Echo

  Death is imminent—I know this all too well—but no matter how much we lose, no matter how numb we become, we always feel the pinprick of the vacancy. The parts of our soul that our loved ones take with them when they leave this world are forever left unfilled. They’re empty wounds that are always exposed and unable to heal.

  As I make my way up to my room, I settle my things in and decide to keep myself busy to block out the thoughts that keep filtering in. Memories of this morning’s defilement. The vision of Declan when I looked at him, his villainous eyes, blackened in rage, keeps finding its way into my head. He was a riled beast, taking what he wanted, forcing his power on me.

  Shaking the visions away, I quickly rush out of the room to find Isla for the much needed diversion. We spend the rest of the day in the kitchen, and I find myself enjoying my time with her. We cook, share a bottle of wine, and enjoy each other’s company, and I’m thankful for the distraction she’s able to provide me.

  But it’s when I excuse myself for the evening and am lying in bed that it all immediately comes rushing back. Declan tying me up, spitting on my ass, smothering my face into the mattress, the pain of his intrusions, the sounds of his wild grunting. I shift in bed, heart pounding, and I feel the burn from his assault, and then it’s Carl I see in the darkened room. I can smell the stench of his cigarettes.

  Lurching off the bed, I dash to the toilet and vomit. My stomach convulses in heaves as the acidic bile stings my throat, and when I gag, it fills my nose and burns like a bitch. My eyes prick hard with tears, and another bout of puke forces its way out of my gut as my body constricts and hurls over the toilet.

  When there’s nothing left for my body to expel, I tire and scoot my back against the wall. I wipe the sheen of sweat from my forehead and take in slow breaths. My hands are jittery and my body is broken in a spell of cold sweats. Even if I wanted to shut myself down, I don’t think I’d be able to. I don’t think I’m strong enough to battle the skeletons I’ve spent my whole life hiding from. The skeletons that Declan awoke when he forced himself on me earlier today. Only one other person has made me feel that decrepit and filthy, and I burned him to his death. Never did I think Declan would haunt me the same way Carl used to.

  WARMTH STIRS ME awake, and as I begin to move, I feel a weight on top of me. Opening my eyes, my body jumps when I see Declan holding himself above me.

  “Shh, baby, it’s only me,” he whispers.

  “What are you doing here?”

  His eyes pinch shut, and he lets go of a pained breath, saying, “I can’t do it. I can’t stay away from you.”

  His words settle my heart, and I don’t question him because I need him. Reaching up, I run my hand along his stubbled jaw, and when he drops his head, my body warms in peace as his lips press softly into mine. I can’t control the moan that comes out of me, and I wrap my arms tightly around his neck, holding him close.

  To have his taste back in my mouth soothes. The world lifts from my shoulders, and finally, I can breathe—really breathe. I don’t ever want this to end. I need this—need him.

  As our bodies begin to move and writhe together, he reaches back and pulls his shirt off. Lowering himself on top of me, he threads his fingers through my hair, saying, “Forgive me for what I did to you earlier. Please forgive me and let me fix it. Let me attempt to take it away.”

  I place my hand over his bare chest, and I can feel his heart crashing inside of him. I want to calm that heart just as much as he wants to erase what happened in his room, so I nod my head. That’s all it takes for him to start slowly undressing me. Slipping my clothes off, along with his, he covers us up under the sheets as our naked bodies rediscover one another.

  He allows my hands freedom to roam over his body—an un-Declan-like thing for him to grant me, but I take it. He runs his damp lips down my neck and along my collarbone before taking his tongue and dragging it over my pert nipple. Covering the tight bud with his lips, he sucks with the heat of his mouth, and my body bows in response to the touch.

  My hands fist his hair, and he moves to my other breast. His cock is raging hard against me, and his slow movements are making my pussy ache in wetness for him.

  “I need you, Declan,” I pant in wanton heat.

  He pulls back and looks down at me with eyes molten in lust. His hand ghosts down my body, my stomach, and when he reaches my pussy, he sighs as my muscles tremble in anticipation of what I thought I’d never have again.

