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The thought stabbed at my insides with such ferocity, it doubled me over with grief. I clung to the limestone wall, bits flaking off and coating my palms with a powdery chalk.
Was I dying? It felt like I was dying. As far as my sweet boy would know, his mother would have vanished.
He would never know all the nights I had cried for him, clung to him while he was still in my womb, wishing for us both that he could just stay in there forever so he didn’t have to leave me.
And now I had left him. Because my father had fucked up again.
I had paid for his sins with my life. And it sickened me.
I didn’t even realise I had struck the wall at first. There was a burst of pain in my fist that lanced through my arm, the shock registering in my neck and head. My ears rang. It hurt. It felt good.
So I did it again.
And again.
And again.
Until my hands were covered in blood and my knuckles were a pulp of red, broken skin.
The blood calmed me a little, I’m not sure why. It was the same reason I’d hidden a razor blade in my mattress at boarding school and traced thin cuts into my thighs while my roommates slept, blissfully unaware. Back then, the blood that sprang from my skin had made my sadness tangible. It had distracted me from the fact that my baby was thousands of miles away, on another continent, and everybody was acting like he didn’t exist. It had soothed the tears that dripped silently from my face onto my thighs, mixing with my blood. It had made me strong.
I suddenly craved that feeling again. Punching the wall had brought a temporary relief, but it waned quickly, and I wanted more. I knew Murphy had packed a small round mirror in with the cosmetics he’d bought for me — I had been forced to sit still while he painted my face with blush and lip gloss before we boarded our first flight. I knew there was glass in there that I could break and drag along my flesh; glass that would bring me some of that sweet relief I was craving.
So when Dornan had walked in, I didn’t even see him at first. Honestly, I was so hysterical by that point, I’d kind of forgotten where I was or what was happening. Hence the self-mutilation. I needed to come back down to earth.
And come back to earth I did when I finally saw him.
My own father had caught me cutting myself in the bathroom once. I was on summer vacation, and he wouldn’t let me out of the house to see Este in case I got knocked up again. It hurt my heart to be so close to the boy I loved, yet so far away. I had sobbed and raged, but my father responded by giving me the beating of my life and telling me to fuck off. It was the only time he’d ever hit me when he was sober, and it had hurt all the more because of that fact.
So I had gotten the razor out. And as the first blood had emerged from my thigh, my father had walked into the bathroom without knocking.
He never said a word to me. Never asked why. He just looked at me in disgust, turned on his heel, and slammed the door shut.
So, naturally, I expected Dornan Ross to do the same. But he wasn’t an ordinary man. Somehow I already knew this from our brief interaction earlier. He didn’t avert his eyes or stay away from me.
He came closer. He touched me where I bled. I watched him lick his lips unconsciously as he studied my handiwork.
It should have made me afraid of him, but what did I have to lose? I’d already lost everything.
I couldn’t help myself. When he had got up to leave me, I couldn’t bear the thought of being alone again with my despair. When he told me he liked my blood, and his eyes had gleamed with a hunger unlike anything I’d ever seen, I knew.
He was a dangerous man. And he liked me. Liked my blood. If I could get him on my side — maybe, just maybe, I could get myself out of this mess.
He said he liked my blood, but he left me anyway. I thought he wasn’t coming back, until he returned a few moments later with a first-aid kit.
I sat on the edge of the bed and let him play doctor. It was jarring, the way he picked my hand up like it was made of glass and examined it, the skin on his fingers rough but his touch gentle. For a six-foot tall, muscled, tattooed biker in leathers, his touch was surprisingly tender.
‘You’ve done this before,’ he said, glancing at the faint lines that marred my thighs. I didn’t answer him, tugging my dress down again to cover the scars.
‘I’m not suicidal,’ I said suddenly. And why should it matter if I was? But for some reason I wanted him to know. I needed him to understand.
‘Darlin’,’ he said, as he dragged a sterile wipe over my bloody arm. ‘Nobody would blame you if you were suicidal. You’re pretty fucked right now.’
I diverted my eyes to the floor.
‘What’s going to happen to me?’ I blurted out suddenly. His hands stilled, but he didn’t speak. I raised my eyes to his in question, and what I saw there made my stomach lurch.
‘Do you want me to lie to you,’ he asked, continuing to wrap the bandage around my arm, ‘or do you want me to tell the truth?’
