“Yeah, just a little shaken up at seeing you such a bloody mess, Crash,” I tell her with a forced smile. “I’ll go find her and bring her back to see you.”
Collin perches on the edge of Finnley’s bed and starts running his fingers through the mess of her hair. She curls up against him and closes her eyes again.
“Tell her to bring me a cheeseburger. I’m not eating any fucking hospital food,” she grumbles.
I laugh as I walk up to the bed and kiss the top of her head, bumping my fist with Collin’s before I leave. He calls my name as I pull the curtain back.
“Thanks, man. I owe you a lot for what you did today. You saved my girl,” he tells me, trying to clear his throat to keep the emotion out of it.
I just nod at him as I leave, hoping I can save my own fucking girl, as well.
After taking the elevator up to Phina’s office and finding it dark, I placed a quick call to Jackson and found out that he took her back to her place. When I pull into the driveway, I find him sitting on the front step.
“I secured the house before she went in. After that, she told me to get the fuck out and slammed the door in my face,” he explains.
I thank him as I head inside and softly close the door behind me. Checking the first floor and not finding her anywhere, I head upstairs and see a light shining under Phina’s bedroom door. I slowly push open the door and find her sitting on the floor with her back against the bed and her knees pulled up to her chest.
I quietly make my way over to her side so I don’t spook her. Her eyes are squeezed tightly shut, one hand holding a cigarette to her mouth and the other flicking a lighter over and over, and she’s clearly very deep in her own head. When the hell did she start smoking?
Squatting down in front of her, I gently place my hand on her knee as she takes a deep drag of the cigarette.
“Baby, what’s going on?” I ask quietly.
She opens her eyes when she exhales the smoke, but doesn’t look at me. Instead, she stares at orange glow burning at the tip of her cigarette and continues to flick the lighter.
“Do you know what it feels like to press something like this into your skin?” she asks in a monotone voice that gives me chills.
Jesus Christ, I don’t want her thinking about her father right now.
“Phee, you don’t have to tell me, okay? Not right now.”
She either doesn’t hear me or doesn’t care, just continues talking in an emotionless voice, the fucking click of the lighter igniting repeatedly making me want to scream.
“Your skin is so tight, you feel so dead inside and you just want to feel alive. You don’t think anything can make your heart start beating again, but then it does. It sinks into your skin like a hot knife going through butter and you can FINALLY get some relief.”
She sighs audibly as she takes another drag and my skin crawls with fear. She quickly exhales and brings the butt of the cigarette close to her face, staring wide-eyed at the orange tip.
“I thought I found something to make it all go away, to make it stop because I thought I finally deserved to feel good instead of miserable,” she whispers.
I slowly reach forward and take the cigarette out of her hand, stabbing it out in the ashtray on her nightstand. She doesn’t even notice what I’ve done, transferring her gaze to the flame of the lighter that she’s holding suspended in front of her face. Wrapping my hand around hers, I ease the lighter out of her hand, as well, and toss it to the side.
“Baby, let’s get you cleaned up and out of these dirty clothes,” I tell her softly.
She blinks a few times and finally looks at me confusedly, almost like she didn’t even realize I was here. Then, she looks down at her hands that are still covered in blood, quickly moving her eyes to the front of her scrub top that is also stained red with quite a lot of what I assume is Finnley’s blood.
She starts panting, whimpering with each exhale of breath as she quickly scrambles up from the floor and starts tearing at her clothes.
“GET THEM OFF! GET THEM OFF OF ME!” she sobs.
I jump up in front of her as she starts raking her fingernails down her arms to try and remove the blood on her skin, crying and screaming the entire time.
“OH, GOD, IT’S ALL MY FAULT! GET HER FUCKING BLOOD OFF OF ME!”
I wrap my arms around her from behind to try and stop her as she scratches and claws at her face, pulls her hair and tries to physically rip the clothes from her body, but she’s like a wild hellcat. She rips her arms out from under mine and starts punching and kicking as I lift her in the air and move her over to the bed. The tortured screams coming from her make it sound like someone is killing her.
