Page 75 of Like An Animal
How did he manage to get the picture I had taken with me?
He doesn’t speak. Instead, he tugs my hand as he leads me to the attached bathroom, his fingers tightening around mine.
This also looks familiar, even having the same black towels hanging on the towel rack.
With every step, the walls I’ve held strong around my heart are crumbling down to the ground, and letting in everything I’ve been trying so hard to keep out, even the bad memories.
“Take off the dress,” he grumbles as he drops my hand and walks over to the shower. Pulling back the foggy glass door, he switches it on and adjusts the water.
I tug the dress up and over my head.
Either he didn’t notice the scars before or he’s biding his time to ask where they came from, but I don’t think I could handle him asking for answers now.
I thought about having them removed, but when I visited a doctor about it, they said that the scars were too deep. Even if I had them removed on the surface layer, they would still be visible.
I’m stuck with them for the rest of my life, my reminder of what I have survived and escaped.
Jeremy unbuttons his shirt and pushes it down his arms as my eyes widen. It’s not that I’ve never seen him naked before, but the Jeremy Borza I remember didn’t look like this. I could tell he had bulked up a bit, but not even that prepared me for how much his physique has changed. Why did he get all these tattoos? He never had an interest in them before. Was it just because he was in prison?
Maybe, but they don’t look like prison tattoos. These look like they were done by a professional.
When he takes off his pants, I see that the ink continues on, even onto his cock. I just couldn’t see it before because it was so dark in my house.
On one side it says “little” and the other says “ghost”. He inked his nickname for me on his dick as if to say it belongs to me and me alone.
He takes my hand and guides me into the shower. Warm water belts down on my cool skin, soaking my hair down to my scars, and I enjoy every second of it. Jeremy’s finger runs along my shoulders and up into my hair. He lifts it into his fingers and then…he freezes. I can feel his eyes burning into the scars covering my spine down to the top of my ass.
We both know they weren’t there five years ago, not the last time he saw my naked body in the light of day.
“What the fuck happened here?” he rasps in my ear as he trails his thumb over the raised skin.
I can’t handle talking about it right now. Sure, I could just tell him and go through the emotional rollercoaster of telling him the trauma he is unaware of, but no. This will remain a roadblock between us because he doesn’t need to know. It will only cause unnecessary pain.
“You don’t want to know,” I mutter. He doesn’t push it, but I can just imagine he wants to punish me for not telling him, but maybe he’s just as exhausted as I am.
There’s only so much I can take right now and I bet it’s the same for him.
He doesn’t speak. Instead, he grabs the bottle of shampoo sitting on the ledge and covers his hands before working it through my hair slowly and gently, two things that have never matched Jeremy’s energy. He presses soft kisses on my shoulder as he works in the soap.
I have to admit, this feels really nice, but it's not the Jeremy I know. He would always leave me to shower alone, but this man isn’t the same one I left behind. He’s changed, as have I.
After he finishes washing my hair, he cleans my body until he whispers in my ear, “Now, you will only smell like me, little ghost.”
That’s why he wanted to get in here with me. He wanted to make sure I washed away any trace of Kyle and that house.
He’s so fucking possessive and jealous. Like it wasn’t bad enough that he cut off Kyle’s dick and made him eat it.
Fucking psycho.
He rinses me off before turning off the shower. He wraps me in a towel before helping me out, as if I haven’t done this thousands of times without busting my ass. Unassisted at that.
We walk into the bedroom and he climbs into bed after pulling back the blanket. It’s as if we’ve jumped into the past, into the days where I would sneak into his room.
Much like then, I get in the bed, face away from him with the blanket up to my chin. And like it used to be, he pulls me back into his warm body, my back against his chest. His strong arms don’t act like a cage. No, they’re a security blanket and with that safety, tears fall down my face.
I want to grab the Jeremy I once knew and tell him how sorry I am for what I had to do. I want to explain why I betrayed him and framed him for a crime he didn’t do, why I wasn’t there when he got out.
Tears roll down my face as a sob falls from my lips, vibrating through my chest, but his arm just tightens around me.