  “Oh, God,” I mewl when he delves his fingers into my wet folds. My hands press into his flesh, and I hang on as he begins to pump in and out of me.

  I’m on fire, needing more of him, so with a strong hand, I wrap it around his wrist and hold his arm still. When I being to rock my hips and fuck his fingers to my own liking, he growls, and the erotic sound spurs my hips to buck up and fuck him even more fiercely.

  “That’s my baby,” he encourages, and when my moans intensify as my body climbs, he pulls his fingers out of me and quickly pins my arms above my head.

  I’m relaxed under his restraining hold. Looking up at him, this is the Declan I remember. He’s in total control—dominating me with loving affection. With his hand locking my wrists above me, he takes his other hand, fingers glistening in my arousal, and slips them into my mouth. I roll my tongue and suck the taste of my pussy off of him.

  He then finds my clit with his wet fingers and gently strokes on the bundle at the same time he pushes his large, strong cock inside of me slowly, so slow it borders on torture. I feel every ridge of his dick until he’s buried himself deep in me.

  And I’m finally home—safe in the comfort of the only man I ever want to share this with.

  He holds himself still inside of me when he says, “You’re the only one who’s ever made me feel like this.”

  “Like what?”

  Pulling out of me, he thrusts back in, grunting, “Like this,” as he fills me deeply.

  My body arches off the bed as he elicits carnal moans from deep in my womb, and I spread my thighs even wider for him because I need more.

  Dragging his cock out of me again, he slams his hips down into me, while asking, “You feel that?” hitting my sweet spot deep inside.

  “Yes,” I breathe.

  “Tell me,” he demands as he drives himself back inside of my body, now pumping in and out with purpose, mending us together.

  My eyes falls shut as I let him take me over, giving him my body entirely for him to have and use however he wishes.

  “I love you,” I release in the breaths of air we now share.

  “Tell me again.”

  My skin tingles in radiant pleasure, warmed in passion.

  “I love you, Declan.”

  I begin to lose myself, bucking my hips to meet each of his thrusts. I can feel his cock growing thicker, harder, hotter. His hold on my wrists tightens, but it only makes me feel safer.

  “Open your eyes,” I hear him say, and the moment before I do, I smell it—stale cigarettes and piss.

  My body locks up when my eyes open and it’s Carl looking down at me, fucking me with his disgusting dick and breathing his putrid breath all over me.

  JOLTING AWAKE, MY eyes pop open to be greeted by another snow-filled night. Another bad dream possesses my subconscious. This is the third nightmare I’ve woken from tonight. Gone are the nights of exploring with Carnegie, my caterpillar friend. He’s been replaced by morphed scenes of Declan loving me and by dank basements, urine-stenched closets, and the visions of Carl jerking himself off as he watches me.

  I take my time to quiet my rapid-beating heart before I lie back down. I focus on the snow that collects on the window. Some of it melts, tuning into trickling rivers that slowly make their way down the glass. I burrow down into the blankets, trying to warm myself, and when I roll over from the moonlit snow, it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust.

  It’s after I blink a few times that I see him, and I hold my breath, wondering if I’m imagining this—imaginin
g him.

  HE SITS ON the chair a few feet from the bed I’m lying in, leaning over with his elbows propped on his knees. I know he’s really here when he lifts his head and looks at me, the moon illuminating his green eyes. My head remains resting on the pillow, and I breathe in deeply.

  Why is he here?

  Neither one of us moves or speaks; we simply watch each other in the dark silence. I want to move though. My body begs to crawl onto his lap, to have him dominate every one of my senses. The dream I just woke from felt so real. It’s all I want, to be in a place where we can have moments like that together. But the dream turned to a nightmare so quickly, and I know it’s because of Declan that it did.

  How can I crave this man who now torments me? What is it about him that makes me want to forgive him so easily, to not even question him?

  I notice the creases that line his forehead and his brows that cinch in the despair we both feel.

