Page 83 of Deviant Illusions

“Stop being an idiot,” I hiss back.

He reluctantly allows me to get him inside and weakly laughs when he sees the open bathroom door over the top of the dresser. “Shit, I didn’t think you’d climb over it.”

“Don’t underestimate me,” I whisper as I sit him on the bed.

I grimace at the sight of the deep cuts marking his back as he rolls onto his stomach. He closes his eyes and takes deep breaths like he’s trying not to throw up. If any of the dirt covering his wet sweats gets inside the cuts they’ll get infected, so I carefully kneel beside him and push my fingers into the hem. A pained whimper vibrates through the room. He sounds younger, scared and begging, “Don’t do it. Please, not again.”

I kiss his shoulder between the raw lash marks as I softly say, “Kane, I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Delilah?”

“Yeah, who else would it be?”

His eyes snap open, full of desolation as he winces, checking the room. The setting shouldn’t make him relax, but he does while whispering to himself, “I’m not there.”

“Where?” I ask, equally low, only to be ignored.

But he doesn’t stop me from removing his sweats this time. I stare at the dried blood on the back of his thighs. The edgesof each small hole are covered in it. I recognize them. I know they’ll heal to be invisible, like my own, but he shouldn’t have them. Some of the thin needles have torn through his skin where they were embedded and I gently ghost the tip of my finger over them.

“Don’t touch me,” he snaps weakly.

“How did it happen?”

I already know the cause, but he should never have been subjected to my grandparents’ version of piano lessons. Just like when he was hiding his identity, he reverts back to having a different conversation as he whispers, “Every ninety days for ten years. Some days they’d let me out. I never knew who I could trust. Were the same people in the yard the ones who were visiting me on the ninetieth day? Or did they know my face?”

“They’d make you sit on a piano bench?”

“No.” He closes his eyes. “I couldn’t sit down.”

“How did this happen?” I lightly press my fingers to the back of his thighs, and he limply lifts his head to look at me.

“I promised to make it better for you.”

My throat constricts at the loss in his eyes. Even his blinks are slow like he doesn’t have the energy to do it. So I don’t force him to keep talking or hate him in this moment. He’s the Kane I loved, the one who was invisible and drowning in isolation from the rest of his family.

He tenses when I try to remove his boxers, so I leave them on before I go to the bathroom and wet as many hand towels as I can find in the cupboard under the sink, leaving two of them dry to clean my hands with. He hasn’t moved when I get back to him. I fold one of the wet towels into a thin rectangle then gently lay it over his nape, where there are the least amount of lashes.

The whip mark running across the back of my fingers stings as I flatten a towel over the back of each of his thighs. The thin needle points always burn, and the only thing that would soothethem is laying in cold, shallow water. I can’t put Kane in the bathtub due to his back, but this is the next best thing, and it must work because his breathing is easier.

We both remain silent as I clean my hands then put on a pair of gloves. The medical kit doesn’t have enough gauze to cover his entire back, so I’ll have to find something to make a dressing for him once I’ve cleaned the lacerations.

I take out the sterile wipes, wincing as I attempt to avoid any open skin. He just murmurs in pain and tenses, pushing more blood out of the cuts.

“I know it hurts. Relax for me, baby.”

Fuck. I always used to call him baby when he wasn’t a crazy fucker. Thankfully, he doesn’t draw attention to my second slip up as he stretches his hand out to hold my thigh. I drop down, sitting cross-legged beside him, so he can wrap his fingers around my thigh instead of crushing them while I was kneeling.

His limbs get heavier as I move around his back, cleaning the blood off his skin, and he falls asleep even though his fingers are digging into my thigh.

37

KANE

Acool breeze blows across my burning back, forcing me to blink awake into a dark room. Delilah. She’s in front of me, her fingers gently working through my hair as she whispers, “I’ve cleaned your back.”

The moon is huge behind her. I can hear the faint crashing of waves while she presses the back of her fingers to my cheek. “Your temperature is coming down now. That’s good.”

She’s so beautiful, framed only in the moonlight, but I know what she’s thinking. Pity. It’s written all over her face and the lack of light doesn’t stop me being able to see it.

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