Pray for Darkness (2 page)

Chapter 2

Trevor

She claws at her knees. The sound of her nails scraping her jeans overwhelms the subtle whirring of the overhead fan. She rocks back and forth, and though she can’t be moving more than a few inches my stomach reacts as if I’d just seen her throw herself into a wall.

“Who hurt you, Sasha?” I try to keep the panic from my voice. I try to remain calm. I don’t know if it’s working or if it even matters because I don’t think she’s listening to me.

“Behind where I work. I mean worked. The parking lot.”

Something steals my breath from me. It steals the air from the room. The fan stops, or maybe I can just no longer hear it over the dull pounding in my head that drowns out everything but the sound of her nails scratching her jeans faster, faster, faster.

“I was wearing Brian’s ring. He’d just asked me to marry him, and I was so happy. And then it cut my lip—the ring cut my lip when the man pushed my head into the car.”

My knuckles hit the table.
My hands are shaking
, I realize.
Every part of me is shaking
.

“Brian asked why my lip was cut. I told him I fell at work, and he got worried and said I had to be more careful. Then he asked if I’d lost the ring because I wasn’t wearing it, and I said no, I still had it.” Her voice grows louder and shriller. “I should have said I lost it. Then I wouldn’t have to tell him that I never wanted to wear it again, that I never wanted to touch anything I’d worn that day again. But he brought it out and put it on my finger and held my hand and kissed it and told me he loved me, and I just couldn’t be with him anymore. I couldn’t stand to be near him. It felt like his lips were swallowing me. I hated him. I hated his body. I didn’t want him to fucking touch me—for anyone to ever fucking touch me again.”

I think I’ve fallen out of my chair. I think I’m on the floor. I think someone is shoveling dirt over my body. There’s something burning in my lungs, like I’ve just taken a hit. Fire surges through my veins, burning my organs to ash; my heart still beats even though I know its crumbling.

“Who?” That guttural sound can’t possibly be my voice. “Who did this to you?”

She flinches. No, not just flinches—her face twists as she whips it to the side as if she’s bracing herself for being hit.

“Who did this?”

She inhales. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? Who was it?”

“I said, I don’t know—”

She won’t stop shaking. She’s going to hurt herself if she doesn’t stop shaking.

I don’t realize I’m up until I hear the chair hit the floor and her shoulders are in my hands. Her chair slides, almost tipping over, as I push her back into the wall. She continues shaking, shaking so hard that I’m afraid I can’t keep her still unless I use all my strength. She looks up at me with wide, glassy, terrified eyes.

She can’t possibly be looking at me
, I think.
She can’t possibly have any reason to ever look at me like this
. I’ve never seen
any
woman look at me like this, and she’s the last person I want to be afraid of me. But I don’t let go. I can’t. My fingers dig into her skin, probably hurting her, but I can’t stop.

“Who was it?” I repeat. “Who did this to you? Tell me.”

She shuts her eyes and turns her head as if she can no longer stand looking at me. “I don’t know.”

Every part of me burns. My heart’s disintegrated, now. Only ghosts of my organs are left, caged by charred bone. “You don’t know.”

“I’m sorry…I…” Her chin brushes against the top of my hand. “I don’t know.”

She’s apologizing to me. All that happened to her and
she’s
apologizing to
me
.

Something swarms inside me, making me feel at once enraged and helpless, and then I recognize the impulse behind it. I want to hit something, to hurt something, to break everything. I should be anywhere but here right here right now. Being this close to her when I feel like this scares me. I can’t believe I’m touching her with these filthy, furious hands.

I bow down until my head hits her bony shoulder. “No.”

Her cold hands slid over the coiled snakes inked onto my wrists. Her hands are delicate. Small. Beautiful. Someone else saw how beautiful they were, and instead of cherishing these hands he tried to break them.

“No,” I whisper again. My tongue dries on her shirt. My mouth fills with the taste of cotton.

She’s gasping. Choking. Her stubby, chewed down nails dig into the tops of my hands. “I can’t. I can’t say it. I can’t.”

