Page 40 of Scorch

Viktor

We drive back home in silence for the first half of the trip. The weight of what just happened lingers in the air. Lydia's usually vibrant eyes are clouded with a mix of confusion and something I can't quite place. Maybe acceptance? I don't know. But I know I need to make this right for her.

“Do you have a doctor you could see?” she asks, her voice breaking the heavy silence.

“I don’t need a doctor.”

She reaches for my right hand and lays it gently in her lap. It’s bloodied and bruised from delivering a beating that had to happen. She doesn’t flinch or pull away, and that steadiness in her touch unexpectedly grounds me.

Today, Lydia watched me beat a man before I sliced his throat right in front of her. It was brutal. It was vicious.

It was necessary.

I saw the shock in her eyes, but she didn’t look away. Why isn’t she more disturbed? Why isn’t she running from me?

I glance at her, blowing out a breath. “Alright, then. I’ll clean you up myself. Tell me you have a first aid kit.”

“Yeah, baby,” I respond, the term slipping out naturally.

She shivers and moves a little closer to me, that small gesture sending a wave of warmth through my chest. Solidarity I didn’t expect and never hoped for.

“What happens now?” she asks, turning to me, uncertainty evident in her eyes.

“I will take you home. We get cleaned up, we get some dinner, and we go to sleep.” I shrug, trying to sound nonchalant. “And tomorrow, we plan our wedding.” I let go of her hand and scrub it across my brow, feeling the adrenaline still pumping through my veins. “After a night like this, I need to let it bleed off.”

“What do you mean?” she asks, her voice soft but probing.

My eyes are focused on the road. “When I fight, when I let that part of me take over, it’s not easy to just turn it off. It’s like… it’s like an engine that’s been running at full throttle and suddenly slams to a stop. The energy, the power—it doesn’t just disappear. It has to wear off, or it consumes me.”

She swallows hard, trying to grasp the weight of my words. Her acceptance of this part of me brings a strange sense of relief.

“Makes sense. So what do you need to do?” she asks, her voice steady.

“I need to come down slowly. We need to come down slowly. That means I don’t want to talk much or do anything outside of routine. It’s how I cope, how I keep it all from spilling over.”

“You need aftercare?” she says, a hint of teasing in her voice, trying to lighten the mood.

I growl softly. “How the fuck do you know what aftercare is?”

“Okay, alright, don’t change the subject,” she says, sobering quickly.

Her understanding sends a chill through me, but she continues. “Okay, Viktor. I get it. After something intense, I need to go for a walk or something. Though, I mean, to be clear, I've never done anything like that.”

I nod, a glimmer of something—gratitude, maybe—warming me before I turn away, feeling the tension in my shoulders slowly easing.

“I’m honestly… well, I’ve never done what you did, but I’ve had intense moments of…” She looks away and doesn’t give me details, but I know exactly what she’s talking about. I know she’s been arrested, and her time in boarding school was more like a reform camp than school because of her vices.

“What do you find helps?” I ask her.

She sighs. “A hot shower. Sometimes a drink, but that's my least favorite way of handling it. Weed.” She looks out the window, pausing. “Sex. You?”

My vision momentarily clouds, but I shrug it off. Sex.

Fucking sex.

Her openness surprises me, but it’s exactly what I need. I grip the steering wheel tighter, knowing that tonight, we'll both find our ways to cope—to come down slowly and face whatever comes next together.

“Some of that, or sometimes I lift. Sometimes, I just need to sleep for hours and hours.” I don't tell her that sex isn’t part of my toolbox.

---