Page 58 of Caged Heart
"I've never stopped." He answered honestly.
"But every time I saw you… you were in your bed and even at the hospital too."
"I slept under on the cold floor when everyone left because I needed to stop the pain that I can't seem to let go of when I feel the itching."
"Of the sheets rubbing against you?"
Mars nodded. "And the feeling of hands grabbing me, all over me, under me." The last part he whispered, but I heard him.
"How often do you see her?" I asked him.
"Who?" He asked.
"Artemis."
Mars shuddered and turned, giving me his back. I had never seen scars and burn marks before the night of the funeral on my, brother's back. While everyone thought he liked to be pompous and shower alone after practice, he was hiding and didn't want me to see.
"I don't want to be him anymore," Mars said. I didn't want to ask him to elaborate because I feared his answer. I feared that my brother was broken, but how could he be so broken and love someone else? "The things he subjected me to do to others and how he made others feel around him. I can't be like him," he whispered.
"You've never been like him, Mars."
"I can't love her, Ares," Mars whispered even lower, and I wanted to comfort him but didn't know how. It had been too long since we last did that for each other. "I'm so fucking tainted. Everything I touched died, and he put that poison in me. My heart is bound and torn in ways I didn't know yet when I see her, when I saw her, I wanted to. Every single time but…."
"But what?" I asked. "You told her she was our girl. No one forced you to say it to her, and now," I growled as my fisted hands hung defeated on my sides. "Now, you're saying you can't love her. No one in this world isn't tainted by something, Mars. It may not be what we deem as an issue, but to that person, to that individual, it is! Carmen feels like she has no one when we're right there in front of her. I feel like I'm not supposed to be alive, so I did destructive things that I'm fighting now every fucking day! I see her ALL THE TIME, and you… you think you're poisoned. That his talons sunk so deep into your soul that they can't be removed. Fuck remove them, man. Break his damned wrist and keep twisting. Twist until you've got the skin and bones wrapped around your heart, causing it to be what you feel it is, bound. A bound heart doesn't mean it's dead."
He had to know that even if he didn't respond. Even if he refused to face me at this moment. Just like he stopped me from going to Carmen, I stopped walking to him to turn him around and pummel the words into his skull.
"I'm not ready," Mars repeated to me.
"I know you're not, and I would never allow you to just fuck up what I have with Carmen because you don't understand any fucking thing. I didn't say everything was suddenly okay, but I'm processing, just like you."
Mars nodded but didn't respond.
"But, we end him and then fuck up sarge too."
"I'll always be ready to hurt someone that hurts the people I love," Mars answered without turning to face me.
The wave of anger transferred from Mars and into me. We were linked by fury, and it was time to show the world what being hurt was like. What provocation led to this. Our father would discover what it truly meant to bury him like the gods did to their father, and Sarge would learn of our power. He violated someone we held dear to us, and he wouldn't get another chance to.
After a moment, I walked out in search of the woman disappearing into herself just as much as Mars was. I couldn't see it before, but I saw it now… A bound and caged soul searched for freedom, and freedom searched for those that were bound to give them a reprieve. To not just give them the definition of love or liberty, no, it showed them that what they saw was impossible… was very much possible.
They could be free. We, Mars and I, could be free with her. With Carmen, she was our freedom.
Chapter43
Carmen
Ithought it would have been weird to have both men living or, well, one that was recuperating and the other who lived here, all together in one place with me…yet, something about it felt natural.
Ares doesn't fully sleep on the bed with me; instead, he cuddled me every night until I fell asleep. When I woke, I'd go over to him in the makeshift closet and cuddle him on the floor until he woke up.
I knew he was worried about me with everything that happened, but I just needed time. My mother dying the way she did affect me more than I could count, but it happened, and I had to face that reality.
Inside, I felt bad that this heavy weight was lifted off my shoulders, yet there was nothing I could say that would ease the ache of the reality that I was now deemed an orphan by society's standards.
"I can hear you thinking," Ares pulled me out of my deep thoughts, and I looked up at him.
His eyes must've been watching me while I thought he was still sleeping.