“Phina! Come on, baby, calm down and let me help you,” I shout over her, my heart breaking with each painful cry from her mouth.
I toss her onto the bed and manage to get her onto her back without an elbow to the eye, bringing her arms above her head and securing her wrists in one of my hands as I push my body down on top of hers. The fight leaves her as soon as I get her in this position and she stops struggling. Quiet sobs leave her body and I bring my other hand up, using my thumb to wipe the tears off of her cheek that is still covered in Finnley’s blood.
“I can’t…I can’t…get them off of me,” she whimpers softly this time.
I nod my head even though she’s squeezed her eyes closed and can’t see me.
“Okay, okay. I’m going to let go and I’m going to get you out of these clothes and then we’ll get in the shower,” I reassure her softly, trying not to sob right along with her.
When I let go, she keeps her arms above her head as I ease off of her body and stand next to the bed, leaning over her. She stares up at the ceiling with tears streaming down her cheeks as I grab the hem of her bloody scrub top and slide it up her body. For the time being, I’m glad she’s not looking down because as soon as I get her top off and unhook her bra, I see that her skin is stained with blood from it soaking through her shirt.
I move back and hook my fingers into the waistband of her scrub pants and her hands immediately come down to cover her face. Her shoulders shake as she continues to cry while I ease her pants down her legs and toss them to the side. I do the same with her lace boy shorts, quickly pulling them off and tossing them with the pants. My eyes roam up her legs and her thighs, stopping when I get to her hips. I slowly lean forward, pressing my hands to the bed on either side of her to get a closer look.
I know that when I look back on this night, I’m going to wish I could have stopped the gasp of horror that flew from my mouth. I’m going to wish I did a lot of things differently, but you can’t go back in time to fix your mistakes, no matter how much you want to.
“That motherfucking piece of shit,” I curse, bringing one hand off the bed to trace my fingers over a whole slew of burn marks that Phina never showed me.
She quickly sits up in bed and gently pushes my hand off of her skin. I meet her eyes and can’t hide the obvious rage in them. She stares at me and, even though she’s visibly exhausted from her freak out and all of the crying she’s done, there’s still a spark of hope in her eyes as she waits for me to say something else.
“I fucking hate the sick, fucked up bastard who did this to you,” I growl.
Her eyes immediately lose their spark and she drops her head. I try to backpedal, thinking I must have said something wrong, but how could I? Of course anyone who burns someone’s skin with a goddamn cigarette is clearly fucked up in the head AND a bastard.
“Funny, I hate that person, too,” she says softly with her head still down.
I shake my head in confusion, wondering why she sounds so fucking dejected. It doesn’t make sense. Nothing about what’s happening right now makes any sense.
She pushes herself up from the bed and walks around me, heading towards the shower. It’s then that I notice matching burns on her other hip and I growl and clench my hands into fists. She pauses halfway to the bathroom, but doesn’t turn around.
“You need to leave.”
I shake my head at her back and walk around the end of the bed, putting my hands on her shoulders to try and turn her around to face me. If she would just look at me and talk to me I could figure out what the hell is wrong.
“Phina, please. Talk to me,” I plead.
She yanks her body out of my grip and continues walking towards the bathroom.
“Just go, DJ. I don’t need you here.”
“PHINA!” I shout in anger as she opens the bathroom door.
She finally turns around and stares at me with lifeless eyes.
“Get. The. Fuck. Out. Of. My House.”
She slams the door closed and I hear her lock it behind her. I’m so frustrated and angry that I don’t know what else to do. I stomp out of her bedroom and down the stairs, figuring I’ll give her a little time to cool off. She told me to go, so that’s what I’m going to fucking do.
