Page 96 of Inflict

Connor stepped further into the room, taking in what drawings he could see without going in even more. Some were simple drawings, things she had seen around the brownstone, or flowers outside along the walkway. Others were of faces he didn’t recognize, and some of them were his own reflection, though always happier than he thought himself to be.

“Did you rip all of these out of your books?”

Evelyn nodded. “All of them.”

She had several sketchbooks. She filled them like nothing, her mind constantly spilling out images onto paper, as though she might forget them otherwise. He swore she could draw for hours—days, even—without her fingers cramping up or tiring of her work.

The one thing she had never done?

Shared her sketches with him.

There had been the one—of him—but other than that, Evelyn kept her art locked up tight, hidden in her books, and pushed out of sight. She never offered, and Connor understood how personal of a thing it could be, so he didn’t ask.

But now, all he had to do was walk around the room, and be careful not to step on her pictures. So, he did just that, though some of the images bothered him.

A man standing over her. Tattoos he didn’t recognize. A wedding band on the hand that was pushing open a woman’s thighs. Bruises on skin. Fresh welts on a delicate back. A bloody smile.

Connor swallowed hard, his gaze taking in even more images, ones he knew had to be older memories for her, even though she had only drawn them recently. Ones he recognized, of her father, Declan, sitting behind a desk, smiling at someone looking up at him. Others of her father were darker in tone, as though the weight of the world rested on his shoulders, and he hadn’t realized someone wee was watching him break down.

“It’s dark in here, too,” Evelyn said softly.

Connor looked over at her, his attention gone from the images but not for too long. “Pardon?”

She pointed at her head. “In here, it’s dark. It never stops, and some of these, I’ve drawn time and time again, just to get the image out of my head for a little while. There’s more in here, things I know and have seen or remember, but haven’t put down yet. But it helps to get them out sometimes, to make them go away, even if they come again.”

It’s dark in here, too.

Art was not like this for Connor. His idea of creating beautiful images had been born from a desire to escape, to appreciate the craft. He had been drawn to it because of his memories of Evelyn as a wee girl, but he’d continued because of how much time and effort and skill it took to complete something.

For her, it seemed like it just bled right out of her mind.

Connor moved again, walking further, taking in a new row of images. One of a woman—not Evelyn, as he could see her face—entirely naked, bound in a hogtie on a dirty mattress, her skin a gray tone, and her eyes closed. Dead, likely.

He blinked, freezing.

That image seemed familiar, though he couldn’t quite reach why.

“Why this one?” Connor asked, pointing to the image.

“I was just a girl—I found some pictures in my father’s desk. That was one I couldn’t forget.”

There it was.

Connor remembered the memory easily, of a much younger Evelyn showing him her drawing, though it had been rough and not as detailed as her newer version.

“I can’t get it out my head, so I draw it a lot,” Evelyn admitted.

“Your father, you said?”

Evelyn nodded. “He caught me with the one, and got really angry. He burned them all, after that. I don’t think they were his, but I don’t know why he had them.”

Connor wondered if he did know, or if he had known for a long time. He thought he recognized that woman, naked and dead on a mattress, tied like an animal with ropes that looked to have choked her to death.

She looked like his mother.

“Someone is knocking on the door,” Evelyn said softly.

Connor barely heard it over the buzz of his tattoo machine, and since he was positive he didn’t hear her correctly, he continued his task. After twelve hours with his back hunched over, his hands were getting tense and his shoulders were stiff. Evelyn had wanted this tattoo badly. It was something she had sketched out the week before, when she had stayed the day with Killian, and Connor couldn’t deny her a thing.