Something tore inside my chest, and I couldn’t stop it, no matter how hard I was trying to.
“Elena, are you listening to yourself?” My voice rose, spiraling higher with every word. “I didn’t do any of this. I didn’t…” My hands cut through the air, useless, frantic. “If something happened, it wasn’t me.”
“I’m not crazy. You said you’d believed me.” She hopped off the counter, her words cutting through my chest. I said that, I said I’d believed her, but this, this is too much.
“I’m not calling you crazy, but Elena, I could never do this to you, and not remember. Are you sure this was what happened? Are you sure the session didn’t go south and we both passed out? That happens, that happens a lot.”Lies! It never happened. Fuck!
“Don’t gaslight me!” she shouted, taking a step toward me with fire blazing in her eyes. “You were there, it was you. In fact, you were there in the moment too even as it possessed you, a part of you knew what you were doing. You called me ‘baby,’ you said you looked at my…Jesus, Damian! I am not crazy!” she yelled,tears welling in her eyes now. “You said my name like it belonged in your mouth. You dragged me across the floor, did these things to me without even lifting a finger. You made me kneel in the circle, you took off my dress, you…you…you. Damian, please…”
“Stop!” I shouted back. “Elena, none of that makes sense!”
“It doesn’t have to make sense,” she snapped, voice cracking. “But that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen!”
My pulse thundered, and confusion twisted into frustration, and frustration curdled into an ugly, sharp, defensive type of anger. “This is insane,” I spat. “All of it. You expect me to believe you because what? You woke up in my arms? Maybe you’re the one who wanted this, and…”Don’t say it!“And, and…”Fuck man! Don’t fucking say it!“You planned this from the start to have arms to wake up in!”Fuck my life!
Her jaw dropped. “Oh, wow.” She laughed, a single disbelieving breath. “You’re unbelievable.” She shook her head.
“Am I?” The anger in me surged, boiling hotter, more desperate to deflect from the chaos clawing at my skull. “If you needed a warm body so badly, you could’ve said so. Instead of spinning ghost stories to justify it.”Jesus fuck! What was wrong with me?
Her face went still, and the air turned cold, and before I could mentally slap myself, her hand cracked across my cheek with the sound louder than that of a breaking branch, making my head snap to the side, and heat flared across my skin. I turned back slowly, something inside me splintering, and fucking hell, I didn’t think, or breathe. The storm inside me swung my hand before a thought caught up, and my palm met her cheek with equal force.
The slap echoed through the kitchen like a curse spoken aloud, then silence fell upon us. Real silence, heavy enough to suffocate. We stared at each other, our breaths trembling between us, both of us stunned by what had just happened.Something rippled across her face: shock, hurt, and something deeper. Something that felt like betrayal threaded through her chest. Fuck! This woman was gorgeous!
Her fingers rose to her reddening cheek, and my hand fell uselessly to my side. I felt the world…pause, like it was waiting for us to either break further or step back from the edge. And for the first time since waking, since I met her sleepy brown eyes, since hearing this insane story, I realized why I was mad beyond recognition.
I was afraid, frightened, not of ghosts, not of possession, but of her. I was scared in my bones because I fucking believed her. I believed her the moment she spoke, but I couldn’t remember, and that pissed me off. I was mad that I couldn’t remember what we were capable of doing to each other, what wediddo to each other.Fuck!
“Elena…” I whispered. Her name burned my tongue, because I was fucking unworthy.
I reached for her, and my fingers brushed the air where her arm should have been as she jerked away like contact with me would burn her. “Elena, please…” Her name left me in a rasp, so raw, and shaken by the echo of that slap.
“Don’t touch me,” she hissed.
“Elena, I’m…”Sorry?
“No.” Her voice cracked into something jagged, brittle. “You’ve said your bit, and I heard you loud and clear.”
She spun on her heel, fury radiating off her like heat waves from scorched metal, and damn, I followed her, the apology clawing up my throat, so desperate to be heard. But she moved with purpose, gathering everything she could find that belonged to me. My jacket, my shirt, my phone, my keys, my bag…my sanity. And while she moved around the house, I followed her, I couldn’t help it. My body just moved, following her as she went, calling her name, and still being unable to say more than that.
“Get out of my house!” She shouted it so loud the walls quivered. “I was stupid, so stupid for calling you in the first place. I should have handled this myself.”
“Elena, please, listen to me,” I pleaded, needing her to at least look at me.
“There’s nothing to listen to!” She shoved my shoes into my chest hard enough to knock the air out of me. “Nothing except the fact that I should’ve known better.”
“Elena…”
“Get. Out.” Her voice shook with rage and heartbreak and something colder than both. She didn’t stop until every scrap of me was piled in her arms, then shoved into mine, until I looked like a man holding the debris of something sacred he had just destroyed.
I fumbled into my clothes while she stood there sobbing in fury, telling me to leave, to get out, to never come back. Blaming herself for even daring to call for help, regretting the phone call that made my whole day, my week, gave me something to look forward to. And when she turned her face away from me, I felt something in my chest rip, rip in a way like I was watching my life fade, yet I couldn’t understand it. It cut deeper than the slap.
I opened my mouth again, but she shook her head violently, the white sheet slipping a little from her shoulder, and I sucked in a breath. Her breathing was uneven, sharp, exhausting, making her breasts rise and fall, and in the midst of all of this heat and cold, I wanted to get that damn sheet away from her. We were both unworthy to be close to her…the sheet and I. How on earth could I…in the midst of all my guilt and confusion and self-loathing, still think of how she looked impossibly beautiful? Her skin haloed in the morning light, her hair wild, and that damn white sheet draped around her like she was carved from fury and heartbreak. And she was crying because of me.
I swallowed the thought like poison and walked out, no morearguing, no more trying. I couldn’t, I didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t trust myself to do anything but kiss her, beg her, grovel at her feet, even if I couldn’t remember what she was talking about. I got into my truck, my keys trembling in my hand, and through the windshield, I watched as she burst out the door like she’d been struck, rushing into the yard with those damned red candles, and flung them into the air one by one, as her other hand clutched the sheet to her chest.
I shouldn’t look at her, I shouldn’t want to stay back, I shouldn’t feel anything except shame, but I watched her anyway.
“Get out!” she screamed at nothing. “Leave! Leave me alone, leave us alone!” And the wind answered her, because only the wind could.
