Page 16

The click clacking of heels echoing down the hallway on the other side of the door makes the orgasmic fog clouding my mind dissipate instantly. “Fuck.” I grunt pushing up off Rhys and rising to my feet only to realise my jeans are round my thighs, my flaccid dick hanging between my legs.

A wicked grin stretches my lips as I take in Rhys’s dishevelled state. Hair sticking up in every direction, a blissed out look on his face, eyes glazed. His cheeks stained red and drying cum smeared all over his stomach. “You look perfectly destroyed and thoroughly fucked.”

Rolling his eyes he throws his arm over his face and mumbles, “What the hell am I meant to do? I can’t go back out there like this?”

I snort as I tuck myself away and do up my jeans. “Well you’re not fucking washing me off your skin, little devil.”

“Jesus christ, K! This is going to be so fucking uncomfortable.” He mutters, taking my outstretched hand as he gets to his feet and rights his clothes, huffing and puffing like a scolded child.

A rumbling growl tears up my throat and I grit my teeth with annoyance. I eat up the space between us in two steps collaring his throat with my hand forcing him back into the wall.

“You are mine, Rhys!”

“There is no one else, K. There never has been, my world begins and ends with you.”

My teeth latch onto his bottom lip as I suck it into my mouth having one final taste of him before I have to walk away and pretend he means nothing to me. His tongue dips into my mouth, teasing and rolling against mine, his hands coast up my arms and link at the nap of my neck.

He moans into mouth and I swallow down with a groan of my own. I tighten my hold around his throat and feast on his mouth as if his lips are the only thing that can give me life.

We part gasping for breath, chests heaving as we try and regulate our breathing. I rest my forehead against his and feel his sweat slicked skin against mine. His pulse thunders under my thumb and I shake my head as a deep seated satisfaction radiates through my chest. “You will walk around covered in my cum all day. I want Gale to smell me on you when he takes you back to hell.”

“For fucks sake,” he sighs, rolling his eyes. “There is nothing going?—”

“Does he know that?” My fingers flex around the column of his neck, a warning first then enough to stain his skin and mark it with my ownership.

“H-he…” I pull back to study his face, something dark and twisted flickers through his eyes before his expression shutters and his face goes blank. My heart squeezes in my chest as trepidation crawls through my cells.

“He, what, Rhys?” I whisper menacingly, and feel the fine hairs on his neck stand on end. He swallows hard, his Adam’s apple grating against my palm and his fingers drum on my neck before latching on and digging into my skin.

“He-he kissed me.”

“That fucking shit. I’m gonna wring his fucking neck. Evidently he didn’t take my warning seriously.” I growl, a wave of anger rolls through me and clench my free hand hard enough to feel my broken nails bite into my palm, the pain the only thing resting my anger from unleashing.

“What are you going on about?” Panic flashes across his face before confusion makes his brows furrow, pulling a sadistic smirk from my lips.

“Ask him.” I tilt his head up with my thumb and brush my lips over his in a feather light kiss, wishing I could sink into him and never leave the heaven that is his mouth. “Until next time.”

Releasing him quickly before I can convince myself to stay, I step through the door and watch him slump to the ground and rest his head in his hands before it shuts and make my way to Jenna’s office for our next mandated session.

Just as I’m about to raise my hand to knock it swings open. Jenna smiles at me with a bemused look on her face. “I was wondering if you were going to come or if I’d have to go looking for you?” She steps back and gestures with her hand for me to enter. I slip past her, casting a fleeting glance around her space before depositing myself on the sofa opposite her chair.

She makes her way over to the coffee machine busying herself making us a hot drink if the two cups she places on the worktop is anything to go by and I allow myself the opportunity to relax. There is something about being in her presence that grounds me, and comforts me in a way no other woman in her position ever has.

I’m tired. So goddamn tired of breathing. Of living in perpetual torture, monsters roaring in my head, stalking the periphery of my consciousness and consuming my mind when I’m asleep. They always said dreams can come true and we should strive for them, reach for the unattainable. But what everyone seems to forget is that nightmares are as real as dreams and far easier to believe. They devour you piece by piece and haunt you when you’re awake, because for me they are my truth. Nightmares hold more power for me than dreams ever will because for me all dreams are liars.

The sound of a cup being placed on the table before me brings me back into the room and curiosity gets the better of me and has me picking up the cup to examine what’s inside it. “Hot chocolate?”

Jenna’s lips twitch. “With whipped cream and marshmallows, don’t forget that.” I look up at her over my cup confused. “I thought we could both use something sweet today,” she swallows a mouthful before placing the cup down in front of her and opening her note book. “I was hoping today we could start our journey to helping you live your life.”

I snort. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“You are,” she sighs. “But, we both know how you came to be here, Kayden.” I stiffen at the sound of my name on her lips, my fingers clench around the cup in my hand as fear tightens its grip around my throat. Images of the day flicker and flash through my mind like bolts of lightning searing them into my retainers.

“I… I….” I swallow down the wave of bile creeping up my throat as I can feel the euphoria and desolation that was consuming me when I stood on that ledge and stared into the tumultuous waters flowing below. Instead of a baptism of fire I’d found myself standing on the precipice of a different kind of abyss. One that offered absolution, eternity in its dark depths. An end.

