“It’s only clothes.”
As if to prove it, he unbuttoned the right cuff. Veins and tendons flexed and rippled with the slow flick and roll of the sleeve. The other side followed, unveiling the winding display of art that always had me curious.
Just how far did it go? Did it cover his entire torso? Lower?
I quickly looked away and felt the knot in my throat give audibly with my heavy swallow. I prayed he hadn’t heard, but I also wasn’t brave enough to look. Instead, I returned to my work, muscles braced for the exact moment he slipped up next to me.
“What are we doing?”
I stared at the spade in my hand, then the row of tomatoes I’d been doing something with. But my brain was clouded with the heady scent of his soap and something dark and primal that clung to his skin. It prickled mine with tiny goosebumps that tingled around my hardened nipples. They grazed against the lace of my bra, sending electric sparks all the way down…
“Just…” I pause to clear my throat. “Checking for dead leaves.”
I watched long fingers extend and brush through the leaves. So gentle and methodical. With the precision of a doctor examining a fragile patient. His dark head tipped and bent forward to examine each closer.
And I was made painfully aware of his firm lips, the strong angle of his jaw. So much like his sons’. Nearly identical. Like God created him and made two more exactly like him just to torment me.
“These seem to be fine.”
He turned his head and I wasn’t quick enough to turn mine and our eyes locked. Not gently. They collided with an electric shock that crashed through me down to my toes. It zapped the already thin air from the room. I was captured in a sea of silver and drowning was a welcome relief.
“Ne me regarde pas ainsi, mon p’tit.”
His quiet murmur telling me not to look at him that way stained my cheeks with heat and still he had me enslaved. Imprisoned. Even when his full height unfurled and he towered over me, I remained frozen before him. Helpless and painfully willing. Even when he reached for my face, lightly stroked my cheek with the pad of his thumb, I stayed.
His next series of words were muffled by the onslaught of blood rushing to my head with the slight tip of his mouth in the direction of mine.
But it never came.
Mrs. Pym took that moment to rush into the room, face white and frazzled like I had never seen it. And with only a few shaky words, she turned all our worlds upside down.
I curl onto my side and bury my face into clammy fists. I stuff them into my mouth and scream.
I scream until I can’t.
I scream until I swear the sound embeds itself into the walls.
I wail until I can’t breathe and my blood roars between my ears and my vision goes red.
They took them.
They took my boys.
My life.
My sanity.
They stole the life I was supposed to have with them.
I have no memory of scrambling to my feet, but my lamp sails across the room. The drapes around my bed are torn off their rod. Pillows, sheets and blankets are sent to the floor. Mirrors shatter. Tubes, bottles and containers lining my vanity explodeagainst the wall. The vanity itself is pushed over in an explosion of glass and splintering wood.
Shards cut skin as my hands twist into the gossamer blinds hanging over the French doors overlooking the grounds. Fabric tears with a single yank. Screws pop from the wall. It all clatters to the floor with a resounding clang, but I’m reaching for the latch. The ornate, brass handles keeping the city dusk at bay. They give with a single twist of my wrist and I’m out beneath the hazy night sky and miles of endless nothing ahead.
Nothing.
No future.
No reason to go on.
