“The fire, Alice. Better.”
Some part of me erupts with rage. It swells inside me like a torrent of heat I can’t push down, somehow morphing all the memories and pain into venom and retaliation. I clamber out of the bed, resentment filling my strides. “Don’t try playing games, Malachi. This is my body, my thoughts, my fucking pain. You don’t get to piss around with it.”
“I’m not.”
“Yes you are and-“
“But I do think you can use your pain for better than self-pity and depressive ideals, Alice. This isn’t who you are. I won’t let you be what you currently choose forever. It’s not useful to me.”
My mouth opens, perhaps shocked by his sudden non-appreciative care of my body and what it’s been though. I can’t even find a comeback as he cocks his brow at me and waits for me to speak. I’m too busy feeling pissed at his arrogance, and his attitude, and his abrupt change of heart that seems to have turned him cold and detached.
“Is there something you’d like to say, Alice?”
“I didn’t choose this, and even if I did kill that bitch you don’t get to dismiss my-”
“You’re the only one who can choose how you respond.”
I frown and keep my feet planted, then launch at him because how fucking dare he be so indifferent of what I’m dealing with. I don’t even make contact before he’s spinning me around and pulling me back into him. The force makes me struggle until I’m twisting and turning in his hold, and my hands and nails claw out at anything they can. It goes on and on, barely anything landing on his skin other than my continued struggle. I can feel them on me again, though. All of them. I can feel those men and their dicks and their sweat, as they made me do things I didn’t want to do.
And then, in my rage and panic, I can see Faith. I freeze, then erupt into more confusion. Itwasme. I can see it, remember the way she goaded me and told me I wasn’t enough. I was hunting, searching, trying to find him and she was there with her sneer and her disgust.
His grip tightens around me. “Calm down. I’m here.”
I can’t do anything but let the feeling bring me back down to earth, or at least to somewhere that resembles peace again. It’s not peace though. Its muddle and rage and humility all rolled into some abomination of bedlam.
His lips duck to my ear, and he keeps his breathing heavy there. It’s rhythmic like our song, and eventually it’s just us two and the sound of breathing.
In and out.
In and out.
“Go and lie down,” he murmurs. “Relax. You’re safe here.”
He doesn’t leave, as I walk away and look back at him, frowning. He stands there and waits until I’m nearly under the sheets, then smiles softly again.
“You see. You’re still in there Alice. You need to let yourself out again.” The bed dips under me, as I move back to where I was and curl up in a ball. “I’ll have dinner sent up to you, shall I?”
I don’t care one single fuck for food anymore. I’m all nerves and temper, confusion and imbalanced repercussions. And he’s over there smiling at me, behaving like some strange gentleman but for small snippets of the asshole I know he can be.
“Get out, Malachi.”
“One week, Alice. Don’t make me fix you.”
And at that he does leave.
And I sleep.
~
Days go by. I know they do because here, in this house, there are clocks. They tick and tock, and they ring chimes that tell me the hour – every hour. Whit, Brett and Brandon arrived earlier in the week like Whit said they would. They all seem so out of place here, like me, but they’re alive and well. Brandon is on high alert, or maybe he’s just thinking about stealing shit. I don’t know, but Brett is quieter, certainly around me. I don’t think he knows what happened to me. I haven’t told him or any of them, but he keeps looking at the bruises on my skin. None of them will know anything other than the obvious truth of being taken, as far as I’m concerned.
Malachi is still being soft and gentle, but for my continued outbursts that come uncontrollably. He even plays billiards with the boys in the games room occasionally and tries to be conversational. It’s not like they have much to talk about, but he knows sports, hockey specifically. That gives them something to discuss.
The rest of the time he’s either somewhere I can’t find, or he’s to be found in his office. He was in there one morning when I woke to find the bed empty beside me. Four in the morning and he was in a chair behind a desk working on his computer screens. Three of them. I found him, huddled myself in a corner and watched as he came over to me. He picked me up, took me back to his desk chair, and tucked me into his lap so I could go to sleep in his arms.
“Rest, Alice,” he said.
Whatever he was doing was so dull that the screen of numbers and his hold around me sent me off into deep slumber. That’s become a ritual now. I don’t know why, but sleep, without him next to me, is terrifying. And he’s so good at lulling me back to some place of quiet and serenity. He hums our song, lets the flat notes wander aimlessly around the air while he works on whatever it is. Oil stuff, I guess. Business. Real life for him.
