Delphi finishes first and comes to stand next to me as she pulls her hair into a high ponytail. “I have a feeling I’ll look like a giant bruise tomorrow.”
“Oh, you will. I did, but I felt stronger too. Maybe not physically, but up here for sure.” I tap my temple as she looks at me in the mirror.
“I’m glad it’s helping. It took me a long time to find something to help me cope, and then I’m not sure I was actually coping or just hiding from my feelings. It wasn’t until I lost everything again that I realized I’d just put a Band-Aid on a gaping wound.”
“Do you think that’s what I’m doing?”
“What? Oh no, not at all. You’re letting yourself feel it all—the fear, the anger, the guilt. I couldn’t find my footing and took the coward’s way out. I didn’t think I had a reason to fight anymore.” She pops open one of the pretty cuffs she wears onher wrist and shows me the scars marring it. She looks down at them, but not before I see the flash of shame in her eyes.
I reach out and wrap my hand around her wrist before she can cover it once more. She looks up at me, startled.
“I held on in the beginning because I had hope. I could feel Nevaeh inside me, and I knew she was out there somewhere waiting for me to come home. Call it a twin thing, or call it youthful naivety, I don’t know. Whatever it was, it was enough to keep me fighting…until it wasn’t. Baby after baby—born and then buried—killed whatever will to survive I had left. I’d just decided how I was going to end it. I would wait until my son was born and then lie down and die beside him, like I should have done with his brothers who came before him.”
Tears are running freely down her face now, but I don’t really see them, lost in a daze as the memories threaten to pull me under.
“But I didn’t have another son. I had a little girl.” I look at Delphi with pained eyes. “He told me I could keep her. He was so happy, and I was grateful. I didn’t read between the lines before it was too late. There was a reason why he wanted a daughter, after all. He’d proven he had a penchant for little girls.”
Delphi sobs, her eyes going wide with horror as the reality of my situation drifts over her.
“I didn’t see it, Delphi. I spent all my time pouring my love into Star, using her as an anchor to hold me here. It wasn’t until about six months before Nevaeh found me that I figured it out. I caught him looking at her, the way he used to look at me, and I just knew.”
“Knew what, Citi?”
I turn at the choked sob of my sister and find all the girls watching me with tears in their eyes.
“That death was a kindness. That Star might have been my anchor, but I’d become her albatross. I knew what he would doto her, and I just couldn’t let it happen. Not to Star, not to my little girl.”
I choke on a sob but steady myself before Nevaeh can reach for me, needing to get this poison out of my veins before it kills me. I look at Delphi once more, my thumb smoothing over the ridges of her scar.
“If Nevaeh hadn’t come, I would be lying now in a field of flowers with my boys…and with my daughter because I would have set her soul free before I ever let that man get his evil hands on her.”
I ignore the gasp from behind me, my eyes locked on Delphi. “Maybe that makes me a monster, too. But I see these marks for what they are—not a cry for help, or a coward’s way out. These are scars of surrender. A white flag etched into pale skin. It’s a mark of peace.”
“A peace that only death can bring,” Delphi whispers as our collective heartache and pain wrap around each other, grief recognizing grief.
“And now?” Legs steps forward, her eyes moving over Delphi’s face before landing on mine.
I smile. There is something a little manic about it, but I don’t care. If I unleashed the crazy I felt inside most days, I’d be locked in a padded room.
“When you’re trapped between black shadows, and endless days of gray, all the color bleeds from your world. You’re left with nothing but intrusive thoughts and cruel whispers from the voice in your head which somedays was my only company. There were times that voice was so loud, I would scream just to drown it out. All I wanted was quiet. Now my grey world is full of color. It’s loud, crazy, and messy. It’s liberating and terrifying. And it will leave its own scars if I let it. Wounds caused by guilt and shame tend to fester and poison us in the end if we let them.”
Delphi blows out a shaky breath before slipping her cuff free from her wrist. She keeps her eyes on me as she opens the other one and pulls it off before handing them both to Legs.
“What should I do with them?” Legs asks her.
“Throw them away. I don’t think I’m going to need them anymore.”
Chapter Thirty
AMBROS
“And how did that feel?”I ask her softly after she filled me in on what happened at the gym. Listening to her talk about how close she was to ending it for not just her but Star, too, makes me want to destroy the room and scream at the fucking heavens at the injustice of it all.
“Cathartic and terrifying. I’ve been so worried that everyone would think I was a bad mother that it built up in my head to the point it was starting to cripple me. I’d pictured Greer dragging a screaming Star away from me as I was handcuffed.”
“Jesus Citi, I would never let that happen. You hear me? You didn’t do anything wrong, and fuck knows we can’t be committed for our thoughts. Thank fuck, or most of the population would be behind bars.”
“I would have though, if that were the only way to keep Star from his clutches, I’d have?—”
