Page 39 of Daring Wicked Love (Wicked Dade #2)

When I was fourteen years old, I spent two months sleeping on the hard floor beneath my bed.

It wasn’t because the foster family I was staying with was bad, or that they didn’t give me a supportive, loving home. In fact, it was the very opposite. Lillian and Cathal were amazing foster parents who went out of their way to help me.

It was actually Cathal who bought me my very first paint set during the one and only Christmas I spent with them.

The reason I chose to wreck my own spine and have a creak in my neck from sleeping in my hiding spot was because I wanted to be alone.

I wanted a space that was just mine, a place that I didn’t have to listen to my sister’s hurtful words for a couple of hours, a place I could be alone, which, trust me, was difficult to come by in busy foster homes.

I wanted — no, I needed somewhere no one would find me, somewhere I could let the darkest parts of my trauma take hold of me without someone trying to swoop in and save me.

It was an all-consuming and irrational need to isolate myself from everyone in the house, including the two other children I shared a bedroom with, that forced me to hide beneath the comfortable and cozy bed.

When Lillian discovered my unusual and the furthest thing from healthy sleeping habit, she became the driving force behind getting me into therapy that would actually help.

Social services had sent me to numerous therapists before Lillian intervened, each of them stating that I had complex PTSD with selective mutism.

Their cure often meant trying to force me to talk and offering a cocktail of antidepressants.

Thank my stars for Lillian refusing to give up on me. Between her and Grainne, the next home I went to after Niamh falsely accused Cathal of hitting her, they guided me into trying art therapy.

Art saved me.

It pulled me out of my own personal hell, eating away at my broken soul.

Painting, drawing, creating things with my hands — it showed me how to express my feelings to the therapist without having to utter a single word.

And here I was, as if my life had come full circle and I was that fourteen-year-old girl again, lying on the floor beneath the bed in the converted apartment, hiding away from the one person who wanted nothing more than to help me.

Except this time, I didn’t have art to pull me back from the depths beckoning me to fall headfirst into the darkness.

I wasn’t sure how much time had passed since I bundled myself into a tight ball beneath the bed, but I was pretty certain the sun had set at least twice.

If it weren’t for the hospital smell still embedded in my flesh and hair or the painful hollow ache in my stomach from lack of food, I would have happily stayed safely hidden under the bed.

But every time I caught a whiff of myself, I was transported back to my hospital bed, and it made me want to vomit.

I physically dragged myself to the bathroom. My right hand hung uselessly at my side. Like it belonged to someone else, like it had stopped getting the message that it was still a part of me.

Holy hell, every single one of my joints and back muscles ached from lying on the hard ground.

By the time I reached the bathroom, every step there was like wading through quicksand, I wanted to fall back down to the safety of the ground.

Pausing at the mirror, I leaned heavily on the sink with my one working hand. A stranger stared back at me. Pale eyes ringed in fading bruises. Greasy hair sticking to my scabby forehead. Hollow cheeks that were littered with healing stitched cuts.

I looked like freshly dug up death.

My clothes clung to me, reeking of sweat and hospital.

I needed a shower. However, the mere thought of standing under hot water felt like climbing Everest.

Inhaling deeply, I tried to peel off my T-shirt and pull it over my head, but my stupid, damaged hand wouldn’t grasp the hem properly.

Oh, shitting hell, just fucking work!

I tried again.

For crying out loud, work goddamn it!

And again.

Please work! FUCCCCCKKK!

My T-shirt was twisted, half on, half off, trapping me and turning my frustration into white-hot panic.

A strangled sound escaped from my throat. I couldn’t even do this one simple thing. Tears stained my cheeks before I could stop them, my T-shirt clinging tighter and trying to suffocate me as I let out a bone-rattling scream and helplessly sagged against the wall.

Everything hurt.

Not just my arm, not just my body, but the reality of my entire world forever changed sank its razor-sharp claws deeper into my spine and refused to budge.

Was this really my life now?

Just some useless and weak person who couldn’t even take a shower by themselves?

I sank to the floor, my bad hand tangled in my shirt, while I broke the nails of my other hand, trying to grip the bathroom tiles as if they were the only thing in this world that could keep me grounded.

There was no strength left in me to fight anymore as gut-wrenching sobs tore through my body for the first time in three weeks.

I didn’t hear the front door open.

It wasn’t until I felt a hand gently squeeze my shoulder that I flinched. “Holy shit!”

“Hey… Hey, it’s just me.” Callie’s voice was almost a whisper. “It’s okay. You’re okay. I’m here.”

