I wished I had my pup upstairs to cuddle with instead of the snapping, snarling beast in the basement I was stuck with — for now.
We’d made progress, but it wasn’t enough. If I went downstairs and asked for a hug, he’d never stop mocking me. He didn’t need to know how much I needed the comfort of a companion, and I wasn’t sure if he would ever understand that a real dog couldn’t take the place of a person.
Instead, I returned to bed, grabbing the full body pillow and hugging it tight to my chest before wrapping my legs around it too. It was no substitute for a human body, but it had been so long since anyone had willingly touched me. I was desperate for contact, desperate for someone to touch me instead of recoiling from me, and every day I went without it… I felt like I died a little more inside.
After all, what kind of monster did I have to be to have done this to someone? I’d never have done this to anyone before the accident. I wouldn’t have even dreamed of it.
And yet.
Here we were.
Here I was.
I dreamt of his screams then, of him begging me to get him out of the fire. I tried to wake, but my own mind cruelly kept me asleep — perhaps as penance for what I was doing, a manifestation of my own guilt in a way that even I could understand. The rest of the night was filled with screams and terror, and all I could think about was Toby.
How had he gotten so deep inside of my brain?
The sword obviously cut both ways…
I watched him eat in silence, without my usual interest. Usually it got me hard to watch him struggle with the food and water bowls, but today it fell flat.
He glanced at me after every few bites, his gaze darting to my face then back down to the bowls.
I ran a hand through my hair, all too aware that I looked like shit after my night. I hadn’t wanted him to see me like this, but it wasn’t like I could do much to hide it. As much as his words had hurt, I couldn’t justify holding food back from him, which meant the visit downstairs had been necessary.
I knew it made me vulnerable, and after the eighth or ninth time he looked up at me, I finally snapped, “What? Just stare if you want. You know you want to fucking look so you can make more little snide comments.”
Well, fuck.
He recoiled, looking stunned.
I hadn’t meant to speak, hadn’t meant to let him know just how much my sanity was crumbling under the constant reminders of the accidents. It wasn’t even the burns, not really. It was the memory of how close I’d cometo death. It was the fact that nightmares plagued me so often. It was the knowledge that my entire life had gone down the drain because people put so much stock in physical beauty.
Here he was, gorgeous and tempting and perfect, and all I wanted to do was touch him and have him touch me in turn. But he was never going to forgive me for any of this, was he?
I clung to the fact that he’d actually apologized for the comment he’d started to make, hoping it meant we were starting to turn a corner. So help me, we had to be turning a corner. I couldn’t keep doing this much longer, not with him hating me so much.
“That’s not… I’m not…”
I leveled my glare on him, and he paled more.
“I’m sorry. For what I said,” he said, looking back down at the floor. “I didn’t mean to…”
“To do what?” I challenged him, belligerent and angry from the hurt.
“I was wrong,” he blurted out. “I shouldn’t have said those things to you. About how you look. You saved that girl’s life, and it was all sorts of fucked, the way you got chased out.”
The words stunned me, and I stared at him, unable to speak around the lump in my throat. Did he really mean it? Could he? Was it even possible for him to care that his words had been hurtful?
“But what you’re doing is wrong,” he continued.
I flinched.
“It’s too late,” I told him, my voice rough. “You know it’s too late for me to do anything else.”
“Yeah.” He let out a choked little laugh, leaning back before plopping his bare ass onto the concrete.
“Don’t sit there,” I instantly told him. “You’re going to catch a cold.”
