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“What is it?”
“He says we both need to just stay inside for the next two weeks,” Elio mutters.
“That’s fine with me,” I sigh. I feel like I could sleep for two whole weeks.
In reality, though, I only sleep for about two days. Elio wakes me at intervals to drink some water and have some soup, but otherwise I’m dead to the world.
It’s better that way. Easier. I want to burrow down into a warm, dark place and simply stay there.
Elio won’t let me, though. On the morning of the third day being home, when I make no move to get out of bed, he picks me up and carries my boneless-feeling body into the shower. He sits me down on the tiles, and it reminds me so much of when I helped him shower after his fight with Darragh. Only, unlike me, he isn’t all shy and confused and timid the way I was that day. He’s almost domineering the way he hoses me down, lifting arms and legs and even scrubbing behind my ears.
He even dries my hair with the blow dryer after a few minutes of swearing while he tries to figure out the settings. He doesn’t have a clue about brushes or styling products, so the result is that my hair looks like a fucking bonfire when he’s done.
I don’t care how it looks.
I can’t even care about how it feels. It should feel nice to have clean, warm, dry hair. Especially when I’m too weak and depressed to make it happen myself.
But it just feels like… nothing.
After that, Elio seems to think it’s his job to get me showered and dried and dressed for the day. After four more days of it, I can’t handle it any longer, and I force myself to get out of bed and go shower myself. Elio supervises me as I do it, and there’s a slight look of victory in his eyes, as if he’s pleased that he’s finally annoyed me into getting out of bed for myself.
His smugness doesn’t last, though. When I emerge from my shower two days later, he grabs me by the arm and forces me to stop walking past him like I was trying to.
“Talk to me.”
“About what?” I ask dully, attempting to tug myself out of his grip.
“About the fact that you haven’t looked me in the eye in days. About how you lie stiff as a board beside me in bed until you fall asleep.” His hold on my arm is firm, but his hand at my jaw is gentle as he turns my gaze up to his. When he sees the tears there, he swears softly.
“I miss you,” I say, trying not to cry. I need to have a day, just one fucking day, where I’m not crying.
“I’m right here,” he tells me, his eyes searching.
“But you aren’t! I can’t. I…” I wipe furiously at my eyes, trying to put into words the jumble of contradictory emotions that have been chasing each other through me ever since our wedding.
“It’s like… Every time I close my eyes, I see you killing my father,” I stammer. “And even though he doesn’t deserve it, I can’t stop myself from grieving him. And then I feel confused by that, because how fucking pathetic am I to be sad about the man who caused me so much pain?”
Elio listens silently as words spew out of me like tears. I take a ragged breath and keep going, because now that I’ve started I can’t fucking stop.
“I miss you because you’re right in front of me and I feel like I can’t get back to you! I feel like we’ll never get back to how it was before.”
Elio’s eyes are so dark, so focused on my face. His expression draws tight when I whisper, “I don’t know if we can get past this.”
He exhales tightly and then lets go of my arm very slowly, like it takes a monumental effort.
“You can go back to hating me if you want to, Songbird. As long as you feel fucking something for me. I can work with that.”
“I don’t hate you, Elio.” I hug myself, wishing he’d hug me and already knowing that I won’t know what to do with the touch. “Sometimes I wish that I could hate you. Hating you was always so much easier.”
“Good things are never easy, Songbird. Thought you would have learned that by now.”
“Is loving you good?” I look up at him, and I’m not just being bitchy saying that. I’m sincerely asking him. Because loving him is the fiercest fucking thing I’ve ever felt, but I don’t think I could ever call it truly good. It’s poignant and profound and sometimes even poisonous. It defies morality, defies ethics and boundaries and everything I thought I knew.
It’s ugly and messy, this love I have for him. It’s hard and heavy and broken.
I think we might be broken too.
When Elio doesn’t answer me, I feel a suffocating need to get away. Away from him, from this room, from everything. I hurl myself out into the hallway, running down the stairs, moving quickly and blindly through the house.
