Chapter 19
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Life’s a trauma rainbow. Might as well dance beneath the colors.
Lukas
“Hi, Mom,” Clara says, and I hate the wobble in her voice, but the determination in her eyes as she sits on my lap, thighs splayed seductively around me, keeps me from grabbing the phone, providing the woman on the other end with a cuss, and chucking it off my balcony.
I mean, come on. If I do that, it might hit my harp or my piano.
I grip my Clara’s flesh instead, offering as much support as I can through the addictive action of caressing her thighs.
“Lukas is here,” she adds, wetting her lips before sinking against my chest and resting her head on my shoulder.
I move my hands to her back, soothing, firm.
Frick, she’s so soft and perfect and against me in marvelous ways, trusting me, so fully.
“Hello?” Clara whispers.
“What?” her mother clips. “So I’m not allowed to talk to you without a chaperone anymore?”
That’s right, you cesspool. No more making Clara feel like garbage because you want to weasel stuff out of me through her. I’d send you a hundred autographs at her request, so it’s very,verytelling that she hasn’t even asked forone.
She doesn’t want to use me like that.
And so you suck for trying to make her.
Her body caves on itself, tensing against mine. “Yes?”
Stupid question marks on her perfectly adequate answers. C’mon, my girl, you’ve outgrown that.
Putrid ire saturates her mother’s voice, dripping like sludge through the line. “That’s not healthy, honey. You need your space.”
Clara lifts her free hand and combs her fingers through my hair.
I try not to let my eyes roll back in my head.
“But…this is what Lukas wants. Am I not supposed to do what Lukas wants? I thought you wan—”
“Ah, ah!” her mother silences her. “Hush. It’s nothealthyto have him control everything you do.”
“But he says I’m his toy. He likes when I listen. And when I don’t…”
I tip my face to kiss her cheek.
“You’re worrying me, Clara. This man shouldn’t be allowed to tell you what you can and can’t do. You should be able to talk to your mother in private. This isn’tright.”
Clara buries herself against me, gripping my hair for support. “It’s not right for someone else to tell me what to do all the time and get mad at me if I don’t perform perfectly for them?”
“No, honey!”
She soundssoaghast. Oblivious entirely to what Clara is doing, to what Clara is getting out of her abuser: the harsh truth, the knowledge that even in their eyes, what they are doing is wrong.
Clara swallows, and dampness rests against my skin when she turns her face. “Oh.”
I nibble her jaw, massage her neck like I did yesterday, try not to replay the sighs and sounds she made in my head while I worked the pain out of her muscles.