Freedom.

I craved it so much in that moment guided by fear and disgust at what he would think if he knew the truth. I hated myself more than I ever had. I was a poison. A cancer that would kill him and I couldn’t do that. I had to keep him safe. But seeing Rhys since, looking like he’d seen a ghost, an angel, his turbulent emotions pummelling me. I feel… I feel something new, a glimmer, a flicker in the darkness, something that resembles hope and it scares the fucking shit out of me.

“I’m just going to get right to it,” she smooths her hand down her fitted black trousers as she considers her words. “If you wish to stop, correct me or don’t wish to continue please let me know. The last thing I want to do is make you uncomfortable, but to help you heal we need to get to the root of your problems.” A bitter laugh claws at my mouth, scathing in its intensity. “I understand your pessimism, and I know whatever I say will not change the past, but, Kayden, I can help take its power over you away.”

“The past might be the past, but that doesn’t change the present. Nothing has changed!” My voice rises as hands ghost over my skin touching me in places I don’t want them to. My body trembles as it’s transported through a million different memories. It’s like I’m trapped behind a glass wall as the most painful moments in my life are happening right in front of me. I’m screaming but there is no sound. I can hear the gut wrenching cries of eight year old me. I can see my body change and grow. The light within me dim until it’s snuffed out completely and I’m helpless to stop it. All I can do is stand and witness it, each time he breaks me and feels like bullets in my chest while I dig grave after grave for every piece of me that dies.

I clutch desperately at my chest, feeling as though my lungs are being crushed by an unrelenting vice. Black tendrils of smoke snake their way into the edges of my vision, obscuring the world around me until all that remains is a suffocating darkness.

The cup slips from my grasp, forgotten as my brain disconnects from my body, leaving me adrift in a sea of chaos. I can feel my monsters closing in, their gnashing jaws tearing at the fraying threads of my sanity, leaving me helpless and exposed to the relentless onslaught of my own mind.

I gasp for breath, my heart pounding in my chest as I struggle to cling to a shred of reality amidst the swirling maelstrom of my thoughts. But it’s no use—the darkness envelops me, dragging me down into the abyss of despair where my demons lie in wait, ready to consume me whole.

I can feel everyone of his malicious touches like they’re embedded inside me pushing outward tearing me to pieces. I can feel the burning pain searing through me as he thrusts inside me without lube, until my blood coated him and eased it by transforming it into something new. It infected me with his sickness, broke me wholly, completely, rendering me wishing for death.

I am someone who did not die, when I should have died.

I can feel it. It’s as if every single second, every fleeting moment of his ministrations, is etched into the very fibre of my being. It’s not just a surface wound, a mere skin-deep reminder of my pain—it’s a searing brand that seeps deep into the marrow of my bones like poison, where no one will ever see.

Every lash of his belt, every acrid breath that escaped his lips and touched my skin—it’s a symphony of agony that reverberates through my soul, leaving me gasping for air in its wake. His mocking words, like razor-sharp blades, slice through me with surgical precision, leaving behind gaping wounds that refuse to heal.

The humiliation, the pain, the anger—the weight of it all threatens to crush me beneath its suffocating embrace. I am consumed by the weakness he instilled in me, a gnawing emptiness that consumes me to my very core. It’s a continual cycle, perpetuated by the fragments of my psyche that sink into my flesh and force me to relive it like it’s happening now, only to shatter me further. I was clinging to a cliff top at the edge of oblivion but now I’m free falling in eternal pain

I’m bound by the chains he created from my suffering, drowning in the blood he spilled from my body, inextricably lost to the void he carved out inside of me. The monsters he created, the demons that haunt my every waking moment—they are a constant reminder of the darkness that has infected me, of the poison he poured into me with one thrust at a time.

The gravity of it all never leaves me. The scars, both seen and unseen, remain—a testament to the pain that I have endured, and the battles that I have fought and lost. They will be with me until I’m finally wrenched from this mortal coil finally free.

“You have power over the present, Kayden. If you talk to me I can help you.” Her unshakeable faith in her words pulls me from the cyclone obliterating my mind, dulling the rumbling roars, clearing the dark tendrils from my vision.

“He will squish you like a bug under his shoe.” I snort, burying my pain in brutal, soulless words. “No one has ever stood up to him and lived.”

“No one is all powerful?—”

“You’ve not met him… yet. When you do you’ll realise what I’m saying is true.”

“So for arguments sake,” my eyes snap to hers. “It’s safe to say you remember everything and my earlier assumption was correct. You’re… running?”

“I thought you were being blunt?” I bite out, lips curled in a snarl. “I was in that hospital because I wanted to die. Plain and simple.”

“Things are never that, Kayden. You might have wanted to die but like an iceberg, that’s just the tip of your truth.”

“What does it matter?” I shrug, sinking into that darkness that roils inside me like a deadly storm. “I’ll never be safe while he’s alive. No one will be… that’s the truth plain and simple.”

“What do you mean by, no one will be?”