“Then don’t.” I don’t want her to say it. I already know, and it breaks me. If I hear her say it and I still know I can do nothing…

I’m such a fucking coward.

I wrap my arms around her, pulling her close. Her heartbeat mirrors mine—furious and overwhelming.
She’s so fragile
, I remind myself.
You can’t hold her like this. She said she hated Brian’s touch, that she never wanted to be touched again. You’re going to break her
. But I can’t stop holding her, tighter and tighter, as if my pathetic, useless strength could somehow achieve something.

She doesn’t try to push me away but she doesn’t quite accept me either. Her shoulder knocks against my chin with every sob, and her hands claw at my back the same way they’d clawed at her legs. When she settles down, she presses her damp cheek to my temple.

“I—I need…” she presses her wet lips to my skin. “I need you.”

I don’t know what she needs me for and I don’t care. I’ll do it. I run my hands up her back, feel her spine through her thin shirt. My fingers get tangled in the hair stuck to the nape of her neck. “I’m here, sweetheart. I’m always here.”

“You won’t be.”

“Yes I will. I’m not going anywhere.”

“No, you’ll go.” Her voice breaks and she starts shaking again, more violently, wringing the front of my shirt as if it’s the only thing holding her up. “I need you.”

“I know you do and I’m not going anywhere.”

She pulls in a loud, ugly breath through her nostrils, choking on it. “Don’t say that until I tell you.”

“Nothing you could say is going to change anything.”

“Just don’t. Please.”

“Alright.” My hand moves over the back of her skull, holding her head in place. “I won’t say anything more. Just tell me what you need, sweetheart.”

“H-hurt.”

I know it hurts. I’ll take all your pain away. I won’t let anything hurt you again
. My parted lips spread over her salty, wet cheeks. I can’t say it. I don’t have that much power, so won’t those kinds of words seem empty now? They aren’t what she needs to hear. Their lies I want to tell myself because I let this happen to her.

The anger returns, making my arms shake. My teeth knock into hers. Our mouthes are next to each other, gasping.

Warm, pomegranate flavored breath fills my mouth. “Hurt me,” she whispers.

This time I can’t hold back. “I won’t let anyone hurt you.” I’m not even thinking when I say it. My finger pads caress the the back of her skull. Her sobs grow louder. She seems to shrink in my arms. But I can’t stop saying all these things I want to be true. “I won’t let anyone hurt you ever again.”

She sucks in air through her stuffy nose. “But I want you to.”

“You want me to what?”

“Hurt me.” She pushes her mouth into my shoulder. I feel her teeth through my shirt. “I want you to hurt me.”

I stop rubbing her head. My hand curls around the curve of her skull. I can’t be hearing her correctly.

We stand like that together. My shirt gets wetter as she bites down harder on my shoulder. “I want you to fuck me.”

I got still.

There’s no way she just said that.

No. Fucking. Way.

Her hands slide down my arms. She leans into me. I groan and shut my eyes, trying hard not to think about the fact that I think she’d just said
fuck me
and the immediate, precise effect hearing those words from her lips had on me.

Her stomach hits my hips. Oh fuck. There’s no way to hide it now. My erection is pushing up against her navel.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so disgusted with myself. What the fuck is wrong with me? How can I even get it upright? Was it really just because she was so close? I grab her shoulders and push her back.

“Trev.” Her lips open. Time stops as her tongue darts between them, pink against red. I realize she has make-up on, applied way too thickly, like she’s trying to hide something. “I know you want me.”

My blood pounds in my arms. “I don’t understand.”

She looks down at my pants and shivers. “I think you do.” She shrugs out of my grip and brings her hands to the collar of her blouse. I watch as she pops the first button off.

It isn’t much skin. I saw her naked the summer I met her, and since I’ve seen her in bikinis and dresses that left all too little to the imagination. But something about that simple motion mesmerizes me. The moves to the next button, undoes it, undoes something in me…

I see her white lacy bra and grab her hands. “Stop. You’re not thinking.”

Her bottom lip trembles.

“You don’t realize what you’re doing. I mean, after what happened…fuck, I don’t know…but I don’t think this is right. I think you need to see someone. Not to fuck, but to talk to.” Christ, could I sound like any more of an asshole?

