It takes my last bit of strength to climb into the bathtub. So, I don’t bother undressing myself before I switch the shower on, turning it to its coldest setting. Maybe that will wake my senses.
Water pelts the porcelain like hale in a storm, yet it fails to drown out my name roared from my father’s lips.
Please, just for one minute, let me rest.
My eyes fall on the pointed edge of the shower faucet, and I think to myself, I can do it.
So I do.
Lifting my wrist, I press the skin against the metal, hissing as the needle-like rim cuts into my flesh. The first drop of blood awakens something inside of me, stirring me on and pushing me forward until there’s a slit spanning half of my wrist, spilling blood to the point that my forearm looks like something out of a horror movie.
It's an odd sensation, watching my life spill from my veins. It seems like so much, but that can’t be true, not when dad and Liam do their best to bleed me dry every other day.
Why is my heart beating so fast?
And the room… why is it fuzzy?
The shower was freezing, so why can’t I feel it anymore? I would look up to check if it’s still on, but I can’t seem to lift my head.
I’m so tired…
I think I’ll sleep.
Letting my head fall back, barely feeling the thunk against my skull, I drift off with a smile on my face, never feeling so at peace before.
I don’t remember what happened after that. But I do remember waking up. My wrist was bandaged with gauze I didn’t know we had, and it hurt.
Really. Fucking. Bad.
But it isn’t the pain that kept me awake, and it isn’t the shock that I tried to kill myself that had me trying to sit up in bed.
It’s dad, lying at my feet, my ankles cared for tenderly in his palms as he sleeps.
“Dad.”
He wakes at my hoarse whisper, eyes bloodshot and bleary as he jumps up and crawls over me. Straddling my waist, I expect him to beat the shit out of me, just like he promised he would if I ever tried something like this, but he doesn’t. Instead, dad holds my face lovingly in his hands before bringing his lips down onto mine.
“Don’t ever do that again, Amira. Do you hear me? Fuck, baby, you scared me.”
He holds me all night, and for the first time in two years, he’s my daddy again, and the love I buried deep inside my soul flourishes.
Maybe things will be different now.
And it was different.
It was so much worse.
My suicide attempt didn’t work, but oh how I wish some days it had.
As I lay against the tiled wall, rubbing my thumb over the faint, raised, jagged white line, I think about how I let myself believe for a moment that things would go back to normal.
I want to punish myself for being so naive, but it’s easy for the mind to accept lies when your heart is starving for love.
A knock on the door startles me from my thoughts. Scurrying from the tub, I rip the towel off the rack and wrap it around my shivering, damp body, tucking myself in tightly before opening the door a crack.
My eyes trail from Roman’s leather-booted feet, past the torn, faded black jeans that hang low on his hips, up to the grey long-sleeve that fits so nicely against the bulges of his biceps, before landing on his darkly handsome face.
The barber did well, removing all the stubble from Roman’s face, so the sharp angles of his jaw stand out, ready to slice anyone who gets too close.
