Page 37 of The Intimacy of Skin

A creak and a gasp shattered the wretched scene. I jolted, snapping my head towards the bathroom door that was now open. Price stood in the doorway, his mouth hanging open, his eyes frantically searching between my mutilated thighs, the blood on the floor, and my face.

“You’re not supposed to be here.” My voice sounded foreign to my ears, an edge to it that I couldn’t recognize.

Price looked up, locking his gaze with mine. A swarm of hurt raced across his face as he took a tentative step forward. “I was worried about you, and it seems I had good reason to be.”

I shook my head, grabbing more toilet paper in a failed attempt to cover what I’d done. “You’ve seen my scars.” I sniffed, willing the tears to stop as I placed the bloodied blade on the countertop. “I told you I didn’t want to see you tonight.”

“Seeing old, healed scars and seeing you covered in your own blood are two entirely different things.”

“Leave it, Price. Go home. I don’t want you here.”

“No.”

The firm, solid tone in his voice had me bristling. “What do you mean ‘no’? You don’t want to see this, and I don’t want you to either.” My resolve was crumbling.

A lot of the blood had dried by now, sticking to my skin. I grabbed more toilet paper, furiously scrubbing at my thigh. It wouldn’t come off. I couldn’t get it off. And the floor—fuck, the floor. I needed to clean the floor.

“Crew.” Price stepped closer, getting onto his knees just a few feet before me. “Crew, stop.”

The lump in my throat was too big. It was impossible to speak around it, so I stopped trying to. I shook my head, focusing on trying to make the bleeding stop.

A palm wrapped around my wrist, stopping me. Crackling, fiery amber eyes bored into my soul. I held my breath, desperately trying to hold myself together.

Price’s face blurred in front of me. I was crying too much, overwhelmed as familiar panic started to rise straight from my gut.

Once again, my brain was confusing shit.

When I tried to look past the tears, Price’s face had taken on Willow’s horrified expression from the first time she’d walked in on me hurting myself.

It was something I’d never forget. She’d screamed so loud, I was sure the neighbors were about to come right over with a shotgun or something. There were hundreds of regrets I had when it came to Willow and our friendship, that day being one of the highest on the list.

Turning the shower on, Price kept his hold on my wrist. Neither of us spoke, letting the sound of water hitting tile fill the silence between us.

Only after I’d stopped fighting him and he’d guided me under the lukewarm water did he speak. “Go ahead and rinse off. I’m going to clean this up, get you some clothes, and then I want to take you somewhere.”

Cutting while showering used to be my favorite method of cleanup. As time went on, my preferences had changed. When Price had asked me to get in the shower immediately after, I understood exactly why I’d stopped doing that.

That shit fucking hurt. Sure, the pain was essentially the point of what I was doing, but I’d forgotten just how painful it was when my wounds were so fresh.

Thankfully, it had also given me time to get myself together a bit.

My tears had calmed, and the ocean threatening to swallow me whole had gone back down to knee-level.

I was still reeling about the fact that Price had shown up and how, though I decided not to ask because of the steely disposition he was carrying.

My questions about the clothing he’d gotten for me and where he was taking me were still unanswered.

His face was hard-set, almost blank. I could still see his concern.

It was mixed with something else I couldn’t name, though.

Whenever the light hit him just right, I saw a dimming fire in his eyes, close to burning out.

When he looked at me, his jaw clenched. His right hand kept inching closer to his left forearm, hovering over it with his fingers stuck in a claw-like motion.

I was dressed for discretion. The pants Price had chosen for me were black and baggy, the ends slightly frayed. My jacket was the same, though it was a gray color with a hood. He’d zipped it up for me and led me to his car that was parked outside.

My thighs were covered with gauze taped down with medical tape over the larger cuts and Band-Aids over the smaller ones.

Price had helped me with those, too, though it wasn’t without me arguing with him about it.

The bathroom floor was clean as well, like nothing had ever happened.

My box of secrets was neatly put back together, the blade wiped of any blood, and tucked back the way it was originally.

I had a passing thought that Price was going to throw it away.

That’s what Willow had done the first time.

