Page 23 of Raiden

The record is still playing, the sleeve lying to the side. I pick it up, brushing my finger over the scrolling cover.A Collection of Bach.

Obviously, I know all the names of the classic composers, but I wouldn’t be able to pick out one piece from another. I like this. I might look it up, add a few songs to my playlists. It’s darker and broodier than most classical, but not so dark and broody that it’s unbearably dramatic.

The books are predominantly about finance. Given that Raiden used to be the club’s treasurer, it makes sense. Raiden loves numbers like I love classics and history. Passion is passion and to each their own. Therearea few classics mixed in. Mostly adventure books like Robinson Crusoe, and Treasure Island. A few by Alexandre Dumas.

Raiden’s steps behind me make me turn, excitement bubbling inside. I want to ask him if he’s read them. Which one he liked best? Get into a discussion that lasts for hours becausethis ismypassion and if he’s read some of my all-time favorites, then that’s just- just… I don’t know.Amazing?

My mouth dries out at the sight of him. Naked down to his jeans, a fine sheen of sweat standing out on the defined muscles in his shoulders and arms, the dark ink swirling starkly over his pectorals, trailing deliciously down his carved abs. His jeans hang low on his hips, the waistband of his boxers and a strip of black fabric exposed, prominently showcasing the Adonis V.

I can’t breathe or move. In direct contrast to my paralyzed body, my pulse starts slamming wildly.

“What…” The word is all breath. I can’t force it into more until I swallow violently. “What are we doing here?”

He could kiss me. Pull me up against him. Thrust me up against the wall. I’d melt for him, open for him like I did in the woods. He’s half-dressed and very clearly hasnotshowered.

It’s not hot in here. The sheen of sweat glistening on his naked body isn’t right.

“Raiden?”

He shakes his head, his haunted, vacant eyes sweeping to mine as he comes back to himself.

“Shower’s yours if you want it. I’m good.”

“Uhh, I think I’ll just grab one back at the clubhouse.” I watch his face, as guarded as his skin is bare. “Do you want to talk, or should we leave?”

He’s silent. Unmoving. Is this a different kind of panic attack? Does he do this, tunnel into himself and just disappear? He seems so vacant and hollowed out.

The most dangerous animals are the wounded ones, but I put a hand on his bare arm anyway. He starts, rearing back. He twists away from me, his hand covering the puckered scar on his shoulder.

I slowly put my hands up where he can see them. “It’s okay. Do you want to go? We can go. No. I’ll go. You can stay.”

His fingers smooth over the old wound. Whoever tattooed him did an amazing job of working the ink over it. I don’t think most artists would be able to touch something like that. It’s not huge, but the skin is ridged and jagged. The ink almost makes it disappear.

“I fucking hate showers.”

“O-oh.”

He keeps caressing that scar. I watch, until his hand forms a fist and he thumps it angrily against his shoulder. “They were the worst part of prison.”

“Oh my god.”

“Not like that. Not for me. Just… this. This was how I almost died.” He traces the line from the scar to his heart. “This is where they wanted to put that goddamn shiv. Didn’t even know the guy. The fucker just didn’t like the look of me. Wanted me to die for it.”

I’m not a therapist. I don’t know how to deal with this level of trauma. I don’t even know how to deal with my own past. I know that blood soaks into the mind. Into memory. Into muscle and body and bone. Once it coats you, you’re never clean again. You learn to live with that, you reinvent yourself, you put one foot in front of the other, or you crawl if you have to, butyou keep moving forward and you don’t look back. Back is death. Back is destruction. There’s only forward or blackness.

I’ve felt that dark reaching for me. It’s comforting, like a blanket, but if you don’t have the strength to throw it off when you no longer need the quiet and the escape of tunneling into a part of yourself where nothing exists except silence, then it can claim you.

“Coffee. You have a coffee maker? I’ll get some going. It’s warm. That’s what we need.”

“I don’t want fucking coffee.”

I’d taken a step towards the kitchen, but I stop. Do I want to deal with this unspoken level of brokenness that this man is hiding so well?

Ishe hiding it? Or does it come and go?

The dark, the panic, the sick feeling in the pit of the stomach and the back of the mind? It’s quite clear that he doesn’t allow his sister or his club brothers, not even Gray who has been his best friend for life, to see this. What do they all think? That the five years he was gone didn’t happen? That he’s just fine?

He let me see out in the woods. He didn’t have a choice. He hated it.

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