As soon as I get outside and see Jackson sitting there, my anger goes up tenfold. No fucking way am I leaving her here with him. I don’t care if he is her police protection and she doesn’t want me here, I don’t trust anyone at this point after what happened to Finnley. My escort, a ten-year veteran named Marcus Walker, is still parked behind my truck with his car running. I wave in his direction and point back to the house, indicating I’m staying and hoping he can see me, but the interior of his cruiser is dark.
“I just told him you might be a while, heard some shouting coming from upstairs. Everything okay?” Jackson asks.
“None of your fucking business,” I growl.
Yeah, I’m an asshole. Sue me. The guy gets on my damn nerves. Collin told me he and Phina dated back in college and even though I’ve gotten over my issue with Dax, I’m still a jealous fuck at heart.
“Aw, trouble in paradise?” Jackson laughs.
“One more word and I’ll kick your ass all the way to the curb.”
He continues to laugh as he pushes himself up from the top step.
“No hard feelings, man. That one’s a stubborn one,” he says, jerking his head towards the house.
Don’t I fucking know it.
Doesn’t mean I have to like that this douchebag knows it, too.
Turning around, I go back into the house and try not to protest when Jackson follows me inside.
“Just going to grab a bottle of water from the fridge,” he tells me, making his way around me and towards the kitchen.
I glare at his back until he disappears into the kitchen. I don’t like how fucking familiar he is in this house. How the hell does he even know Phina has bottled water in her fridge? She does, I mean who the fuck doesn’t in this day and age, but still. That fuck nut doesn’t know that.
Jesus Christ, I’m losing it.
I hear the shower shut off upstairs and my stomach flops in anticipation of seeing Phina again, hoping the shower calmed her the fuck down and she’s ready to talk. What the hell did I say that was so wrong? What did I do that forced her to put all those fucking walls back up around her heart, refusing to let me in? She opened up to me last night about her father, she told me about the burns and she showed them to me and even let me make love to her instead of fuck her like a crazy person. Something isn’t adding up and my pea-sized brain isn’t grasping it. Is she just upset because of Finnley’s accident? Is the guilt she’s feeling making her relive every horrible thing her father did to her and she’s back to feeling like she’s not worthy of my love? She’s the only one who can answer these questions and she damn well better be prepared to open her beautiful mouth and start talking.
Jackson waltzes back into the living room, whistling as he goes and I want to punch him square in the mouth. Instead, I flop down on the couch angrily and clasp my hands together between my knees.
I hear footsteps on the stairs a few minutes later and my heart starts thundering in my chest. As soon as she gets down here, I’m going to grab onto her and kiss her, remind her of all the reasons why she can’t fucking shut me out. I glance up as she pauses on the bottom step and looks at me in irritation. Her wet hair hangs down around her shoulders and her make-up free face that’s been scrubbed clean of Finnley’s blood makes her look much younger and more vulnerable. That is, until she opens her mouth.
“I thought I told you to leave?”
Every good plan swirling through my brain disintegrates into a pile of dust.
I stare in a daze at my feet as Finnley’s blood mixes with the water from the shower and the pink-tinged liquid slides down my body, swirling around the drain. I should be crying. I have every reason to cry, but I feel so dead inside that nothing happens. I knew as soon as DJ started to remove my pants that he’d see. That stupid pep talk I gave myself meant nothing when it came down to it. I try to reason with myself that I just wasn’t ready for him to see. If I would have just had a little more time to prepare myself and think about what I wanted to say to him, maybe it would have turned out differently, but I know that’s a lie. If it happened tomorrow, a week from now or six months from now, I probably would have done the same thing – waited for him to look at those burns in horror and give me a reason to push him away. It’s what I do. It’s what I know, and no amount of pretending that I was this happy, well-adjusted person the last few weeks was going to change that.
I used his words of hatred for the man he thought was responsible for putting those burns on me against him. I know he doesn’t hate me. He loves me and he would do anything for me. The problem is the woman standing in the shower right now watching her best friend’s blood drip down her body. I hate myself too much to allow anything good in my life. It’s just like the bullshit they feed to people at Al-Anon meetings. ‘It’s not that your loved one doesn’t love you enough to stop their addiction, it’s that they don’t love themselves enough.’
