Page 249 of Obsession

He reached under the collar of his T-shirt and pulled out the pendant he always wore around his neck.

“This was my mother’s,” he whispered, looking at it, “she always told me that everything has a beginning and an end and that you always have to be aware of that. If you’re going through a hard time, you have to wait and hope that it will end and that you’ll be happy one day. The same applies vice versa: If you are happy and have achieved something, you must not forget that this too has an end. You have to wait, live your life and know when to stop if you’ve gone too far. I never understood her words and never paid them any mind, up until the point where I went too far. I had forgotten who I was and what my goal was. Mylife was on that track. I threw myself into the middle of chaos to cleanse my aching soul. I had changed so much that when I looked at myself in the mirror, I no longer saw her, I saw the fucker who had abused her. Sin feels good, like an aphrodisiac, it makes you forget everything, but when it’s over, the pain comes back all the stronger. I never took advantage of a girl. If I liked one and knew she would be mine, I preferred to let her come to me. The obsession with the tattoo was also a protection for her in a way. That’s why I do it, so every asshole knows she’s mine and they should be afraid to go near her. People got it wrong because they thought I was marking my possessions with it. No, it’s my way of keeping my girlfriend from experiencing the same thing my mother did. And even though I never cared about any of them as much as I should have, I still wanted to protect them. Maybe there was a bit of possessiveness involved, you could call me a territorial male, but above all it served as reassurance that they were protected. There’s a lot in the S: jealousy, possessiveness, but above all protection.”

I blinked in shock. I was thinking exactly the same thing as everyone else about the tattoo. But it seemed as if the trauma of his childhood washed over him in the most painful and exaggerated way. Given the tattoo’s new meaning, it no longer seemed so obsessive.

“I made a name for myself, not just with my driving, but with my wild, impulsive behavior. Especially after…” he paused suddenly, biting his lips and closing his eyes as if he’d said something he didn’t mean to.

“After what?” I asked, and he let out a deep sigh.

“After I killed the guy who raped V.”

I made no sound, suddenly feeling paralyzed, and he looked at me as he added:

“Joshua’s brother.”

I hadn’t expected him to go back to that subject, not after everything he’d told me. I licked my lips, and he looked up at the sky, where the light was still fighting the darkness the same way I was fighting my love for Harris.

We were both losing.

“Tell me,” I begged him, laying my head back on his shoulder, “tell me everything.”

Harris sighed and looked down at his hands.

“V was new among us, Jay had just brought her. Young, innocent, lots of boys were interested in her, and one of them raped her one night.”

I pressed my lips tightly together to keep from reacting. I had known V as a fluorescent waterfall of joy and courage; I never thought she went through something like that.

“It happened at a party. V went alone with a couple of my friends. Jay and I stayed home because we were not interested in the theme of the party. They were having an LGBT celebration, and while I’m not homophobic, I didn’t feel like going to a party where some guy would try to pick me up, and that was a mistake.”

I frowned, trying to make the connection.

“It has to do with the colored dust, doesn’t it?”

Harris nodded.

“They were all covered in it, with the LGBT flag, and V was no exception.”

“Oh, my God,” I whispered as I realized it, and Harris looked at me, his face contorted with pain.

“She’d become like a sister to me, but she was Jay’s girlfriend, so I had no right to her, at least that idiot thought I didn’t.”

He gritted his teeth and looked to the floor.

“She called us after it happened. No one rescued her. I remember she could barely speak, and I did not understandwhat had happened until we got there. She was covered in all sorts of colors, but a lot of violet. Her clothes were torn and her skin was covered in powder. When I found him, he was still at the party, drunk out of his mind and covered in the same colors, but also a lot of violet.”

I clung tighter to his arm as I got colder and colder, but not because of the temperature or the rain.

“I managed to get him out of there without anyone noticing anything strange. I took care of him on my own; Jay wasn’t prepared for something like that. I knew Marcus wouldn’t live to see the morning. After the first punch, I couldn’t stop. He struggled against me, he was older, but I was stronger. It lasted a long time… even after he stopped breathing. I was fueled by V’s image, scared and broken, but not just her.”

“You remembered your mom?” I whispered.

He nodded.

“You have no idea how. Somewhere along the way, I guess I forgot that I was punching Marcus. I thought I had my… father in my hands. I disfigured his face with my bare hands. The autopsy said he was hit by a rock or a hard object, but it was really just my fists and the rage I had inside me.”

He looked at his hands, at the wounds that the same kind of anger had inflicted on him, and then he looked at me.

“I have no regrets. I’d do that to any fucking rapist in the world.”

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