AllFreeNovel
Share Us
6
EMRYS
One moment I’m fucking happy that Mia left me a reply on the desk and that I managed to give one back—I’m fucking hard just thinking of her, dammit—and the next I open the classroom door and a wave of blackness blows over my thoughts like smoke.
Can’t remember why I was so happy, or hard, or what I was planning to do.
Ophelia is here. Of course. She always comes pick me up after lessons because she wants to spend time with me. It’s… nice. To spend time together. Holding hands. Like couples do.
I just… wish sometimes I could remember all the stuff I keep forgetting. It makes me feel like I’m living another guy’s life.
“What are you up to today?” Ophelia asks.
“I have training,” I say. “The Scale-ball match is in two days.”
“Sports.” She sniffs disdainfully. “Such a stupid waste of time.”
I smile at her. Of course she’s right. “Then I won’t train,” I tell her.
“No, go. Don’t let the teachers suspect.”
“Suspect what?”
Now she’s smiling, too. “Suspect that I convinced you to ditch the stupid sport. They won’t like it. They may take me to the Headmaster, even expulse me.”
“Then I will go. For you.” And I frown, because how does this make any sense?
A headache is hammering behind my eyes. Nothing makes sense. I’m not like this, I fucking love playing Scale-ball, I—
Her hand strokes up my arm and there’s a tug inside my head, making the headache worse but offering calm.
“You’re overthinking,” she says, “like always. Everything is fine, Emrys.”
“Everything is fine,” I whisper, nodding. “Of course.”
“You’ve been a naughty boy, haven’t you? I could sense you thinking of Trash Girl last night, this morning, too. I should punish you. Would you like that?”
“Punish me,” I repeat, and deep inside me a shudder is starting, an old memory pushing up toward the surface. “No, I wouldn’t.”
“You want it,” she says, her voice a little harsher. “You like it when I show you how things ought to be. Tell me how much you want it, Emrys. How much you like pain.”
Sweat is rolling down my face, down my back. “I want it,” I manage, black spots swimming in my vision.
“Tell me what you want me to do.”
“Punish me,” I whisper. “Give me pain.”
“And after that, the relief will be so sweet,” she says, still smiling. “You will see. And all other thoughts, all naughty thoughts, will fade away. Won’t that be nice.”
“Yes,” I breathe because there is nothing else I can say. And she’s right. She knows what is best for me. I fuck up all the time. Have done so all my life. Nothing new there.
But she cares enough to be patient and hold my hand and show me the way. She knows I respond to pain—just like my family knew it long before now—and she will do what she must to help me get better.
Even if it hurts her to hurt me.
I heard people say that love hurts. So I guess love has to, if it’s real. I just never knew how much.
When I come back to myself at some point, I’m in my room, on my bed, and even as I wait for my heart to stop hammering and the blackness to dissolve into faint light, I know it isn’t the first time this has happened.