“That’s obvious isn’t it?” my heart hammers against my sternum hard enough to tattoo its image there before shattering the bone. Sweat beads along my hairline and trickles down my temples.

“I think again, that’s not the whole truth?” Emotion clogs my throat and burns the back of my eyes as I try to swallow it down and piece my fractured walls back together. What the fuck is it about this woman that has words spewing from my mind like lava before I’ve even had a chance to realise what truths I’m alluding to?

“What do you want from ME!” I scream, flying to my feet, propelled by the anger and fear that consume me. “What fucking difference does it make if I tell you everything or nothing? What can you do to save me? To help? When I know he could walk in here any second and you’d roll over and let him walk out dragging me kicking and screaming?”

My chest heaves as my words strike my target with deadly precision, each blow rocking the foundations of her self confidence, her belief ravaged to the core. Each breath cuts like needles into my lungs as I continue to pace her room. The juxtaposition of the golden rays of sunlight streaming through the bay window to the darkness wireless in her like a toxic mist is not lost on me. “Welcome to my life,” I whisper, my voice shattered.

“I-I want to help. I don’t know who this man is you’re referring to, but let me in and I can help.”

I shake my head at her and card my hand through my hair gripping the slick strands, my knees quiver until they snap under the pressure and I slide down the wall by the door, obscuring myself from her view. “He is untouchable, what don’t you understand?” The first tear falls scalding my skin as it slithers down my cheek. I pull my legs up to my chest, wrap my arms around them and bury my face into my knees hiding the physical manifestation of my hell.

Silence stretches between us like a taut, fraying thread, on the brink of snapping irreparably. The tension in the air is suffocating, wrapping around me like a vice, causing the hairs on my arms and neck to stand on end. A bitter, self-deprecating laugh echoes in the hollow chambers of my mind, a painful reminder of the distrust that has become my constant companion.

I knew it. I knew she wouldn’t fight for me. I knew her words were nothing but hollow promises, just like everyone else’s.

No one really wants to help.

No one really cares.

No one loves me enough to fight for me.

The sound of feet whispering across the carpet tickles my ears, a second before I feel Jenna’s comforting presence beside me as she slides down the wall next to me. She wraps her arm around my shoulders and pulls me into her. Her touch thawing the ice that coats my skin and suffuses through my veins. That minute amount of contact, that small show of human decency disintegrates my armour with a battering ram unleashing the tears I was trying to hold at bay. A howling wail tears up my throat as I unleash the agony in my soul, and I cry. I cry until there are no tears left, until I’ve bled myself dry of the years’ worth of pain that has festered within me. It’s a catharsis unlike anything I’ve ever experienced, a release that leaves me feeling raw and exposed

Will this change anything? Fuck no. But I feel a glimmer of hope stirring within me. Perhaps, just perhaps, this small act of kindness has opened a door—a door to possibilities that I never dared to dream of.

Clearing her throat, Jenna’s voice emerges raspy and determined. “I want you to start at the beginning.” Her request hangs heavy in the air, and I draw in a shuddering breath, feeling the weight of her words press down on me like a boot against my throat. My head shakes automatically in protest, the memories too painful to revisit.

“I know it’s hard, Kayden,” she continues, her hand moving soothingly in circles on my back, a gesture of comfort that brings both solace and unease. “I’m not making notes. I won’t hold you to ransom over this or anything like that,” she assures me, her tone gentle yet firm. A snort of disbelief escapes me, eliciting a soft chuckle from her lips. “I just want to help, and to help, I need to understand.”

“I-I’m not sure I can,” I stammer, my voice barely above a whisper. Behind my closed eyes, I see flashes of the past—the desolate gaze of a broken eight-year-old boy curled into a fetal position, surrounded by darkness and despair. Rivulets of blood cover his pale body, while deep purple bruises bloom under his broken skin. His silent plea echoes in my mind, begging me to do what he couldn’t; to speak the truth, to confront the demons that haunt us both.

To save him.

To save us.

To save me.

“Your worst sin is to destroy and betray yourself for nothing. Your silence is your sin,” Jenna’s voice cuts through the turmoil within me, her words striking a chord deep within my soul. How did she know? “Do it for the boy you were before this all began.”

My breath hitches at her words, and I feel a surge of emotion rise within me. She sees through the fa?ade I’ve built, peeling back the layers of pain and trauma to reveal the raw truth that lies beneath. “I’ve been doing this for a number of years, Kayden,” she continues, her voice steady and unwavering. “And while I don’t know your story, your trauma or your monsters. Your scars, the ones I can see and the ones I can’t, tell me this is more than a one-time occurrence. Start with the seed that birthed the devil that broke you.”

Her words hang in the air, heavy with meaning and intent. And as I wrestle with the demons of my past and present, I realise that perhaps, it’s time to confront the darkness that has haunted me for far too long.

“You don’t deserve this pain, Kayden. No one does. You didn’t ask for it. You weren’t created for it and you don’t deserve to be eternally punished by it.”

With a trembling breath, I begin to speak, the words pouring forth like a devastating storm, demolishing the barriers that have kept me prisoner for so long and maybe I am one step closer to reclaiming the pieces of myself that I’ve buried in unmarked graves while I’m still breathing.