Page 95 of My Lovely Tragedy
My left hand shoots out, knocking his out of the way. The key falls into the water below.Clinksagainst the porcelain.
Tobias’s hand falls against me. Heavy and shaking. I grip his fingers tight. Crushing them in my fist. Bones grinding. Hating and panicked and—“I need?—”
My head shakes. Water sloshes upward. “Don’t.”Why can’t I ever speak when it’s all too much?
“Brooklyn, please, it’s only?—”
My shaking grows more frantic, and I feel the sting, but I barely register their descent, tracking hot and fast down my face. The air is too cold. The water is scorching. Tobias is…too… him.A forever and an always. And I just know he exists in every universe.
He’s too profound not to.
“Please leave them on.” Vomit clings to the back of my throat.Don’t say it. You can’t.
You can’t…
“I need you to leave them on.” Weak. Pathetic. And a truth all the same.
Tobias goes rigid behind me. His heart thumps against my back. Into me. My own falls into line, becoming one with his.
Shared air and essence. Veins and brain matter. Splattered and stained. Pink and gray.
Consumed and eradicated.
His hands glide over my flesh, slow and devout. Memorizing every muscle. Every vein and tendon. Each hair and scar—old and fresh. Creases and crevices, hollows and ridges.
Ifeelhis obsession as it leaches into me through the point of contact, searing in his chest and out. Carving his soul into the very bone that keeps me whole. Until every cell in my body aches forTobiasTobiasTobias.
“You are… an angel of darkness. Tailored to my evisceration.” His words are spoken with adoration. Stolen from within. Hidden and ruinous. Insidious and seductive.
His fingers circle my wrists, finding rest along the bone. In the hollows. The added pressure of his forearms against mine makes it more real. Like this isn’t a fever-dream. That I’m not trapped in bed, in the recesses of my own mind.
That I’m not too far gone.
Except I am—because I accept this. Iwant it,even. And surely that means I’m past any hope of redemption. There is no light for the vilest of souls, after all. And Tobias has tarnished mine. Made it hideous.
Or maybe I did that on my own years ago. Back when I first took a razor blade to my skin and watched it split open wide. Rivulets of blood cascading, hot and warm, buzzing with a fading life.
When I drank too much. Took too many drugs. Fucked too many people.
When I let the darkness swarm just to… not feel.
When I stopped fighting.
When I accepted that I crave him with equal measure.
“I suppose it’s only fair that you’ve cut me open, too.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-SIX
BROOKLYN
His hands.
They’re shaking. Or… more like vibrating as they hover just above my own. I stare down at them, at the bulging veins, at his knobby knuckles. At the cracks in his skin. And he watches me.
I feel his gaze, but it’s different this time. It’s… heavier. Filled with something I can’t name—or maybe I just don’t want to. So, I don’t look up. I don’t give into the desire to see pools of blood honey. Or the reflection of his lens because his glasses are probably halfway down his nose like always.
I don’t think about any of it as he gently dries the water from my skin and begins applying a thin layer of ointment. Even as tender as he’s being, the first graze against my raw flesh makes me hiss and jerk away. Tobias tightens his grip on my wrist, pressing against my manacles on purpose. But it works—the bruised state of my bones draws the focus from my forearm, and I breathe a little easier.