  “What are we doing?” His voice, a quiet rasp filled with oppression.

  Sitting up, I never take my eyes off of him, but I don’t know what to say. I wish I had an answer for him, but I’m just as confused. He has my emotions bouncing all over the place and colliding in a war inside of me.

  I lose the contact when he drops his head down into the palms of his hands, and his voice is a soft murmur, “What’ve I done?” and I don’t know if he’s talking to me or simply to himself, but I remain quiet as he continues. “What’ve you done? I don’t know what’s going on here . . . what this is between us . . . what this is inside of me.”

  “It’s a battle between heart and mind,” I whisper, and when I do, he looks up at me.

  I watch his face tighten in grief, the feeling thickens the room, and it takes him a while to speak again, but when he does, the words are drenched in shame. “Are you all right?”

  When I don’t answer him, he exhausts on a breath, “That’s a stupid question.”

  “Declan . . . ”

  “I’m sorry. What I did . . . That wasn’t . . . ”

  “Stop,” I tell him when his voice begins to crack.

  “What happened to you as a child . . . ” His hands clench as he fights with his building emotions. “It fucking breaks me.”

  “Don’t do this.”

  But he doesn’t even acknowledge my words as he goes on, “And then what I did to you . . . I don’t know how I lost control like that. Seeing you in that room . . . That was supposed to be ours. You don’t know how badly I wanted that. How much I wanted to take you away from the husband I thought was . . . ”

  He lets his words drift, and I want to cry, but I don’t. I know he doesn’t want to see my tears, so I keep myself focused, but I’m dying on the inside. To sit here and listen to his words that are masking cries of his own is awful. This is a man of abundant discipline and authority, so to hear him so broken down, so weak, it destroys me.

  “How do I get past a deceit of this magnitude?” he eventually questions.

  “I wish I knew. I wish I could go back. But I can’t. I don’t even really know how to explain this all. I want to be honest. I want you to know the real me, to know the truth, but it’s so hard. Because the truth is so gross and twisted, you probably wouldn’t even believe it, because people don’t want to believe that life can be that horrifying. I’m a fucked-up human; I know this. I don’t know what it is to be a rational person, but you make me want to learn. You make me want to try.”

  “His eyes were open,” he says out of the blue, and I’m confused as to what he’s referring to, but then he adds, “After I shot him. I saw photos of you on his desk. I gathered them up along with the file, and when I looked down at Bennett’s bloody body, his eyes were still open.”

  He says this and I remember that Pike’s eyes were the same. I’ll never forget how haunting they looked.

  “He knew who you were.”

  “I know,” I say. “I heard him in the hospital. He was having me followed; he knew you and I were together.”

  He then stands, walks over to the bed, and sits down next to me. He doesn’t touch me, although I wish he would.

  “I hurt you today.”

  “I’m okay,” I whisper.

  He then looks down at my knuckles that are wrapped in band-aids. “My shattered mirror tells me otherwise.”

  “Bad memories.”

  “Did it happen a lot?” he asks on a voice that’s barely even a whisper. Like he’s afraid his words will break me, and for the first time in a long time, I feel like they possibly could. That I’m not as tough as I used to be.

  I give him a nod, but it isn’t enough for him when he urges, “I need you to tell me.”

  I hesitate, licking my lips, wanting to give him the honesty he’s asking for but also terrified for him to know.

  “Tell me, Nina.”

  “Please . . . don’t, don’t call me that.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says, looking away from me. “It’s all I know you as.”

  “Look at me.” He does. “This is me. This is what I want you to know.”

  “Elizabeth,” he murmurs, and I nod, affirming, “Yes . . . Elizabeth.”

  “Tell me then, Elizabeth. Because I need to know you, to figure you out.”

  “Yes,” I respond. “It happened a lot. It was dirty and gross and—”

  “What did he do to you?”

  I swallow hard, scared to say the words. My hands fidget nervously, and when Declan sees, he covers them in his own.