It had pissed me off to no end back then.

She didn’t understand that this was how I lived my life—how I stayed sane.

I had gone out, bought a new blade, and found a new hiding place the very next day.

All Willow had accomplished was making me more aware and more secretive of my habit. I wasn’t going to stop unless I wanted to. I didn’t want to back then, and I didn’t want to now. Either Price understood that or knew I’d cause one hell of an argument about it.

The car ride was stifling. My head bumped against the passenger-side window as we made our way through Crescent Planes’ city traffic. It was late at night, the dark a harsh contrast to the amount of lights around us.

Any other time, I’d find them beautiful.

Now, though, I began to wonder if the car I rode in would be able to handle the tension between Price and I.

I wanted to ask him where we were going again.

The way his hands were gripping the wheel, his knuckles going white with the pressure, had me deciding otherwise.

After roughly twenty minutes of driving, we stopped. There was nothing around us except for a place that looked like a bar and other random, closed restaurants.

Price turned to me, that same look on his face as before. “Put your hood up. Hide your face.”

Keeping my arguing to a minimum, I did as he said and exited the car when he did. I watched as Price walked to my side, jerking his head as an invitation to follow him.

We walked side by side in complete silence. I didn’t pay much attention to the people we passed by, taking Price’s advice to cover my face. The streetlamps on this side of town were dimmer than most. Our shadows were hazy, partial shapes of our bodies as I followed whatever path we were on.

That was another thing that had shocked me when I came to New York. Back in my hometown, we didn’t have very many streetlamps. The stars seemed brighter there. The moon seemed to like us better.

At exactly eight o’clock, every tiny store, gas station, or small locally owned food joint would close for the night.

Not a single light could be seen through their windows, yet the streets gleamed from the sparkling sky above us.

It was Willow’s and my favorite pastime to go walking around late at night—just us, the moon, and the annoying as fuck crickets that seemed to chirp twenty-four-seven.

Here, though, there were millions of lights to blind you and every store I saw kept their lights running even after they closed.

After walking for what felt like an eternity, I finally gained the courage to ask questions. “Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”

“We’ve been walking a while.”

He nodded but didn’t say anything.

The burn of my thighs was starting to become too noticeable to ignore. My fresh wounds rubbed against the gauze, the tape occasionally getting stuck on the fabric of my pants.

I sighed, wanting to understand what was going on. “Listen, I know you’re probably freaked out right now over what you saw. All I can say is that I’m sorry you saw it.”

No response. Price had stopped moving, pushing us against a wall.

“I don’t even know how you got into the house.”

He grabbed the zipper of my jacket and tugged it up, hiding the lower half of my face better.

“It isn’t like I haven’t done this for a long time, Price. It’s just a part of me, okay?”

I couldn’t read his facial expression as he rearranged my hood, concealing me further.

Exasperated, I let my shoulders slump. “Can you please just tell me what you’re doing?”

“Look and watch.”

My body was turned, facing outward to the other side of the street. There were groups of people lined along the wall. Some were huddling close, chattering away to each other. A few were sunken down against the ground, their legs brought close to their chests.

I turned on my heel, facing Price. “I’m not sure what all you like to do in your free time, but I didn’t know one of those things would be creepily watching random people.”

His eyes narrowed as he palmed my shoulder once more, turning me back. “Watch closer, Crew. They’re not random people.”

Since I was the one at fault for scaring the shit out of him, I decided to humor what he was saying. What was so important about these people? It didn’t make any sense to me.

Until I looked closer and noticed the majority of them were dressed in scandalous clothing, their bodies barely covered, even as the air around us got more frigid by the second.

My hands were ice at this point, yet it didn’t seem to bother them.

Or maybe it did because their legs were shaking as they huddled closer to the person nearest to them.

The few that were on the ground—their backs against the wall, their arms gripped tight in a shield around themselves—were tired. I could see some of their eyelids were closed, others drooping repeatedly underneath the streetlamp lighting.

Not very many of them had jackets or hoodies. The ones who did looked like they were drowning in them, the fabric much too large for their tiny frames. Not a single person had a smile on their face.