears escape as I sit and try to just breathe. Rowan’s jaw is ticking like a time bomb he clenching it so tight I am scared of his anger and what may follow.

“Show me. Show me every mark he made on you so I can make him pay for it Ellia, get up and show me.” His words are loaded with rage and vengeance and bring me right out of the peace I had found seconds before. I cannot show him my body my broken body. My body cannot be fixed, my mind maybe, just maybe. My eyes tell him that I can’t pleading with him to leave this alone. “Now Ellia!” He yells loudly scaring me and I my brain reverts back to victim back to prey back to do as you are told so you won’t hurt as much. Just do it, switch off and do as you are told Little One.

The steady flow of tears stream down my face as I stand up and begin to remove my clothes. I can do nothing to hide my humiliation at what he will see now. I am used to being forced to strip for Renzo to inspect his torture many times. I take down my pants without looking at Rowan’s face, I don’t want to see his face. I don’t want to see what he sees and I know those eyes won’t lie. I lift my shirt over my head and close my eyes as hard as I can and I stand there as still as I can. I can’t stop the tears they just flow and my breaths are shallow. I know Rowan is looking at me, at every burn mark at every unstitched cut at the horrendous scar on my shoulder. I know what he sees, I see it in the mirror every day and it’s ugly, as ugly as my life has been for eight long years. I’m ugly. I can’t do this anymore. I’m going to be sick so I turn my back to him so he cannot see my face as I try not to wretch. I hear his low gasp as he sees my back and I crumble to floor heaving, sobbing and broken. Even more broken than I was when I walked in here because now someone knows. He has seen my ugly and he knows he can’t fix it now. Now he understands.

I hear him move his bare feet across the floor, please don’t touch me, please don’t. The door clicks closed he just leaves me in my little pile on the floor. Every scar on my body burns with the same pain as the day the wound was made as I just lay there in a broken mess of tears and my ugly naked body. I’m paralyzed to move. My heart is still thundering, maybe it will have a heart attack and I can finally just die. That sliver of light that I saw when I wanted to live, is gone again.

I was such a fool. I can’t be fixed. All I’ve done is make my ugliness a part of someone else. I should never have told him anything. My mind shuts down and I feel my eyeballs fill with blood. I am going to pass out. The familiar feeling of a pending panic attack fills my body slowly. First my throat goes dry and closes off to the air I need so much, then my lungs burn and my mind shuts down at last. Blackness, quiet, peace. Please let me be dead. I don’t want to wake up again.

I CAN’T BREATHE.
I can’t breathe I cannot force the air into my lungs. I’m all but running down the hall and I fling myself on the floor of the guest bathroom before I throw up my dinner and I think everything I have eaten in a month. I can’t get the sight of her body out my head as I dry heave into the toilet. How did she live that horror story? How is she even alive? I could see from some of her scars how deep he had stabbed her. Not one had the marks of being stitched up. That fucking bastard. I’m ashamed at how I’ve treated her, I never knew what lay beneath her clothes. I feels an even deeper guilt now that I stopped watching her, I could have stopped that from happening. I hate myself right now I’m a failure.

My mind won’t stop raking back over every inch of her skin, every inch marked and broken. Every angry purple scar feeding my rage. Her beautiful thighs slathered with burns I know came from his filthy cigars. I am sure I saw scars from bite marks across her breast. I feel bile rising up my throat again. I close my eyes trying to erase what I have seen but I the images just become clearer.

When she couldn’t stand it any longer and turned away from me I saw her back and that was my undoing I couldn’t stay a second longer. The raised scars stretching from her knees all the way up to her neck where I know he has whipped her with a shambok and god knows what else. I shouldn’t have made her do that, I saw the terror when she begged me with her eyes not too. Her words had made it sound so bad, but seeing it they seem to have revealed nothing of what she has lived for eight, fucking eight years. I needed the control of knowing everything I was responsible for and I pushed her.

The reason behind it all hurts me even more. He was punishing her for what Mick did to his mother. He kept her alive to punish her. When he found out he could gain from her death he didn’t have the balls to finish what he started so he hired me. Coward, what a fucking coward. I can’t put out the fire of rage burning in me. I want to kill him, I need to kill him. I want to hurt him and break him and make him die slowly. He killed her for eight years.

She is right, I can’t fix her. I don’t think anyone could fix her. But I can let her live. She spent eight years dying slowly every day. I can let her live. She feels safe here and I won’t let her go but I will let her live and maybe heal a little.

I haul myself up off the cold tiled floor and take in a big breath of air trying to get myself ready to go back and face her after I ran away like baby. I should have stayed, said something, anything. It was just too much.

I push her room door open and look in, but it’s empty so I go back to my room. She is exactly where I left her on the floor in a pile every inch of her broken body still on display. I can’t look I don’t want to see it anymore, but I can’t leave her there. As I bend down I can tell she has fainted. I have seen enough people faint in my job to know she isn’t just asleep. It was too much for her, I am such an idiot. I grab a blanket from the back of the couch and cover her body. As I lift her up off the floor her small frame melts into my chest and for the first time in my life since Cassie died, I feel a tear escaping down my cheek. I don’t know why but in that moment, I just can’t let go, I should not have done this. I’ve broken her even more. I lift her into my bed and cover her with my sheets. I slide in behind her and hold her unconscious body against mine and beg for sleep to take me away. Her words from earlier haunt my effort to sleep.
“Who will pay for your sins Rowan?”
I lay there awake as I see dawn breaking through my curtains. I just hold this broken shell of a woman in my arms and I know for the very first time since I was just a boy and since Cassie died, that I am feeling. Feelings scare the shit out of me. I do know that no one can pay for my sins except me and no one ever will. I want to stop feeling but I cannot stop whatever it is I feel for her.