Page 104 of Ruin

And then he’s inside me, stretching me, filling me, holding my legs open wide, fucking me like he’s trying to etch himself inside me far deeper than the blade can go. It’s slow at first and hard, then faster and faster until he’s pistoning his hipsinto me so rapidly so that the sound of him fucking me is like gunfire ricocheting around the room.

I’m moaning, delirious, as he begs me with each thrust, his words coming to me like a dream:

Tell me you’re mine.

Hurt me, sweet girl.

Mark me like you used to.

Tell me nothing’s changed.

Tell me I’m yours.

But I can’t. I can’t give him anything but this moment as I cling to him, coming apart around him, my heart splintering into ash.

Sobs wrack my body as he fucks his release into me, losing himself in me for what I know will be the last time, and I cover my face with my hands.

He pries my hands away from my face. “Open your eyes, Giovanna. Look at me. Look at me right now.”

I squeeze my eyes shut tighter, the words ripping out of me in broken sobs. “No, Tommy. No. Please. Just…go.”

His silence is unbearable as he collapses over me, his forehead against my cheek, his breath ragged, his body shaking not from lust but from loss.

When I finally force myself to look at him, he searches my face for the reassurance he desperately needs, for the promises I’ve given him a hundred times before.

But this time, I can’t give him what he’s asking for. I can physically see the moment when he finally understands, when his heart shatters.

When he knows that we are over.

45

Giovanna

When Tommy is gone, the front door clicking shut behind him like the closing of a coffin, I lay in bed as the room grows lighter. I feel dead, weighted to the bed, unable to think or move. I feel like my soul has left my body. Tommy took something of mine with him when he left.

When the light begins to fade into evening and my thirst overwhelms me, I drag myself to the bathroom and drink from the faucet before sitting on the cold tile floor.

My thigh pulses with my heartbeat, the mark fresh and angry and red.

I told him it was over. I told him not to touch me again. But I asked him to cut me, and it was the most freeing moment of my life.

My fingers hover over the wound, tracing the design in the air just above it. Already my body is trying to heal, erase it, smooth it over as if he’d never been here. As if he hadn’t carved himself into me.

I don’t want that to happen. I don’t want it gone. I don’twanthimgone.

I reach for the small dish of matches on the counter, the ones I keep for candles when I take a bath. I strike one and let it burn for a moment, then blow it out, scraping the blackened tip against the porcelain tub until I have a smear of ash. It stains my fingers, a gray smudge like dirt, like pain.

I press the ash into the cut, and the sting is instant, searing, sharp enough to bring tears to my eyes. I bite down hard, forcing the pain into silence, grinding my teeth so I don’t make a sound. The ash grits against my raw skin, burning deeper than fire, hurting more than when he cut me in the first place. I repeat the process, creating ash with the matches and rubbing it into the orchid design until my vision blurs, until the wound is dark and ugly, until I know it will be mine forever.

It’s primitive. Stupid, maybe. A combination of superstition and science. I don’t care. I just pray that it works and that the scar will stay.

Even if it’s hidden where no one else can see it, I’ll know it’s there. Every time I undress or bathe or touch it, I’ll be reminded that I’m his. And if anyone should try to touch me, they’ll find that I’m not theirs to take.

I close my eyes, lean my head back against the wall, and whisper his name. Then I shut my mouth tight, like I can lock him inside me like a secret, behind a love that will never be broken, behind a scar that is already beginning to form.

46

Tommy