“I can’t do this,” I whispered, feeling my heart crack inside my chest. For just a moment last night, he’d made me believe that something might be possible. That we could find a way through the issues we both clearly needed to deal with and find something on the other side.
“Good. Had enough of slumming it already?” he asked.
“That’s not what I mean,” I said, shaking my head in exasperation as tears burned my throat. I couldn’t cry, not here, with an entire audience watching. Humiliation burned through me, leaving me with a rising anger that he would do this to me. That he was so stuck up his own ass that he couldn’t see how much he hurt me.
Or maybe he just didn’t care.
“You’re so hot and cold. One minute you’re demanding everything from me...and then the next…” I trailed off, all too aware of the men listening to our every word.
“I’m a man, Butterfly,” he said mockingly. “You made yourself available. That’s all it was.”
I nodded, feeling the first tear break free from my eye as I turned on my heel and headed for the door without another word. I kept my shoulders straight, determined not to let him see me break. That would come behind closed doors with no one to watch.
I made my way through the exit, emerging into the suddenly refreshing sharp air of March. He didn’t follow me, and I doubted he ever would.
I was nothing to men like Scar. Never enough for anyone to stick around.
Things were better that way.
I dropped my purse on the kitchen counter, blinking at it when it tipped over and the contents spilled all over the white marble. My signature red lipstick rolled across the surface, falling to the floor with a small thump on the other end.
I turned away, heading for my bedroom. Stripping off my clothes and quickly pulling on a comfortable nightgown, I moved through the room in the numb trance that had settled over me after Scar’s rejection, after the stinging implication that I’d made myself a whore for him to use.
By trying to be there for him in the way he wouldn’t admit he needed, I’d opened myself up to the heartbreak that came from being nothing. Nothing more than live porn for his entertainment.
I pulled the sleeping pills out of the top drawer of my nightstand as I dropped onto the edge of the bed. Twisting the cap open, I shook two out onto my hand and popped them into my mouth. Swallowing them dry without any difficulty, I returned the bottle to the nightstand and settled back against the pillows.
I didn’t bother to get under the covers, instead staring down at the faint scars on my thighs and running my nails over the sensitive skin. The urge to add to the marks was almost overwhelming, making my fingers twitch with the desire to reach for the knife I kept in the nightstand drawer for the nights when the emptiness became too much.
When even sleep couldn’t seem to shake off that hollow feeling inside me.
Scar’s demand that I go to him when I needed the pain only added to the desire, the reality of that little lie sliding over my skin and making me feel dirty. He knew my darkest truths. He’d used them to make me think there could be something in the future, if he cared enough to keep me from cutting my skin. Knowing it was nothing…that deception hurt worst of all.
It was a reminder that men lied and used, a reminder that they hurt and they took. That at the end of the day, they were all the same.
Just looking for another way to get off.
I dropped my head back to the pillow as my hand wandered to the nightstand drawer, pulling the knife free and switching open the blade. I raised it to my face, running my fingers along the smooth metal surface before I lifted my nightie further up my thighs.
The memory of Scar’s attention fixated on my pussy washed over me, encouraging me to spread my legs as I ran the tip of the knife over the sensitive skin of the scars. Sliding it around to the inside of my thigh, I pressed down just hard enough to draw a small line of blood.
The burn of the cut made me hiss, pushing back the numbness with the force of a wrecking ball. With it came the pain I’d neglected to feel, the agony of mattering so little.
But at least I wasn’t numb. At least I knew I was alive.
It was ironic, to live in a way that I needed to bleed to remember I wasn’t a walking corpse. That I hadn’t risen from the dead without full cognitive and emotional functioning.
I tucked the knife away as tears stung my eyes and streamed down my face slowly. I leaned my head back onto the pillow further, relaxing into the blissful haze of my sleeping pills that would carry me away from this place where I would need to continue to cut myself in order to feel.
I wasn’t the perfect princess everyone thought they saw when they looked at me. I was nothing more than a broken shell of a woman who was so emotionally fragile, one rejection drove me to medication and self-harm.
But at least I wasn’t numb.
15
SCAR
I leaned forward, touching my head to the steering wheel in front of me.
She was late. In all the days I’d spent watching Irina like a creep from the shadows, I’d never seen her arrive at Fresh Start any later than the ass crack of dawn. But that hour had long since passed, the sun risen, and young kids were dropped off with the daycare employees while their parents went to school or work or wherever they spent their time.
Still, there was no sign of the woman who made the organization run like a well-oiled machine. No sign of her trademark red lipstick adding a shock of color to the space which could have felt authoritarian.
Snatching my cell off the passenger side seat, I dialed her number and pressed it to my ear. I had no right to be watching for her at work, no right to call her after the things I’d said to her the night before.
All I needed was to see her one more time, to watch her paste on her happy face and know that she would survive and thrive just like she always did. To remind myself that I was just another inconsequential man, and that she would be better off without me.
The phone rang in seemingly endless repetition when she didn’t answer, until eventually her voicemail picked up. I ended the call without leaving a message, knowing I couldn’t exactly fault her for not answering my calls.
I wouldn’t have either.
Fuck.
I tossed the phone back onto the seat, shifting the SUV into drive, and pulled out of my spot in the lot. Heading toward Irina’s apartment came too naturally, something that I never should have done, but I still needed to see her.
The drive was short despite the traffic, since Irina had clearly chosen her apartment for the proximity it offered to the workplace that she valued so much. I drove around the lot until I found her car, then parked in the empty space next to it, staring at it in confusion.
A glance up to her windows confirmed her bedroom curtains were still pulled closed, and she always opened them when she woke up in the morning.
Was she sick?
I needed to let her go—needed to stay away—yet I found myself shoving my phone into my back pocket as I threw open my door and stood from the car. I clicked the lock button on my key fob as I made my way toward the building, slipping inside the front door when someone left with as much ease as I had the night before.
She needed security, a doorman, cameras, and alarms. Instead, she lived in a place with nothing to protect a woman who looked like her, who men would use and abuse and take advantage of at the first hint that they could get away with it.