  “I’ve never told anyone,” I confess. “Only Pike knew, and he was there. I didn’t have to say a word because he saw it all.”

  “I told you about my mum, remember?”

  “Of course I remember.”

  “I opened up to you about something I had never spoken about to anyone. I gave you that piece of me. A piece that makes me embarrassed and ashamed.”

  I remember seeing his tears when he told me he cowered under a bed while he watched a man shoot his mother in the head. A shot that killed her. He thinks himself weak and a pussy—those are the words he used. He made himself vulnerable to me, so I’ll give him what he’s asking for, something I’ve never given anyone.

  “It started on my tenth birthday with him forcing Pike to have sex with me. He would take us down to the basement. There was a dirty mattress he kept on the floor. He’d watch us while he sat in a chair and jerked himself off. Most of the time he would get up to cum on either Pike or myself.” Saying the words turns my stomach, and I can already feel the wave of nausea come over me. “We would be down in that basement at least four times a week. A couple years later was when it switched and Carl started touching me.”

  I stop and drop my head. I can’t bear to look at Declan anymore when I start to feel the filth crawl along my skin. Tears burn the backs of my eyes as I try to keep them at bay, but they come anyway.

  “Don’t look away from me,” he tells me when he tugs my chin up to face him.

  With my head up but my eyes closed, I say, “It’s humiliating.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t want you hiding from me. Look at me and trust me enough to give me this truth.”

  So I do. I open my eyes, and while tears continue to fall from my eyes and drip off my chin, I tell him everything that happened in that basement. How Carl would rape me, sodomize me, piss on me, beat me, and whip me. How he’d cum on my face and laugh at me while he’d wipe it off with his finger and force me to lick it. How he’d piss on the mattress and shove my face in it, force me to finger his ass while he’d beat himself off. How it didn’t take long for him to turn me into a machine because it’s what I had to become in order to survive.

  I sob as I give him this sick part of me, and explain why I started having sex with Pike by ourselves. Explained how it soothed me and provided an escape for me. I rip myself open and let the rot fall onto Declan’s lap as I reveal my twisted childhood to him.

  He listens, never interrupting, but encouraging me to go on. His eyes are wide in disbelie
f and pity, and I know he will never look at me the same way again. He now knows the reality of my pathetic existence. The worthlessness of my body, the one he used to look at in amazement and admiration. He’d call me perfect, beautiful, and flawless.

  But now he knows the truth.

  This body was never something he should’ve valued. Anyone would be foolish to value the pile of shit it is. It’s simply a capsule—fancy wrapping paper—that conceals everything I’m made of . . . sewage.

  “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

  “Because I was scared if I did, I’d lose Pike. I feared going to another abusive home and being alone. Pike was all I had; I didn’t want to be without him,” I try to explain.

  “He used you.”

  “Who? Pike?”

  “Yes. If he loved you like you claim he did, he would’ve pushed you to get help, to get you to a place that was safe.”

  Shaking my head, I refute, “It doesn’t work like that. And he did love me. He gave his whole life to me. I was always safe with him.”

  Declan bites down hard causing his jaw to tick, and I tell him, “You won’t ever change my opinion of Pike. I don’t expect you to understand, but we were just kids. We did what we could to survive. Whether you believe it to be right or wrong, what’s done is done, and looking back won’t change anything.”

  “I wish I could take it away.”

  “You can’t,” I say weakly. “Just like I can’t take away the pain in your life. I want to. I want that power more than you know.”

  Sitting in the darkness, making my confessions and opening myself up, I wonder why Declan remains unmoving by my side. My desire to crawl inside of his head, to know the thoughts he hides in there is strong. His expression is hard to read as he looks at me. The hush in the room is unsettling, yet peaceful. I was starting to wonder if he would ever be able to be in the same room as me without punishing me.

  “I should go.”

  He stands up from the bed, and when he does, I lie down. I watch him turn back to me, and in a sweet gesture, he pulls the covers over my body and then braces his hands on the mattress, hovering over me.