Page 72 of Fix You

Before I could stare too long, I clamped my eyes shut. I kept them closed as I heard Maeve slosh through the water. It seemed an eternity passed before she spoke again. “You can turn around now.”

When I did, I thankfully found her submerged in the tub and covered by bubbles and foam. At her wince in pain, I asked, “What’s wrong?”

“My hands.” Frowning, she pulled them out of the water, staring at the battered skin. Her gaze flickered over to mine. “What did I do to them?”

“You beat them on the concrete.”

“Oh,” she murmured as pink tinged her cheeks.

“I’ve got a First Aid kit in my suitcase. Let me get it.”

As she pulled her knees up to her chin, Maeve bobbed her head. I hurried out of the bedroom. When I returned with the kit, tears were once again streaming down Maeve’s cheeks.

“Would you like me to give you an injection for the pain?”

“I’m not crying from the physical pain.”

“Oh,” I murmured, unsure what else to say or do at that moment. Instead, I busied myself with getting the proper medicine out of the kit to clean her wounds. While stitcheswouldn’t be necessary, I imagined she would need them bandaged after she dried off.

I sat down on the edge of the tub with my supplies. “Let me have one of your hands.”

Maeve pulled away one of the hands wrapped around her knees. I then began to clean her fingers with a soft washcloth.

“The man who did this to me….”

My hand froze on her wrist. Glancing up into her beautifully broken face, I said, “You don’t have to do this.”

With a shake of her head, she replied, “I want to. You deserve to know the truth, so you can fully understand what happened back in the alley.” She swallowed hard. “And what happened when we kissed.”

As her shoulders caved in under the weight of her trauma, I fought the urge to dive into the tub with her. To take her into my arms and shelter her from the emotional storms that ravaged her. But like the emotionally stunted man that I remained rooted to the floor.

“My rapist was the man my father arranged my marriage with.”

In that moment, there were a million questions I wanted to pepper her with. But instead, I sat patiently, allowing her to tell her story at her own pace.

As Maeve began to relate the emotional and physical horrors she’d experienced that night in the Kavanaugh crypt, the nerves in my body grew impossibly tight like the strings on a bow.

Every time I thought it couldn’t get worse, it did.

When the tears began dropping down her cheeks, my taut nerves frayed and broke. A fury like I’d never known before in my life rippled through me.

I shot up off the bathroom floor. With no outlet for my anger, I began to pace around the room. The steam from the tub singed my skin which was already fiery from my rage. Before I couldstop myself, I grabbed the bottle of bath oil and flung it at the mirror. Shattering glass echoed through the room as the bottle exploded into the mirror.

But it wasn’t enough.

My hands slapped against the top of my head as a scream of fury tore from my lips. I tugged at the strands of my hair until the last breath within me whooshed out. Bending over at the waist, I tried to regulate my breathing.

At the feel of a hand on my shoulder, I jerked my gaze up to meet Maeve’s. She stood naked before me. Grabbing the front of my shirt, she pulled herself against me. As she buried her head in my chest, I tentatively brought my hands around her back, which was still slick and soapy from the tub.

At that moment, I didn’t even think about the fact that she was wet and naked against me. I was just desperate to find a way to comfort her.

“Tell me that your brothers made him pay,” I croaked.

“They tortured him for days.”

“Good. But the bastard deserved weeks and months and torture. Your fucking father, too.”

“Yes, they did,” Maeve replied softly.

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