Page 161 of Petite Fleur

Leon comes upstairs and showers me, carefully washing every inch of me. He cleans the welts on my body and scrubs the dried blood from my skin, but all I can focus on is the rusty-colored water circling the drain until all that is left is suds.

It leaves a faint brown stain on the side of the tub, and I find myself focusing on it despite Leon carefully and lovingly touching me.

Why can't I focus?

Why can't I enjoy how his hands feel or how soft his touches are?

Why can my mind only focus on the blood running down the tub and disappearing?

Even when he pulls me out of the shower and dries my skin, my mind pictures the blood running down the drain, and it makes me wonder why that's what's stuck in my head and not the look of Carlie and Shelby's exposed brain or Sean's blood almost touching my feet.

Why is it the bloody water that matters?

“Put this on, ma fleur.” I hear. It finally snaps me out of my haze, and I look up at Leon to see that he's already wearing what looks like Sean's clothes and holding an outfit that I can only assume is Carlie's.

I toss on the scratchy shorts and the thin t-shirt that he'd grabbed for me and follow him downstairs. It's surreal to stand here and see the wreckage.

It's broken pieces and fragments of what used to be my life, destroyed in a way that can never be repaired.

Can I ever be repaired?

Is this living room a representation of my life? Destined to be changed forever…

As wrong as the scene around me feels, something feels so cathartic about what happened tonight.

Even as Leon scrambles around this bloody mess, I feel a sense of calm overwhelm me, but why is he packing?

What is he doing?

He's filling a laundry basket with clothes, another with appliances, and another with food and toiletries.

“These aren't my things.” I mumble, but I'm unsure if what I said was loud enough for him to hear.

He takes everything to the front door and grabs my hand, pulling me to the door with him and sitting me on the porch steps. “Sit and stay here, okay?” He asks calmly.

“That's not my stuff…” I repeat, not even sure why I'm telling him, but it's the only thing I can think to say.

Well, not the only thing; he was right that I have the same darkness as him.

Maybe he was right that all of my broken pieces could fit into his, and we could be whole together, but how could that be?

How can I bring a baby into a world where we kill people?

Chapter 61

Leon Aldon

So, that girl is manic.

Logically, I should tell her, or at least be concerned about what happened in there, but it was glorious.

My girl lost her mind and destroyed half of that apartment.

The walls have holes; the coffee table is shattered; the TV is caved in, and, of course, the bodies.

My God, the bodies.

My girl did beautifully. She caved in Shelby's skull and kept swinging until brain, teeth, and blood flew across the room. Shekept swinging until Carlie got in the way, and the back of her head was caved in.

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