Page 34 of Atonement

“Hit me.”

Meyer

The words came out as a whisper. She stared blankly for a moment as she absorbed my words, then her mouth dropped open.

“What?”

I swallowed past my fear. “Take it out on me. God knows I deserve it.” I tucked a strand of filthy hair behind her ear so I could see her face better. “I can handle whatever you need. Give me all your frustration, all your anger…” I trailed off and swallowed thickly.Please. I’ll take everything.

“No.” She shook her head furiously, letting go of me long enough to wipe the tears from her face. “I’m not going to do that, Meyer. I won’t ever hurt you like that.”

The unspoken accusation hung between us like dead weight.Ihad hurt her like that, and gladly, before I understood that she was the only part of my miserable life that made it worth living.

“I want you to.”

“Don’t lie to me,” she snapped. “We’re beyond that now. If you can’t tell me the truth, there really is no hope.”

She shut her mouth as she realized what she’d said. If it was still possible for me to shatter the last of her faith, that meant there was some left right now. Maybe only a little bit. But it was there.

“Hit me.” I pushed her back against the wall again, crushing her with my torso, and kissed her. She wigged her hands between our bodies and pushed against me uselessly. She was strong, but no match for me, and she knew it. When I broke our kiss to look at her again her pupils were wide, reflecting my own face back at me. “Give it back to me, everything he did to you tenfold.” I bit lightly on her earlobe, trying to give her a little bit of pain. Just enough to spur her into action. I couldn’t handle her tears anymore; they were killing me from the inside out.

“I don’t want to.” Her voice had changed, was slightly breathy now, and I placed one hand over her breast lightly before squeezing it. My fingers pressed onto her skin, feeling a point hotter than the rest, and I knew I’d hit a bruise. She groaned and grabbed my wrist, trying to pull my hand away, but she couldn’t move me. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t,” I whispered. “Not the way I hurt you.”

“So we just go tit for tat, back and forth until one of us dies?”

“I think my ledger is a bit more in the red than yours.” I kissed her forehead, taking that contact where I could. “I deserve this, Maddie. I deserve whatever punishment you have to dole out. Go ahead, just … try it. One time. Then I’ll let it go.”

She swallowed as she looked up at me, fingers tapping against my bicep. Her eyes flicked across my face as she thought through what I said, then landed on mine as she made up her mind. Her closed fist landed with a thud against my chest. She waited for a second, watching my face for a violent reaction, but I held myself as still as I could.

Then, the frayed thread that had been holding her back snapped in two.

“I said I loved you and you left me.” She hit me again, harder this time, knuckles sinking into my muscle. “You left me for him even though you knew he would be coming for me.”

“I did.” No excuses. No minimization of my actions. Even though deep down I wanted her to be waiting for me like a lovesick puppy, I knew also that Conrad would eventually hunt her down. He had given up too easily in my office, let us walk out without enough of a fight. The bruise on my arm where he’d hit me smarted as if to protest my belittlement of what he’d done to me, but it was the truth. The only reason he hadn’t dragged Madeline out by her hair right then was because Shawn was around and he’d already seen too much. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t believe you.”

I kissed her again, or tried to before her palm met my cheek and shoved me away. The soft sound of the slap reverberated through the room like a gunshot.

“Like that,” I encouraged her. The blow didn’t scare me. No, the soft feel of her hand on my face spurred me on, because it meant she was breaking. And if she broke apart, maybe I could crawl my way back inside her, find that piece of my soul I’d left within her before I’d even realized a part of me was missing. “Harder. As hard as you want.”

“It’s not you I want to hurt.” It was a protest, and admission.

“But I’m the only one here. I’m the only one you can do it to.” I put my lips against her neck, sucking skin and muscle into my mouth, and her hand went around my own throat and squeezed. “Did he do that to you, too?”

“Shut up,” she snarled. The tears in her voice had dried. “I told you to leave me alone.”

“I did that once. Look where it got you. Look where it got us.” I bent at the waist, licking gently at one of her stiff nipples. She sucked in a breath, chest rising to my mouth. “I thought once that I would destroy you, Maddie. But do you see what happened instead?”

“Someone else got to me first.” She grabbed my hair and wrenched my head back, then shoved her other hand against my chest so hard I was forced to stumble back. But I was in front of her again in a moment. I lifted her and leaned back, spurring her to wrap her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist.

“Not completely.” I set her on the dresser, knocking over the hotel phone and the glasses wrapped in plastic left for our use. I pulled my shirt over my head and then grabbed her hands, placing them on my bare skin, and pressing her nails into the flesh. “You’re not running from me.”

“You never did quite understand consent,” she snapped, but her nails pressed into me as she dragged them down my front, leaving red marks in their wake. Here and there spots of blood jumped forth. Instead of shying away she wiped some with a finger and licked it, staring at me as she did so.

“There’s a lot I don’t understand. Except for you.”

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