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“There you go, taking on burdens again,” I murmur and then kiss her lips, taking them with possessiveness. Her lips linger and I deepen it slightly, rewarded with a moan of pleasure from her.
Her hand rests on my chest and with the movement she winces.
A bruised ass, wounds on her wrists and ankles … and now she’s sick. My poor girl. If I could go back, I’d have lessened the bruising. Perhaps skipped it altogether.
A huff leaves me at the thought. If I could go back, I wouldn’t have pushed her to the point of slapping me. Running a hand through my hair, I remind myself, all of the what-ifs and should haves don’t mean shit. They’re nothing but irrelevant fuckups.
I simply can’t do right by her. It’s one thing after the other and nothing is right.
“Could you tell me a story?” she questions, once again bringing my focus back to the present.
“You think I know bedtime stories or fairy tales?”
“No, no,” she murmurs, “just any story.”
“I’m not exactly known for my storytelling skills.”
“I can’t … stop thinking,” she says quietly into her pillow and doesn’t look me in the eyes. “I keep thinking about the … Scarlet and the bath.” Mixed emotions swirl inside of me. The very mention of Scarlet, a known traitor, has me wondering why she’s bringing it up. There’s no question she was a rat. We had her on camera, recordings from phone calls, her texts and photos of her meetups.
Clearing my throat, I try to think up a story. “You want me to distract you?”
“Yes … please.”
“One time, a long time ago … there was a kid. He was dirty all the time because he hated showers and his brothers were always gone.” I almost add “and his father was always drunk” but I realize it would be far sadder than I want by adding that detail in. We only had one bathroom in our home and the memory of my mother falling in it when she was weak and frail and I couldn’t help her haunted me, even after she was gone. I don’t tell her that either, though.
Her breathing is steady, her breasts pressed against my chest as she listens to me. “And one day, this little girl who was sweet and so cute, told him he smelled.”
She lets out a small laugh and a genuine one, albeit gruff and short, leaves me too. With a small smile she looks up and tells me that’s not what she said.
“Might as well have.”
“I was polite,” she argues in the most adorable tone.
“What was it you said?” I ask her, trying to remember that moment.
“I asked if you needed somewhere to go for a bath.”
“Mmm, I don’t remember it like that.”
“I wanted you to come home with me and I would have helped you. That was before, though,” she comments.
“Before what?” I ask without thinking.
“Just before things changed.”
I offer her a sad smile. Things changed all the time when I was younger. Every month worse than the last. Lonelier. Harder. I’m not naïve enough to think it wasn’t worse for my brothers. I don’t remember it all, and my father wasn’t as hard on me. He beat the shit out of them, though, and all I did was hide in the corner. Regret makes it hard to swallow as memories I don’t care to recall come back.
I remember my mother dying. I was so young I only remember a few things before that. And Braelynn with her perfect braids and frilly dresses telling me I needed a bath was one of them.
“There’s a happily ever after, though.”
“Is there?”
“The boy made sure he showered every day after that,” I state somewhat comically. She doesn’t laugh so much as roll her eyes and make an effort at a tiny smile.
“That’s the happily ever after?”
“I told you, I’m not the best at stories.” The blanket falls from her shoulder as she shifts so I pull it up around her again. “The boy would have done whatever that girl told him to,” I tell her and I don’t know why. Maybe that sounds like more of a happy ending. It isn’t, though, because I hardly saw her again. Let alone speak to her.
