Page 48 of Love on the Run

I make four lines on the clean, prepped uninjured thigh to signify the years I spent loving a man who couldn’t love me back. At least this version of Flower. What would he think of her?Pathetic. He thought he was getting a complete person he had no idea how broken I am. He’d hate this. Hate me. He was right to take Asa.

Making neat circles around the areolas that will never feed another Takeda heir, the piercing pain is sharp but is nothing compared to the blow of the news I experienced earlier.

Every crease and fold of my body is part of my macabre masterpiece. I haven’t gone to work on myself like this in more than a decade. Inside my elbows. The gap of my thighs, behind my knees between my toes and the tips of nail beds and toes. Blood slips from me in thin trails.

The towel is bloodied stained crimson. I look at it with a certain pride that I am in control of it all. I can stop anytime I want. I will have to take it to the incinerator myself or pack it deep in plastic, so no one will see. Then maybe not since the whole ship knows I miscarried. I can easy cover with that.

Every mark is superficial. I’ll barely be able to see them or feel them in a few days. Then I can touch them to reassure myself that I suffered the worst possible thing to happen other than actually losing my husband and child to heaven and I still survived. I will thrive in this.

The fight will be arduous, but I will prevail. I can see that now. Before I couldn’t see past the pain.

Euphoria cascades over me. The cool air lights upon my skin. Resting my head back my beathing becomes easy now. It’s like the afterglow of sex. Sated and replete, my body slumps back. I’m no different than someone overdosing only this is my drug. I’m powerless over my life at the moment it but at the same time I feel strong. I can control every movement of the blade. I say how deep I go. No one but me. I don’t crumble at the sight of the blood. My head lolls and my eyes drift close, not from blood loss despite the mess I’ve not lost even a half of a cup.

“Flower.”

I still. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no….

He’s not supposed to be here.I didn’t lock the bathroom door. Because he’s not supposed to fucking be here.She set me up.

“Flower,” his voice sounds alarmed. Hearing him rushing over to me I slowly turn my head to face him.

His face is a sea on anguish and fear as he crashes to his knees before me. With hands gentler than I’ve ever felt before her cups my face searching it. “What happened to you? Who did this to you?”

I can’t make the words come out. Too many thoughts blast through my mind at once.

“I-I—” I bite my lip until it bleeds.

“Flower,” he shakes me a little, his face contorting. “Baby,” he soothes, breaking me further. My soul is pulverized seeing his reaction. “Tell, me what happened. Who did this to you?”

I reach for his wrist. Cupping it. Holding the razor between two digits.

“I did.” I wait. I’ve seen it before from my parents, FADE, Ghadi and Willow. The reason they watched me so carefully when I lost our first baby. Why they come to visit and check on me all the time. The hypervigilance that is never ending. The secret I swore them all to keep. One they kept to give me a chance at happeness, because they saw how much he loved me, how good he was for me. They never understood why I never told him the truth but I do.

I don’t turn from it. This time I don’t run.

I watch as his concern and fear of what someone may have done to me fade and the realization settles. The terror of me being attacked changes when he realizes it’s me causing the harm. Then I see what I knew I would.

Horror.

TWENTY-ONE

JUST US

Akchiro

“That’s all of them, Hana.”My voice sounds like it’s been rubbed raw although I’ve barely said ten words in the past hour since I saw my love slumped on the gotdamned floor of the master suite’s bathroom of my yacht like a bloody ragdoll.

In the following heavy silence,I clean up all the items I pulled from the first aid kit neatly stacking the bandages, peroxide, liquid and gauze away. Despite all of the bleeding, the cuts were superficial. But damn if there weren’t dozens of them. My chest squeezes at the thought. I take the kit putting it away in the bathroom that is still a mess.

Rolling my sleeves up I take the cleaning products stowed away under the cabinets and clean the floor, remove the bloody towels putting them in the bag marked for the incinerator, Flower had already gotten out in preparation of her cutting session. I curse myself a thousand times a fool wondering how many times she’s done this very thing under my nose since we’ve been together. Is this why she’s suffered from anemia so muchduring our relationship. How many hours of my work day are spent with her tearing her body away like this? Fear and betrayal slice through me but I press it down. It would serve nothing for me to rise against her now. She obviously hurting so much right now. My entire focus turns to my precious love lying so small and alone in bed.

I’m nota man who normally experiences fear. The last time I felt this helpless was when I found out we lost our first baby and that she’d gone through that entire ordeal alone. The first time was when my father died when I was in high school.

Now again and I vow for the last time terror eviscerates me. Shucking the blood tinged dress shirt, I added to the bag sealing it before heading back to the bed.

Coming back,I gaze at the small figure in the bed. She looks exhausted. Broken. I know without having to be told that I did this to her. This is what loving me did to her. Her eyes are guarded as she looks at me. She looks hollowed out, like all emotion has been scooped out of her and nothing’s left but a husk of the woman I love.

“Hana—”

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