Page 33 of Light As A Feather
“Many nights passed like that, me lying in your bed, him standing in the doorway or the corner. Occasionally, I’d wake to him reaching for me, leaning over me, but still, he hadn’t hurt me. He hadn’t given me any real reason to fear him. To me, he was simply a specter, a looming presence.” A chill skates across my skin, cold as the energy he emanates.
“He followed you?”
Sitting with the question, I reveal another part of the story I hoped to keep vague. “Well, only around your family’s property. He died here.”
“How is that possible? My parents had this house built from the ground up.”
“Not here exactly, but on the land your parents own. His soul is tied to this place,” I clarify.
“But he followed you when you left…”
“I’ll get to that.” He nods, and I continue. “Day after day, night after night, month after month, he watched. Over that time, he evolved, and soon I could roughly make out features—the type of clothing he wore, the hollowness of his eyes, a recognizable smile. Sometime in the month or so before…everything…he started appearing to me whole, almost human, but not. Still a ghost, but fully formed, his clothes and appearance clear to me for the first time. Then he really didn’t seem so scary. He just looked like a normal man. And he—” I choke on the admission, surprised at myself at how easily it nearly slipped out.
“He what?” Hawthorne’s knuckles go white with how hard he grips the countertop to hold himself in place. With a deep breath, he turns from me, and I fear it’s the last thing I’ll see of him. My world teeters on the edge of a cliff face as I wait for himto tell me to walk out that door and never come back. I stand at that edge and bare myself to him, the darkest of my secrets, the deepest well of my shame, the weakest part of me. The truth of which I’ve hid in terror from, convinced it would disgust him, that it would taint his love for me, rot it from the inside out.
“He just wanted to be around me. Just wanted to talk, just wanted to listen. He found me interesting. He told me…he told me I was beautiful. He made me feel wanted.” The last of it crumbles like sand, barely something to hold onto, barely real.
“You were always wanted.” There’s a lancing pain buried in there, one I know well. The pain of not being enough.
“That was before we were together, before I knew how you felt.”
“How could you have ever missed it?” The anger’s there now, not directed at me necessarily, but at wasted time, at regrets of a former self.
“You know that’s not fair—to either of us. We were kids, Hawthorne. I wasn’t used to being wanted, wasn’t used to being the object of someone’s affection. And he was older, mysterious, he made me feel like something special, something to be desired. Awkward, weird, chubby teen me was starved for that kind of attention.”
“You weren’t?—”
“Don’t even say it. I’ve always been fat, Hawthorne. It’s not something to be ashamed of. Just a simple truth, like the fact that my eyes are brown. I wasn’t even ugly, but you and I both know that most teenage boys care more about the judgment of other teenage boys more than anything else. Nobody had ever openly admired me like this.” An exasperated sigh escapes me. “You have no idea what it’s like to be a young girl, especially one who’s undiagnosed, always wondering why she doesn’t quite fit in. He saw that in me. I let him, like the goddamned fool that Iam, I showed exactly what he needed to make me trust him. And he played me like a fucking fiddle.”
“That’s not fair. Like you said, you were just a kid.”
“You’re right, I was. And yet, here we are because of a choice I made. Because I didn’t tell him to leave, because I didn’t reject his infatuation with me, here we are, both the worse for it. I allowed him to ruin our lives. Hell, Iinvitedhim to.”
In three long strides on those strong legs, he tears through the distance between us, cradling my face like I’m the most delicate creature who could collapse into dust in front of him if he makes one wrong move.
“Sol, look at me.” He holds me gently, even though I fight him. “Look me in the eyes and tell me that you don’t forgive that girl you used to be. Because I could, but I don’t blame her in the first place.”
Disbelief forces my gaze to his.
“I don’t blame you. He took advantage of you. He took a vulnerable young girl and exploited her. He is a fucking predator.”
My mouth goes dry. The immediate condemnation is a shock to my system that was prepared for dismissal, the swift tear of everything that we are. But when I look up into Hawthorne’s russet brown eyes, I find more understanding there than I could have ever anticipated. It’s given freely, pooling there for me to swim through leisurely, to finally put my shame to rest and float atop the surface. Without words, he communicates clearly;I have you.
“I won’t rest until you’re free of him.”
“I’ve tried everything,” I whisper into the collar of his shirt while breathing in the warm, earthy scent, the notes of clove beneath awakening my senses and grounding me in this reality.
“Not everything. I’m going to wipe that motherfucker from the face of this earth, I don’t care what it takes.” His vow shouldwrap a blanket of comfort around me, but instead, it summons the worst of my nightmares from the clinging shadows in the corner of the room.
My head begins to throb as I stare into them, my chest tightening, my warning smothered. Out steps the man in question, his anger slithering toward me like a venomous snake. His influence is a heavy, drugging thing, amplified by the hold he has within this house. The depths of his jealousy pull me under with barely so much as a fight, waves of it pounding down on me as I’m dragged away from the familiar shores of myself.
“I’ll take that as an invitation to join you,” Ivan announces himself, although his steps are silent.
“You’re not welcome here,” Thorne asserts. His muscles taut, voice controlled, but his anger is a palpable thing that seeps into my skin and licks at the invisible wounds this man has left on my soul.
“That’s cute.”
“This is my house.”