I couldn’t even lift my chin to properly look at my best friend. I just curled tighter into myself, still stuck in my stupid shirted prison. “I can’t get it off,” I cried. “How pathetic is that? I can’t even take off my own clothes.”

Callie silently sank down beside me on the bathroom floor. Her hand reached for my broken-nailed hand, pulling it off the floor onto the safety of her lap. “In my opinion, taking your own clothes off is overrated anyway.”

My body started to shake as my tears continued their assault — the little bastards refused to stop these days and were likely to kill me from dehydration.

“Well, this is not how I planned this visit to go,” she said lightly. “I brought vodka, the expensive, branded kind, by the way, not our usual cheap swill, and homemade brownies.”

“ You made brownies?”

“Not me, per se. Rob made them, but I wrapped them in clingfilm, so I mean that’s practically the same thing. After all, it’s all about presentation.”

A broken laugh slipped through my choked sobs.

“I thought you might need a distraction, or to get drunk and eat your weight in sugary goodness,” she said. “Didn’t expect to find you in a crying heap on the bathroom floor. We can certainly get drunk in here, but I draw the line at eating in a bathroom.”

Resting the back of my head against the wall, I stared up at the white ceiling while my whole body sagged with exhaustion.

After a couple beats, Callie said gently, “You should know he sent me.”

My stomach twisted. “What?”

“Appeared at my doorstep with a key to this place and begged me to come and see you.”

Oh, fuck me, the tears were never going to stop at this rate.

“He nearly gave Rob a heart attack when he opened the door,” she half-laughed. “Apparently, he was all ‘I don’t want to push her, but I’m pretty sure she’s about to disappear forever if I don’t do something,’ and Rob’s all like, ‘Um, dude… Let me get Callie.’ ”

“You’re kidding?”

“Nope, the man was beyond desperate,” she said.

“He was all, ‘ I can’t keep going on like this, Callie. It’s been two days, and I’m losing my mind.

She won’t let me in, and I’m trying to be respectful, but please help her .

’ He’s worried. Okay, more than worried, I think he might go insane any day now.

He told me you wanted space, that you didn’t want him or his little girl in to see you.

Guess he thought you’d maybe let me in, instead. ”

The image of Frederic standing, pleading with Callie, was too much.

I attempted to swallow the lump in my throat, but it remained firmly in place. “I didn’t want him to see me like this.”

“You mean vulnerable? Human?”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Sure it’s not. After all, God forbid you let the person you love see you at your weakest.”

“This isn’t my weakest, this is rock-fucking-bottom,” I said.

“I can’t paint anymore. I can’t hold a brush.

My hand’s dead. Or close enough. Pretty sure everything I’ve ever worked toward is dead right alongside it.

” A sharp knife twisted in my chest. “And what if he doesn’t love me like this?

What if he decides that this new version of me isn’t who he fell for? Because I wouldn’t love me like this.”

In typical Callie fashion she didn’t try to soothe me with platitudes or bullshit optimism. She simply reached out and gently tugged at the fabric still clinging to me like a straitjacket. “Come on,” she said quietly. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

“I can’t... I don’t think I can.”

“Orla, when are you going to learn that you don’t have to do this alone?”

I let her help me up onto my unsteady feet.

When I stepped into the shower, I hesitated as Callie reached in first and tested the water, adjusting the temperature as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Like helping her broken best friend undress and shower wasn’t one of the most heartbreaking acts either of us had ever done for each other.

With a gentle push from Callie, I stepped under the spray.

The heat hit me all at once, water needling into my skin, pricking the raw places of the body that no longer felt like my own. I gasped as it ran down my back, over my shoulders, into the hollows of my bruised collarbones, and down the length of my arms.

But I only felt water dripping from one set of fingers.

I broke all over again.

I fell apart at the very seams under the water until my throat was raw and my lungs were ready to burst apart, while Callie held my one working hand and let me lean into her as the wretched hospital smell rinsed down the drain.

After my eyes decided that I had used up every drop of moisture in my body, I didn’t bother even trying to open my shampoo bottle.

I had finally stopped crying. There was no need to start back up again when I ultimately failed to open the lid.

Callie took control, squeezing shampoo into her hands and taking her time as she gently washed my hair. She helped me rinse the soap from my skin, careful not to pull at the incisions along my arm that were still healing.

I had no idea how long we stood there with neither of us uttering a single word to each other.

Not once did Callie rush me out of the shower.

Not once did she look away or cringe at the bruises and wounds making up my body.

And for the first time since the accident, I felt something other than pain. Like the worst of the car crash had been washed away, if only for that small moment.