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Chapter fifteen
Lyla
Thenextfewdays passed in adapting to her new life beyond her bedroom.
Waking up to the view of the beautiful mountains on one side and the sea on the other thrilled her every day. As did finding a fresh red rose and little notes on her bedside table. Notes that elicited different reactions in her.
The ‘I got the piercings for you’ made her breathless.
The ‘Did you know you snore?’ made her frown.
The ‘I liked the dress you wore yesterday’ made her cheeks warm.
And so on and so forth.
Little notes, every single day.
She enjoyed the long showers she took, avoiding the bath mainly because of the memories she associated with being in a tub. She started using her tablet for everything. From searching ‘how long should I boil pasta’ to ‘is it normal for rape victims want to have sex again’ to ‘best shows to binge’? And the answers she didn't find, she asked Dr. Manson, who told her that yes, it was completely okay for survivors to want intimacy again.
Searches got varied, and life got a new routine. She tried different things and learned she had no talent for painting, didn’t enjoy being online for more than a few minutes, and didn’t like making jewelry. What she did like was cooking—or rather learning and experimenting—and reading, though she was a slow reader. And it wasn’t a physical book from the library she was enjoying reading either, but one she’d found online and had Bessie help her buy. It had showed up on her search when she’d looked for ‘raped heroine romance’. She’d been skeptical that there wouldn’t be many but surprisingly, and tragically, there were. It seemed being forced was more common than she’d thought, even in the outside world.
The book she was reading dealt with a normal woman who had been raped at a party, her struggles and how she fell in love again with a wonderful man. Parts of it, Lyla could relate to. Those parts—feeling dirty, hating her body, being depressed—those made her feel seen, acknowledged, like someone had reached inside her and told her it was okay to feel the way she did. But other parts—mainly where the heroine was falling in love with a gentle, caring man who told her how much he loved her and how beautiful she was every other page—she couldn’t relate to.
She put the tablet down, staring out at the sea, imagining what it would be like. She imagined a good-looking, non-violent, gentle man, imagined him easing her into soft kisses, imagined herself sleeping with him for the rest of her life... and felt nothing. The more she was learning about herself, the more she was understanding that the love in the movies she watched with him wasn’t something she’d ever understand.
The scene in her mind changed. She imagined herself running in the dark, getting caught by a man who was darkness himself, telling her she was his as he claimed her, making her feel safe and protected and unreachable for any other monsters. She didn’t need a good man telling her he loved her; she needed a dark devil to tell her she was his.
And maybe Dainn was the man. Maybe he wasn’t.
She shook her head. Who the hell was she kidding? She knew he was the man for her, had known for many years. Had she been trained by her brain to believe it? Probably. Was it ‘healthy’ like she’d read in articles? Probably not. But again, as Dr. Manson reminded her, other people's definition of healthy couldn't be hers. Her experiences were different, her past was different, and whatever made her grow and heal was healthy for her. All the information she’d been consuming over the days had been doing was simply making her think—think, so she could follow different directions of thought and decide for herself which she agreed with and which she didn’t. She was discovering herself, slowly but surely, and that was all she could do. The knife on the counter still looked inviting sometimes, but she was working on it.
Getting up from the comfortable, plush armchair in the study, she went to the table and picked up the small notebook she had claimed for herself, opening it to the last entry.
‘Cook pasta for dinner’.
One step at a time.
That’s what she had begun to do at Dr. Manson's suggestion. Every morning, she wrote a task for herself to be done that day, and throughout the day, she focused on it. She’d read about it in one of the more useful articles on how to prevent suicidal thoughts as well, and it had been centering her more. Now, every time she had a thought, she opened the notebook and checked what she had to do that day, and eventually, the thought passed.
Checking the time, seeing the sun was setting already, she headed to the kitchen, the one place in the house she was slowly making her domain. Though she still wasn’t an expert, she was experimenting more and more, looking up recipes online, seeing videos on how to cut a vegetable or slice the chicken, and she was becoming more and more confident about the simple, basic things. But only she had tasted her food, and it was the first time she was planning on making a full meal.
Dainn—she was still getting used to calling him that, both inside and out—wouldn’t return home until late in the night. They had begun to share meals together, but if he was away, she usually ate and went to bed, mainly because she’d started waking up at the crack of dawn to simply enjoy the sunrise on the deck every morning. By the time she had dinner watching TV on those nights, she was droopy. Last night, she’d fallen asleep on the couch, only to come awake when he’d picked her up and carried her to bed, tucked her in, and left her sleeping.
She wanted him back in the master bedroom. She wanted to have sex with him, yes, but she also wanted more, much more. She wanted to fall asleep in his arms and wake up in them, she wanted to talk to him in the dark of the night and memorize his words for the day, she wanted to find his hypnotic, intense gaze on her in the morning and give him the reactions he wanted. She wanted it all with him. And maybe she was foolish—she more than likely was—but the desire to have him, to hold him, to hug him was a constant hunger under her skin.
She wanted to belong.
So, she got to work.
Putting her tablet on a stand in the corner of the kitchen, she put on a tutorial video even though she had practiced making it, and brought out the big pan. Putting the water on boil, she opened the fridge and brought out the eggs, tomatoes, cheese and butter.
Knowing what she knew about him being Shadow Man, she didn’t expect him to come back early, but she was willing to sit up and wait for him. She did want to ask him what else he did and how he had all this wealth, ask him why he became the Shadow Man in the first place, ask him about what his big plan was that he’d once talked about. But he was closed off about those subjects, so she let him be for now.
Watching the video and following the steps, she lost herself in the motion of creating something. It soothed something inside her, just the simple act of cooking something from the scratch, and it excited something inside her, just knowing she was going to make someone beside herself eat it.
“Lyla.”
The voice behind her made her turn. Nikki was putting on her coat, still aloof toward her. “Do you need anything before I leave?”
