Keeping his gaze on my hand, he slowly placed his own hand over mine. I turned mine over and his fingers threaded through mine. Sweat coated his palm and his hold was shaky.
“Hank, he would… do things that… that hurt me.”
I nodded, praying to God that I could keep my emotions in check. “To your heart, or your body?”
“Both.”
“Okay. And how did you feel about that?” It was always a stupid question. Anyone in their right mind would know how it would fucking feel. But it was a question that opened up so many possibilities, and hopefully gained an insight to the mind-set of the patient, as cold as that sounded.
He shrugged. Still he kept his eyes on our joined hands, refusing to look me in the eye. He was quiet for a long time, thinking, musing. His gaze became unfocussed as he retreated inside his mind. “After a while I didn’t feel anything.”
Bile coated my throat. He’d endured so many tortures for so long that he’d become immune to them. Much like when you get so used to your own perfume that after so long you can’t smell it any longer. It wasn’t either nice or nasty. It just was.
“Pain made me feel, Kloe.”
I lifted my eyes to his. It became difficult to breathe under the intensity of his stare. Anger swirled beneath his green irises, but when his chest heaved with deep breaths, I knew there was more I was seeing in those deep pools of need and lust.
“I don’t understand.”
A small curve of his lips confounded me. His eyes hooded over and he licked his lips. “All I had were the walls, Kloe. Huge stones. That was all my eyes saw. For so long. Darkness and the cold, and the drip of some fucking cracked pipe somewhere in the room. Chains were all I felt. The cold press of steel against my skin the only touch I felt. And after so long, that same touch of metal, that constant drip, drip, drip and that forever smell of damp and mould, I couldn’t feel them anymore. I couldn’t smell it anymore. It all became life. Like breathing, you don’t feel it, you don’t notice that you’re doing it, but it’s still there, that constant inhale, exhale. Everything inside me was dead.”
He tipped his head sideways, his eyes narrowing on me. “Numbness is so much worse than pain. Numbness is nothing. You can’t feel nothing. You can’t grab hold of nothing. But you can become nothing. It grows inside you until you’re a big hole of nothing along with it. You just become a tiny insign…insignif…”
“Insignificance,” I finished quietly.
He nodded and focussed his shimmering eyes on me. “There was nothing but me. And sometimes Tamsin. And then came the pain. The pain they gave to me. It was like a gift; it made my heart beat. It made me catch a breath again. It made my body come to life. It gave me something to focus on. It made me feel, Kloe.”
My mouth was so dry that I struggled to speak. “And that’s okay, Anderson. Humans have an amazing ability to adapt, to seek comfort in the very worst…”
“You don’t see, do you?”
His temper surprised me and I reared back a little.
“This… this me,” he pointed to himself, stabbing his finger into his chest. “This me is grieving. This me is hating that I can no longer feel again.”
I bit onto my tongue to stop the vomit from tearing for freedom.
“I miss them!” he cried as if suddenly he needed me to understand.
But I did understand, all too well.
“The only thing that makes me feel is… is you.” He winced at his honesty, looking away from me as if shamed by his words. “You make my heart happy when you smile. You make me sad when you are sad. But that… that isn’t real, Kloe. Those are your emotions, not mine.”
Tears flooded his face as he gripped my hand harder.
“It’s not enough. I feel like I’m dying. There’s so much numb in me, and I can’t feel my heart beat any longer. The scream that lived in my head is gone, and it’s so quiet. It’s so fucking quiet that all these other things start hurting.”
“Anderson…”
His head shook wildly. “No.” He leaned towards me, his face full of spite and rage. “Are you going to make me feel again? Are you going to hurt me enough to make my soul cry out in joy, to make my skin bleed with pleasure? Are you, Kloe? Are you going to fuck me so hard that I can’t bear to sit on the cold slabs any longer? Are you going to bend me over and make me bleed? Are you going to be the one to give me that again?”
I was mute, staring in shock and grief at this poor, broken man. A man who thought being raped meant he was needed, loved. Because that was exactly what he was saying.
“No, you’re not,” he whispered. “And that’s what you don’t understand. By taking away my pain, you’ve taken away the only thing I have in life.” His eyes bore into me as very slowly he reached to my face. His fingers curled around my chin and he tilted my head back, making me look at him. “But I think you already know that, don’t you, Kloe?”
Unable to hold back the tears, I wiped at them, hating that he witnessed them. Because I wasn’t crying for him. I was crying for myself. And Anderson knew that. He saw that through my eyes and into the depths of my soul. The same damaged and broken soul that haunted him every day.
However, I wouldn’t let him win. I couldn’t.
“You’re wrong,” I whispered, powerless to make my voice louder. “You’re so wrong.”
Kneeling up, I mirrored his action. Taking his chin in my fingers, the feel of his skin under my touch making my bones shiver, I guided his face back to the window. The clouds had broken and the sun’s rays were creeping along the grass, drying and warming everything it breathed over.
“There is always sun after the rain, light after the dark. The morning will always be accompanied by a bird’s happy song, the spring will always burst after the cold winter, and the night will always be caressed by the light of the moon. There’s always pleasure, Anderson, always that touch of better. You just have to look for it. And find it.”
His touch left my jaw and he closed his fingers over mine that were still resting against his short beard. My heartbeat stilled when he slid our fingers up to his lips. Placing a very soft kiss to my fingertips, he held me there, both with his hold and his gaze. “And did you find the light after the dark, Kloe? Or are you still looking?”
I couldn’t help but slide my finger across his soft lip, my touch barely there but generating a soft gasp from his mouth. “I’ll always look for it, Anderson. Until the moment I take my very last breath. Because I know it’s there, waiting for me. Even if it’s in the middle of a snowstorm, a star I have to wish upon, or in the centre of a damn rainstorm. I know it waits for me. And as long as it waits, then I’ll keep looking.”
He nodded, dropping his hold on me. Once again he turned to face the outside.
“They beat her to death.” His voice was quiet, and full of grief.
Shaking my head in confusion, I stared at him, unable to look away from the sorrow. “They beat who?”
“Tamsin. They beat her to death because she bit Hank after he whipped me so hard I couldn’t move for a week.”
Closing my eyes in despair, I blew out a breath.
“So, you see…” He chuckled bitterly. “Even if the rain moves aside for the sun, the storm always comes back. And then it drowns you.”