She flinches. “Already you’re saying no, and I haven’t even told you what I want.”

“What do you mean you haven’t told me?”

“I want you to take me, Trevor.”

“Take you where?” I feel like I’m trapped in a High School sketch in sitcoms, one where the popular girl seduces the nerdy guy and there are tons of unfunny puns, only this situation wasn’t meant to be funny. It was a nightmare.

She takes a deep breath. “I want you to throw me on the bed. I want you to rip off my clothes and overpower me as I struggle. I want to do everything I can to try to push you off, and I want to be unsuccessful.”

It’s hard to hear her voice over her stuttering and ugly sound of her sucking air in through her nose to keep it from running. I must be mishearing her. This can’t be real. This is some horrific scenario my mind has conjured in its most recent attempt to try to make me stop loving her. It won’t work. There’s nothing anyone could do to make me hate her, or stop wanting her.

I sigh. “You need to talk to someone about this.”

I feel her hand above my heart. This time it’s me who flinches at the contact. “They say that after someone has been traumatized, they should be reintroduced to their trauma in order to overcome it.”

“I don’t think this is what they had in mind, Sasha.”

She runs her fingers up my chest to my neck. She pulls down my head until our lips are almost touching. “Every time I shut my eyes I feel his body on top of mine. I think about him more than I’ve ever thought about anyone, even the people I love. It’s like he hurt me so bad that he became the only thing that could exist in my heart. I don’t want to talk to someone about it. I don’t want to talk, and talk, and talk until it eats away whatever’s left of me. I don’t want it to kill me, do you understand? I don’t want to feel anything anymore.”

What are you asking me to do exactly, Sasha?
I don’t ask. I already know. Even if she hadn’t told me, a sick understanding has already begun to form in the back of my mind. “This isn’t right.”

“Of course it isn’t, but it’s necessary.”

I can’t believe our lips are so close and I’m not kissing her.
She doesn’t want to be kissed; she wants to be hurt.
“I can’t.”

She moves her hand back down my chest, to my pants. I suck in a breath.

“I think you’d be surprised at what you can do—what any person could do. I know you want me.”

“No I don’t.”
Not like this
.

“Then why are you so hard? You’re so hard you’re trembling.”

“Stop it.”

Her hand grips my cock through my jeans. I groan as she holds it softly, tentatively, like she’s never held a cock before.

“Do this one thing for me and you can have me however you want, in any way you want, for as long as you want.”

No. If I do this, then I can never have you how I want to
. I push her back. “I don’t want this.”

She swallows. “Hit me.”

“What?”

“I said hit me.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

Her face crumbles. “Hit me. Please.”

The room is spinning. “I think you need to call Dianne.”

Her eyes sharpen. “No.”

“Di doesn’t know, does she? You should to tell her. You need support from your friends.”

“No.” She staggers forward. “I don’t want to tell them.”

“You don’t have a choice, sweetheart.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

I glance away. “I know you’re going to hate me for this—”

“No!”

“—But I can’t let you do this to yourself.”

“No Trev!” she shrieks. “Don’t you fucking do it. I asked because I knew you wouldn’t tell anyone. That’s the only reason why I asked!”

My hand shakes as I reach for my pocket. She always told me everything back then because I never tattled on her. I even took the blame when she got caught. Always.

I guess this will be the last time.

I try to reason with her. “You can’t go through this alone.”

“Fuck you! You don’t fucking understand shit!”

I fumble around in my pocket for a few seconds. Where is my damn cell? “I can’t help you like this. What you were asking me to do—that isn’t helping.”

Her upper lip curls back. “I can’t fucking believe you. I can’t fucking believe you’d even dare to take away my choice again.”

Her words stun me. “That’s not what I’m doing.”

“Yes it is.
You
want to decide when I tell somebody.
You
want to decide what I do. And do you know what the worst part about it is? You don’t know anything. You’re just following a fucking blueprint in your head. You’re trying to pass me off to someone else because you don’t want to deal with it. Well I don’t want to fucking deal with it either, asshole, but I don’t get a choice!”