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44
IRINA
Everything shifted in slow motion. There was no fear. No panic or any of the grief I’d felt staring into Scar’s eyes.
In the moments before my death, there was only peace. The kind of peace I’d spent my entire life searching for. I wasn’t haunted by the thoughts swimming in my head, wasn’t tormented by the voice that said I would never be enough for anyone.
I was free.
I flew, spreading my arms out to the side and not feeling a moment of pain as my broken arm raised. Air surrounded me in a moment of suspension, my body weightless as I slowly tipped forward to face the ground.
Reality crashed into me, grabbing me around the waist while I hung in the air. The sudden grip forced the breath from my lungs, sending a shock of pain through me as the freedom of only a moment before was snatched from me.
I gasped, arms solidifying around my waist as I shoved at them. They pulled me back, gripping me tightly and moving so quickly that my legs knocked into the railing painfully
Everything hurt in this world.
I landed on top of something firm, my hands involuntarily shoving at the arms gripping my waist so tightly. “No!” I screamed, clawing at the skin beneath my nails.
The familiar sight of my nails against his scarred flesh gave me a moment of pause, a moment of regret. But the longing for that moment of freedom I’d felt, the peace that had waited for me, made me push forward.
I thrashed in his grip, ignoring the muted murmurs in my ear as he held me still on top of his body. He shifted me to the side, tipping me over until I landed on my stomach. In the precious moments of freedom, I shoved to my hands and knees and twisted around, crawling for the stairs even as the splint and brace made the movements difficult and pain shot through my limbs.
“Hush, Butterfly,” Scar soothed. He shifted me, getting his arm behind my knees and supporting me as he lifted, standing from his squatting position in a fluid movement, and turned for the bedroom I’d abandoned in my desperation to die.
“Scar!” Ivory yelled from the stairway.
“She’s okay. Get a fucking man on the door twenty-four seven. I don’t care if there’s someone in the room with her or not,” Scar ordered, his voice holding a cruel bite that I’d never heard him use with Ivory.
That I’d never heard him use at all.
“Let me go!”I wailed, twisting my body in his grip. I couldn’t go back to that bed, where I couldn’t let myself sleep.
“Never again, Irina,” he said, shaking his head as he stared down at me. His long legs closed the distance between the stairs and my room far faster than I’d been able to on my own, and before I knew it, the soft pressure of the mattress was at my spine.
Scar laid me out on the bed, his eyes going to the suicide note I’d left for my father. For the only person who might have cared that I was gone.
He turned back to me, his eyes dancing with something both menacing and comforting. His fingers closed around my chin, his other hand touching the top of my hair, matted from lying in bed for far too long. “Never fucking again. Do you hear me?” he asked, that menace coming out to play.
I shook my head, unable to give him the words he was looking for. I couldn’t promise that I wouldn’t try again, not when I was already so desperate to find a way back to the stairs.
To reach for that freedom again.
“You need to sleep,” he said, moving away from the edge of the bed and reaching for the top drawer of the dresser I never touched. He unlocked and pulled open the drawer, reaching in and pulling out a little vial and a syringe.
“Will I wake up?” I asked, knowing which answer I was hoping for. Would he help me end the pain? If he’d chosen to come with me, I’d regret it every moment until I drew my last breath, but I couldn’t help but appreciate the sentiment that he might have given us a more painless way to go.
“Yes. You’ll wake up every day, Butterfly. It isn’t time for you to fly yet,” he said, inserting the needle of the syringe into the bottle and tipping it upside down. He drew the fluid in carefully, his attention shifting between me and his hands.
I turned onto my side, rolling until my weight fell off the bed. My arms felt like lead at my sides, exhausted from the effort of hanging onto the railing and giving me nothing in the way of strength.
I landed on the floor as Scar finished drawing the sedative into the syringe. My body throbbed with pain, my arm crushed beneath my weight as I used what little strength I had to push up to my knees, ignoring the pain.
“Irina, stop,” Scar ordered, the dominance in his voice soothing some part of me. It should have been the part to rebel against his control over me in the wake of my trauma. It should have been the part of me that couldn’t stand to give any man authority.
Instead, it seemed to settle the frazzled edges of my fear. It comforted me against the terror of what might be waiting for me in my dreams.
Still, I shoved up with everything I had in me, rising to my knees and twisting until I put my palms on the bed.
His footfalls came slowly, closing the little bit of distance between us until he stood directly behind me. I rose to my feet, reminded of the moments prior to my breaking point, when I’d refused to stay down.
Where was that woman?
My eyes burned as I turned to face Scar. He stared down at me, his face gentle as he softly cupped my cheek with an enormous hand. “There she is,” he murmured, leaning forward to touch his lips to mine.
His breath filled my lungs, bringing the first moment of clarity in the smog that had enveloped my soul in darkness.
It felt like something that wasn’t loneliness or fear. It felt like acceptance.
A sharp pinch pricked my neck, the needle slipping into my flesh as Scar kissed me sweetly. The sting of betrayal came with it, a shock to my system when I realized what he’d done.
It shouldn’t have surprised me, yet somehow it did.
“No,” I whispered, pulling back from his lips. He hurried to remove the needle from my neck, touching his mouth to the wound. “I don’t want to sleep.”
“You made a mistake, cuore mio. You showed me all your broken edges,” he said, licking the blood from the spot where it welled in the absence of the needle. He laced his fingers through mine, raising them so he could stare at the way we intertwined. “You made me realize how seamlessly they fit with mine.”
“What about what I want?” I asked, ignoring the pang of something inside me. There’d been a time when Scar was all I wanted—when his words would have made me whole—but now there was nothing left to fit with him.
There was nothing left to give.
“That stopped mattering the moment you chose death over life, Butterfly. I would die for you—but you?” he asked, touching his forehead to mine as he leaned forward. My back bowed in submission, bending until it touched the mattress under me. The fog of sleep rolled in, making my eyelids heavy even as I tried to force them open. I couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t relive Darragh’s torture in my dreams. “You’re going to live for me,” Scar finished, laying his weight at my side. He draped a leg over mine, pressing a hand to the spot on my chest where my heart beat in tune with the pulse in his palm.
Like the two halves of what remained of our hearts were somehow a matching pair, the jagged edges lined up perfectly.
“Darragh…” I trailed off, the words lost to the sleepiness consuming me.
“Darragh will never touch you again. He doesn’t get to have you, Butterfly. You’re mine now,” he murmured, burying his face in my neck. “I’m sorry. So sorry it took me so long to see you.”
My eyes closed, one last tear falling as I fell into the rhythm of his breathing, and I drifted away.
