He’s everything.
“Donovan, please…” I know if he closes the door on me now, whatever part of me came back to life, whatever part of me felt like I could be a person instead of just a monster, is going to die with the sound.
“Shiloh…” His expression is soft and shuttered as he reaches out and then instantly drops his hand back to his side as he glances down and sees the knife I’m clutching. The hesitation is breaking me apart, the way he’s looking at me like I’m breaking him too… and then he steps aside. “Come in.”
I half stumble through the door, my teeth chattering and my fingers numb, and the sound of it shutting with meinsideis the first thing that breaks through the frozen feeling in my chest since the night Donovan walked away.
“I…” I stand there almost helplessly, my arms crossed over my waist like I can hold myself together for whatever is about to happen. I don’t even realize I’m tapping the knife nervously against my arm until Donovan steps forward, reaching toward me again before drawing up short.
“You’re going to cut yourself.”
I stare blankly at him. “I already have.”
His eyes widen then, his gaze sweeping along the length of my body. It’s the concern there that gives me the strength to do what I do next. I set the knife down long enough to yank my shirt over my head, dropping it to the floor with a wet plop. I turn my arms out so he can see the ragged cuts I’ve drawn blood from over the last few weeks.
“Shiloh…”
“I needed to paint.” I’m surprised my voice sounds so small… so in pain. “It was the only way I could see you.” My head shakes back and forth as I keep my arms out between us so he can see it all. “Everything is so… colorless now, Donovan. I can’t see anything but blacks and grays.”
The pain on his face is almost too much. Am I hurting him more by being here? Am I making it worse? I couldn’t wait for him to call me anymore… and I…
“I don’t understand, Shiloh,” he says, reaching out to take my carved-up arms into his warm hands. “Help me understand… this. All of this.”
All of this…
All of me.
“You want to know me, right? Iwantto give you all of me, Donovan. I’ve never wanted that before. I’ve never wanted someone the way I want you. I…” My brows come together as I look at the cuts on my arm, some scabbed over, a few looking fresh. “I had to paint you, and I didn’t want to hurt anyone else after the way you looked at me… I…”
“You hurt,” he says, soft and gentle like he’s soothing a wild animal. “I can tell, but you also hurt other people, and I… I don’t know how someone so beautiful could do something so… just… horrible, Loh. I’ve tried to make it make sense, but I can’t.”
“My dad tried to kill me when I was small,” I say blankly, drawing him up short. There’s something on his face, some sign in his expression that tells me maybe he suspected something like this. I grab his hand and take in a shaking breath as I draw it to my waist.
It nearly kills me when his fingers run over my scars—not because I’m afraid, or because I’m remembering… but because his hand is so warm. Just that touch is enough to make my pulse race, my heart remember to beat again.
“You don’t have to…”
“He came up behind my mother and me when we were painting, and he put a gun to the back of her head and pulled the trigger. He didn’t have a reason… he just got it in his head to do it one day. He probably would have killed me too if the damn thing hadn’t jammed…” Donovan winces like he’s being draggedback in time, like he’s there to see it as I monotone the story. “So he took our painting knife and stabbed me. Over and over. I can remember lying there on the floor with my insides spilling out and watching my mother’s blood and brains slowly slide down the wall. It made a pretty picture, like a butterfly. I…” I swallow hard. “Looking at it, imagining it was paint… that’s the only thing that kept me awake until the police arrived.”
“That’s terrible. I’m so sorry.”
My eyes flick to the space between us, to his hand on my waist and his fingers trembling where they’re pressed to my skin. Everyone wants to know the truth, but when the truth is so ugly… what else can they really say but sorry? “I think he’s still alive in a cell somewhere…” I snort, the thought still prickly in my mind. “Anyway, after that… I don’t know… I just saw beauty in blood. It’s what I am. What I was, I guess.” I look at him pleadingly, like he can untangle the mess in my head. As if he’d still want to. “It’s all I thought I could be before I met you.”
“You say that like this was the only logical outcome for your life.”
“It’s not an excuse, Donovan. But it’s why I am the way I am. It’s all I know… it’s why I…” I shudder, picking up the knife and holding it between us. The blade catches in the low light, and I can see the reflection of his Godzilla posters on the wall warped in the metal as I twist it back and forth. “It’s why I wanted to help the kids at the center, so maybe there won’t be another me in the world. Fuck, Iggy could have been another me.” I scoff, blinking away tears that slide hot down my cheeks. “One’s enough, right? I know I’m a monster… but I… you made me feel like…”
“Like?” he asks, as I let my sentence trail off.
“Like I could be more.” The confession cracks me open from the inside out, splits my ribs and leaves me raw and exposed. “Can I… can I be more? Fuck, can I be enough?”
“Enough?” he echoes, and I shove the knife forward without thinking. Donovan startles until he realizes I’m handing it to him, using my free hand to wrap his fingers around it. This is all I can do. I’m open—I’m raw. My beating heart is there, and if he can’t accept it, I need him to carve it out. He has to end this one way or another, because I can’t walk out of this room knowing that I have to go back to being who I was before I met him.
“Take it, Donovan. Please.” I feel the words catch in my chest, trembling, aching, and I press the knife harder into his hand. It’s easy to draw his wrist up to hold the blade to my throat. “Make me into something different. Make me into somethingbetter. Carve me open if you need to prove to yourself that I have a heart…” I can’t make out his expression through the blur of my tears, but it doesn’t matter. “Please… please, just make me into something that can beyours, because I can’t do this without you.” The confession catches on a sob that aches through my rib cage and makes me sway, nearly falling against the sharp edge at my throat.
“Shiloh…” Donovan’s hand around my waist is the only thing that keeps me upright… but it still isn’t an answer.
I need an answer.
