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Madelena
I hear the click of the lock turn, something that has become a common occurrence in my life over the last few years since Santos Augustine entered it.
A warm mixture of blood and come slides out of me when I sit up and push the blanket away. He cleaned me as best as he could, but even though the washcloth was soothing when he’d pressed it to me, I’m no less sore for it.
I force myself to move. I go into the bathroom and lock that door, although I don’t think he’s coming back. Not just yet. He’ll go to the reception. One of us has to. It’s humiliating that they’ll all know what happened here. I can just hear the gossip, how I’m too weak to even carry on and get to my own wedding reception after being fucked by my husband. He’ll probably get several pats on the back knowing the men of Avarice.
Ana will be at the reception. Does she still keep in touch with all her friends from high school who lived to make my life hell? Will she report back my latest humiliation? I’m glad to say that I don’t care much about that. She can’t hurt me anymore. The worst she could have done is done.
I switch on the shower, turn it to the hottest possible temperature, and step under the flow. I close my eyes and just stand there, letting the night’s events circle my mind. The photograph. My uncle’s death. Those scars on Santos’s body. The carved lines. The fact that he knew about my cuts. He’d seen them that night two years ago, but maybe he hadn’t understood or maybe he’d just needed time to process that someone would do that to themselves.
Truth is, though, I haven’t cut in a while. I used to. I’d started when I was thirteen. I can’t remember the specifics of the event that triggered it, although it had to do with my father and my mother—the fact that I was alive and she was not. I hadn’t realized it was a thing when I started. It was almost accidental. But in a moment of pain and rejection—why I kept thinking I could do something that would make my father hate me less was beyond me—I’d gone into my bathroom, where I’d seen the razor lying on the edge of the sink, and I’d carelessly cut my wrist.
I’m still not sure why I’d done it, or what I’d been seeking. It scares me to think about that moment.
But strangely, what I’d found was comfort. A different, wrong kind of comfort. No, maybe that’s not the right word, but the pain of the cutting somehow managed to contain the rest of the pain. Like I could focus it. Concentrate it. Control it. It was how I could survive it.
I’d only done it sporadically because it still did hurt, and I used to be a wimp about pain. I’m better at taking it now.
When I turned fifteen, a momentous year for me apparently, I’d trusted Ana with this detail about my life. I’d told her about what I did, and why. About how it made me feel. It was after that that I started to do it regularly because it turned out I shouldn’t have trusted her. I should have known better.
I still don’t know if she did it to boost her social standing or to punish me for what my father had done to hers, but she used this secret—this deepest, darkest truth I’d told no one else—against me. Given my past, all those kids thought I was some freak anyway, and this just cemented it.
After Ana had betrayed me, I became more isolated than ever, and I cut and I cut and I cut.
But I’d stopped mostly by the time I was eighteen. There are moments where, like any addict, I think just one more hit. Just once more. The need can be overwhelming, but I know myself. I know there won’t be a one more time, and there’s always the fear that it won’t be comfort I seek, but something else. Something darker. More terrifying.
When I think like this, I wonder if my mom’s mental illness transferred to me while I was still in her womb, if I’m as sick as she was. But that thought is too terrible, and I shove it away, out of reach of my conscious mind.
Once the water starts to cool, I switch it off and reach for a towel. I dry off, being extra careful as I pat myself dry. I’m sore, but I’m not bleeding anymore. I slip on the too-big bathrobe and tie it.
When I return to the bedroom, I notice a tray of food has been brought up. My stomach growls when I smell steak, and I’m pleased to see a bottle of red wine. I can’t imagine Santos sent the wine, but I guess he sent the food.
I go to the tray and pop the cork out of the bottle. It’s been opened but recorked. I pour a generous glass for myself and drink a big swallow, then another. I take the lid off the plate of food and see the steak, lobster, potatoes, and steamed greens. I cover it again to take a look around first.
With the glass of wine in hand, I walk into his closet. It’s huge. Santos certainly likes his bespoke suits. I almost laugh. But then I find myself reaching for the sleeve of one of his jackets and bringing it to my face. I close my eyes and inhale his familiar scent. It’s all around me in here, and I just breathe it in.
I want to hate him. I do hate him, don’t I?
Confused, I shake my head and look around.
I’m not sure what that was between us, how things have shifted. If he’d taken what he’d wanted and I’d felt nothing but pain, would this be easier to process?
I need to be smart about this. This is different than I expected—not necessarily worse, though. He’s attracted to me, that’s clear, and as much as I hate to admit it, I’m attracted to him. Sex with him felt good. Coming with him was different than it is when I make myself come. It’s a whole other world I didn’t know existed. From the way he looked at me, he felt it too. Or maybe it was his self-imposed celibacy—if I buy that.
That doesn’t matter though, not now. What happened tonight changes things. Sex can be my weapon. Sex can be where I gain the upper hand, even if it is only for little bits of time.
I can do this. I can remember this and remind myself that we are enemies. Enemies with benefits.
With a smile, I sip my wine and look through his closet. It is so precisely organized. I’m not surprised. He’s a control freak in every way. I look through all the drawers and find the usual things. I mess up some of the folded items just because and come up to one drawer with a locked metal box inside. It looks old and very different than anything else in here.
Lifting it out of the drawer, I take a close look at the lock. It can’t be hard to pick but I’m not in the mood, not right now.
I finish my glass, drinking it like water as I return to the bedroom. I pour myself a second one and eat a bite of steak while watching the snow falling outside. There must be a foot on the ground already. Through the thick flakes, I can see the waves of the ocean every time the beacon of the lighthouse pans over the black water. I can’t imagine how cold that water is. The thought makes me shudder.
I touch my fingertips to the glass of the window and look down. Odin thinks I’m afraid of heights, but he’s not quite right. It’s not the height that scares me. It’s the cliffs. I’m afraid of dying on them.
Light pours from the windows of the ballroom below and I imagine all those people downstairs eating and drinking while I, the bride, am locked in this bedroom. Not that I want to be there, but it is strange how life just carries on.
I’m about to turn away when movement around the side of the building catches my eye and there, stalking rather than walking, I see Santos. No coat. I assume he’s still wearing his dress shoes too. His head is cast down against the snow. I slink back a little. If he looks up, he’ll see me. I watch him, wondering what he’s thinking. Why he’s not at the reception. Why he’d go outside on a night like this without a coat at the very least. Snow storms in Avarice are brutal, especially along this cliff’s edge.
But then he turns onto the path that will lead to the lighthouse, and my heart stops for a minute. Why would he go out there? Does he know what happened there?
Another door opens, this one from the ballroom. I wonder if this is going to be a family reunion out in the middle of a snowstorm because it’s Caius. He’s pulling on a coat and carrying a second one. He stops, then turns back. Someone must have called after him. I can’t see who it is from this angle, but he seems irritated, his body language abrupt, and a moment later, he follows in the direction of his brother.
Santos has almost disappeared from view by the time Caius goes after him, following the rapidly disappearing footprints in the snow. Caius catches up to him, and for a moment I think he’s going to tell him to turn back, tell him that he’d be mad to go out to the lighthouse tonight. Maybe he does. Caius hands him the coat, and, after a brief conversation, Santos takes it. Wind here is no joke, and the lighthouse is a whole other kind of freezing. I know. They should turn back. It’s a stupid night to go out there.
But to my dismay, they don’t. Santos slips the coat on, and the pair of them continue along the path to the lighthouse and there’s not a single thing I can do about it.
