Page 121 of Trying Sophie

“That’s what I wanted to know too. At the end of the night, she approached me and asked if she could explain herself. I said yes, even as I wondered if I really wanted to know. That’s when she told me pain and humiliation were what she wanted—what she needed—to feel whole.

“Trailing my fingers over the bruises on her arm, I asked her why she let people hurt her like that. She shook her head sadly and told me she’d singled me out because she thought I needed the pain too, that we could help each other.”

I choked back a sob, startled to find I had tears in my eyes.

“Her words fucked me up Sophie. I didn’t want to be like her, to need the same things she needed. The idea of being that way repulsed me, but the longer I obsessed about what she’d said, the more I recognized there was some truth there too. I tried to convince myself I wasn’t some sick, twisted motherfucker who hated women, but I couldn’t deny sex was more fulfilling when a little pain mixed with my pleasure. I’d embraced that part of me, so why was I fighting the darker, more sinister part?”

I actually had a theory about why I liked it rough, but it didn’t explain the high I got when others hurt too. Every day I took my body to the height of exertion, punished it the way only a rugby player could. I’d gone so many years hurting that I worried it had deadened me, both mentally and physically. On the pitch, if I broke my finger, I kept playing. If I took an elbow or ten to the stomach, I pushed the searing pain away, stood up, and kept on going. When your kneecap felt like it was going to fall off, you checked to make sure it was still attached and then you kicked the motherfucking ball. And now, in order to get off I needed something … more … to show me I was alive and strong and that my body still worked. My pain, hers, ours. It didn’t matter. As long as the fucking wasn’t soft or sweet, that’s what I craved.

“The worst of it is,” I continued, “until you came along, I’d cut myself off from all the other good parts about sex. That’s what I was talking about back at the hotel. All that, ‘I don’t do this’ stuff. Because usually, that’s not the way it goes for me. Get in, get off, get out.” I laughed humorlessly. “Do you know they talk about me? They call me ‘The Machine.’ At first it was this big joke, but then some girl told me why they called me that and even though it made me sick to know that’s what people thought of me, I couldn’t stop the way I was.”

I heard Sophie swallow and then gear up to say something. When the words didn’t come, I said, “Tell me, please. I can hear you thinking.”

“It’s the eyes thing, isn’t it?”

She knew me. This woman got me on a level I hadn’t been prepared for. I’d once thought I knew Sophie better than she knew herself. Now I wondered if the reverse wasn’t also the same.

“Yes.”

“I thought so,” she murmured. “That first time, you disconnected from me. It felt like you went somewhere else.”

“I had to,” I admitted, humiliation churning in my gut. “I can’t … I couldn’t …”

“It’s okay Declan. You don’t have to explain yourself.”

“But I do,” I answered emphatically. “What I told you afterward was true. It was too intense, my feelings too much. But there was more. I can’t—physically can’t—look a woman in the eye when I fuck her. Not anymore.”

“That’s not true,” she argued, but I kept on as if she hadn’t spoken. Now that the words were flowing, I needed to get them off my chest.

“I tell myself it’s because I don’t want to see what might be lurking behind the facade, but I think it’s because I don’t want to see them looking back at me with the same mixture of horror and disgust that must have been on my face when I was with Natasha.”

It was the first time I’d ever said the words out loud, and now that they’d been spoken, I felt a measure of … not exactly peace, but something like it, settle over me. I’d given voice to my fears and maybe now could stop holding so tight to them.

“But you can look a woman in the eye,” Sophie argued gently. “You’ve done it with me.”

I had. And each and every time I’d warred with myself not to turn away, not to give in to those fears. But with Sophie it was different too. Because it wasn’t that I was actually afraid. The fear was instinctual, a holdover from how I’d been before. When I was with her, the only fear I felt now was that I’d have to give her up someday soon.

“Things are different with you,” I admitted. “It’s not the same when I’m inside of you.”

“Why’s that?” she asked, her voice quiet.

I couldn’t bring myself to say it, to give her the words, so instead I said, “You know why.

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