I can’t help but bite a laugh down at how extremely amusing she is as she stalks over to her kitchen and pours herself a glass of water. Eyeing me over the rim, she leans back, crossing her arm under her breasts.
“Well?” she says as I push myself from the couch.
“Well, what, little bird?” I ask, while slowly walking toward her.
“Don’t play with me,” she says as I watched her eyes watch me over the rim. She takes a sip from the glass and I watch as the water slides down her throat… the way her skin moves as she swallows.
“Play, little bird? What makes you think I’m playing?” I reach her and place my hands on either side of her body, caging her in. I watch her look down and up and a small quiver seems to flutter over her body.
“I have no experience with the game board that we’re playing on, and that makes this a lethal game. I ran from one man’s abuse and mind games and believe me I don’t want to fall into another’s.” Her voice was brittle, sending a chill over my arms. I pull my gaze from her tremoring bottom lip to see her eyes darting around me looking anywhere but me.
“Little bird, I-I-um-I won’t hurt you.” I breathe out, my own voice failing me at that moment.
“I was reminded every day that I wasn’t enough, but I still stayed.” Her voice was soft, barely audible.
Moving towards her, I want to kiss all the hurt from her body, taking it all on as my own.
“I stayed when I should have left, but punishment and broken shards of memories was easier to swallow, than the distressing and disturbing pain that was walking away from the tears and pain.”
I breath into her mouth as she shakes. My arms tremble from the restraint of holding them in place, when all I want to do is take her tiny body in them and hold her till, I took every ounce of whatever trauma she had ever experienced away from her.
Raising one of my hands to her face, I trace the pad of thumb over her soft flesh. I watch as she takes in a deep breath through her slightly parted lips. Her eyes flicker closed, showcasing long thick black lashes. This woman is stunning even without a lick of makeup covering her beauty. She doesn’t need the enhancements. You cannot add to natural beauty and that is just what she is… she is captivating. I lean my forehead dangerously close her breath shaky yet warm on my lips.
“I built these walls to hide my ghosts and yet your fingers trace the wounds making them exposed. I try and try to not let you in, but I am failing.” She breathes as her pulse beats fast in her neck. Her words are burning onto my lips as my hand moves from her face to the nape of her neck. I tense my fingers ever so slightly, so I don’t scare her, but let her know that her words haven’t gone unheard.
“I had a love that I kept at arm’s length because I was so scared that she wouldn’t stay. She promised me she would, so I pulled her in. She broke not only her promise to me, but now I have these nightmares and wounds that will not heal. My hands, little bird, have scars on them from so many bodies. Some that deserved to die, some that did not. From women that begged for more than empty sex and a rough touch. I’m not proud of who I am, and I hide it. We all hide behind masks, ghosts, darkness and we all have cracks and splits, windows that have the fog lifting, it just takes the right person to allow the light to seep in.”
“If you wear a mask for too long, 81, you sometimes forget who you were beneath it.” I watch as tears pool behind her stunning eyes and real truth that laid inside her irises.
“Well, little bird, let me help you seek her out.” Kissing the tip of her nose not trusting myself to touch her lips with mine yet. I pull her hand into mine and lead her out of her apartment for some much-needed soul food at no other than Big Reds diner on the corner of her street.
Chapter Thirteen
Jade
It’s cold breathing in the dark. I constantly feel at war with myself. It’s scary because I hate getting flashbacks from things I don’t want to remember. There was so much more to me than what the world sees now.
I was happy once, now I sit here with whiskey in my hand, my lungs burning, hands shaking as I watch him watch me from the darkness of my apartment. I see him, I know he’s there. He thinks I don’t see him, but he’s wrong. I see more than he would ever think I could.
I'm suffocating. I can't breathe. I can't think. Every time I close my eyes all I see is him... I just wanna leave my body and watch as he attacks me like I had done for so many years before I found the strength to escape. I am free now, so why do I feel so lost. Maybe this world is another hell that I have to live in. A risk I took by stepping out of the bloodied fog that his hands produced. I feel like I desire things that will destroy me in the end. He just about did. Now there is 81. Everywhere I look there is a threat to my sanity, my safety. It’s written all over my face when I look in the mirror. I see it in my eyes like a halo of dark deep red… the devil trying to live within an angel. I am drowning inside the dark thoughts of killing a man but falling for another’s touch and eyes. Isn’t it strange how we decorate pain?
Though, it's been years since I've seen his physical form, I see his image every day. but I still see it every day. Still staring at the me, with him behind the broken glass of my eyes.
No sleep tonight cause all I will do is sit with my knees pulled tight into my chest with my arms holding on while I shake, paralyzed inside my own mind. I've been crushed in a landslide, drowned in a riptide. I've never felt quite like this, but I know that I have tried so hard to kill the pain. It's all a temporary fix. I heard that you were with someone new.I breathe out to the dark street as I watch him sit in his car smoking, watching me watch him.Does she make you feel better than I did?I mummer out sipping on my whiskey.Do you hurt her the way you hurt me?Licking the lime laced whiskey from my bottom lip.Was I not enough?I question the ghost of him as smoke swirls around in the cool night in front of his face. The ember of the tip slightly lighting up his dead eyes. It’s amazing what you can see in the dark with whiskey swirling inside your veins. I think I think too much.
She was a stranger lying in my bed, the bed that you beat me into a bloodied mess in. Has she seen the blood stains on the mattress? The blood stains on the carpet? Has she questioned my head holes down the hallway? Have you fixed them or have you added to them with her blood, her head?
But as I sit here watching you watch me, it’s our songs running through my head. The room's spinning out cause all I wanna do is call you, run down to you, not to fall into your arms but to kill you, stab you in that cold heart of yours. Bleed you out under the starlit, inky-black night and watch as the light falls from your eyes. I hear his bike rumbling from the distance, I knew it was him by the way his bike ate up the space between the turnoff and my street.
Louder, angrier… my heartbeat had a new passion, replacing the deathly beat for blood with a beat of wanting his hands on my skin. I do not know why I feel this way. It’s not like I am looking for anything but my power back and killing him will do just that. It is freedom I seek. 81 will just cloud my thinking causing lust to take over from hatred.
He gets out of his car, flicking his smoke butt. I watch it flicker and fall in the air between him and I. I lean closer to the window, the whiskey sloshing over my ice. His steps slow and calculated. Slowly, he’s getting closer to me. My body is fully aware of the way he places fear laced panic inside me. How his presence causes my body to fall, twisting into a spiral of twisted mind games.
The voices get louder with each step, the shakes begin to ripple as a cold trickle of sweat beads down my spine. He breathes up through the night,Come Jade, let us play a game.
81’s bike rolls down the street. He leans against the lamppost outside my shop. My knuckles are white around the glass, my jaw clenched tight as my breathing quickens. I watch him, watch 81 as 81 rolls slowly past him and down the side of my building then behind it, to the back. He cuts the engine. I sit here, waiting for one or the other to make their move.
I’ve been expecting the pounding on the door. That didn't mean I did not jump when it started. That didn't mean I did not jump when it started It has sparked a flame inside me, burning out the splinter of fear that the man outside watching me from his car had placed inside me hours ago.