It’s almost funny when I think about it, but I’m so numb that I can’t even force myself to laugh. DJ wants to tear the person who burned me limb from limb, assuming it was my father, when he was staring at the culprit the entire time. I’m sure it won’t be long before he puts two-and-two together. He’s a paramedic. He knows what fresh burns look like compared to fifteen year old ones. I can’t blame him for not realizing it when he first saw the marks on my hip. I’m sure my freak-out confused him and he was still running on adrenaline from the accident. He immediately assumed he knew where the burns came from and I didn’t correct him. If I was a different person, maybe I could have come clean, finally told him about the problem I have and what I do to myself from time to time. Maybe he would have pulled me into his arms, kissed away my tears and told me it didn’t matter. Maybe I would have believed him.
I turn off the water and dry off robotically, throwing on a pair of yoga pants and a sweatshirt. Grabbing my cell phone out of my scrub pants, I close my eyes so I don’t have to see the blood. I dial Finnley’s number and breathe a little easier when I hear her tired voice on the other line.
“Did you get my cheeseburger?”
I try to laugh at her odd question, but it comes out as a sob and I quickly smack my hand over my mouth. She doesn’t need to be burdened with my problems. Because of me, she’s in a hospital right now and she could have died.
“Oh, honey, I’m fine,” she tells me softly. “Just a bump on the head and all my tests came back good. I’ll be able to go home tomorrow night.”
I’m glad she’s going to be okay, but that doesn’t change the fact that she’s in this position right now because of me. Her car flew through a busy intersection because my father couldn’t get to me. She was covered in blood and Collin almost lost the love of his life, all because of me. I let my guard down and was fucking humming with happiness all morning while Finnley was fighting for her life.
“Listen, I know you heard about what happened to my car,” Finnley states, interrupting my thoughts. “I want you to promise me right now that you don’t blame yourself.”
I close my eyes and she continues, not even waiting for a r
eply.
“It’s not your fault, Phina. I know you and I know you’re beating yourself up over this and you need to stop. The things he did to you, the things he’s still doing…it’s not your fault, do you hear me? What happened today, it could have happened to Collin, to DJ or to you.”
“But it didn’t,” I whisper softly.
“BUT IT COULD HAVE,” she replies loudly. “That sperm donor is the one who is responsible for this shit, not you. He’s responsible for the shitty way you grew up, for making you think you don’t deserve to be happy and for all of the crap that’s been going on lately. HIM, not you. You didn’t ask for any of this.”
In theory, I know she’s right, but it’s impossible for my head and my heart to come to an agreement. I can still see the way DJ looked at my hips and I can still hear the hatred in his voice. My father might have started the ball rolling, but I took over his job for the next fifteen years and did a great job of fucking myself up.
“I love you, Fin,” I tell her softly.
“I love you too, you big dummy. Oh, I almost forgot, Dax called here looking for you. Said he tried to reach you on your cell, but you didn’t answer.”
I noticed a couple of missed calls from Dax on my phone before I called Finnley, but she was my first priority.
“He said he found something out and needs to talk to you as soon as possible,” Finnley finishes.
I end the call with a promise to come up and see her when I’m finished with Dax. Holding my cell phone in my lap, I stare at the ashtray on my nightstand with the lone cigarette in it, the one I lit earlier with every intention of pressing it into my skin. I try to go to that place in my mind, the one unconscious of everything around me but the need to feel pain. I close my eyes and concentrate, thinking about what it feels like to press the burning embers into my flesh. I imagine the smell of burning skin and the relief that washes through my body as it gets a new brand on my hip. My hands start to shake, not with the need to light up the cigarette, but with the fear that I don’t have the desire to do this to myself anymore. I found something better to become addicted to, but I told him to leave. It was for the best, I reassure myself. As much as it hurts, it needed to happen. The pain of pushing him away is far greater than any burn from a cigarette.