Page 54 of Ink Deep Devotion

This nice little safety net is about to drop me back into the choppy waters. Dad’s work needs him now more than ever. He has to put on a bold new face, proving to his clients that his office is stable again. I have to put on my old mask, and I’m his dutiful daughter, who is well-rounded, levelheaded, and, oh yeah, has no scars that haunt her.

I have to smile and pretend to be the happy fiancée.

Pretend again.

It should be easy. It’s just a role I have to dance to.

Damian’s car pulls up to my house as if this were one of his routine visits, but today, he’s my chariot here to take me away.

It’s always Damian, sometimes daily. He’s tried to knit himself into the patchwork quilt of my life, like a new square that somehow brightens the dark themes that have consumed me.

As if a shadow vanishes in the sunlight, I retreat from the window, concealing my disappointment that it’s Damian, not Dash. I haven’t seen Dash at all; it’s as if he’s embodied a ghost. The presence of it haunts me. Sometimes, I look up, feeling his eyes on me, but that’s just my silly heart, hoping for what can’t be.

How do I communicate with someone who is deaf and has walls so thick I can’t even see his face?

I know Dash loves me; I see it in his silence.

Watching me bleed was the final straw for a man like him. I am his weakness; that’s what he meant when he said I was a predator.

He, however, found a new way to protect himself from me. He’s turned his skin into coarse desert sand; he’s impenetrable now; his defenses are so tiny you can never single one grain out to stab it, yet his strength is so numerous you can’t target it all at once.

I can never scoop all of him up and beg for him to hold me while I cry. He just slips through my fingers, leaving a burning, rough trail behind.

I can’t find enough glue to piece Dash back together; there’s just too much, the aftermath spread too far and wide.

Sand hides in all those cracks, and you can never get it all out, so you give up and try to live with the irritation.

That’s what he considers me now—just another pain. I’m a pitted and corroded mirror. No amount of washing will fix me because that grime is under the surface, behind the glass—undermy scars. The only way to remove the rust from the mirror is to break the glass, but then it’s too late. You cannot use the mirror because it’s shattered, making you appear distorted and ugly.

The only way to remove the filth from our minds would be to carve it out, but then we’d just be shells too cracked to hold anything.

No amount of poking and prodding will have Dash bending his knees to me.

I don’t know what to do.

Knock, knock. Damian always knocks twice but then enters without waiting. His black boots, gleaming clean, stride into the foyer, and his eyes find me in a flash. A wide smile greets me, but it never reaches his eyes. Those eyes of his are always digging, looking for signs of what I’m hiding.

“You ready?”

“If I said no, would it matter?”

He takes my luggage, his lips pressing thin.“Remember what Titan and I told you? We’re here, and we won’t stop being here. Dash is here, too.”

“Just in a different way,” I mutter sadly.“I don’t know what to do, Damian.”

“Give him time.” Damian places his hand on my lower back, guiding me out the door and into his car.“No matter how strong a fortress, time will eventually erode it.”

Damian is like a river that has reached a mountain of rock; he keeps pushing, gently slipping into the tiny pores, turning them into cracks, then caverns, pushing and pushing until the hope he speaks turns into a river that has etched its way through the rock.

I don't want his hope right now. I want honesty.

“You’re right, but sometimes time doesn’t stop to look at the mess it made; it just moves on.”

???

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” Blaze flashes a goofy grin as he pulls up his shirt, showcasing his scar to the entire art class.

I rush towards Blaze, arms outstretched, abandoning Damian at the entrance. This morning, walking the campus with Damian made me feel like a walking scarlet letter. I was aware of hushed whispers and brief flashes of movement as students scurried away, daring not even to be touched by my shadow.

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