“You are terrifying and strange and beautiful.
Something not everyone knows how to love.”
—Warsan Shire
My body slumps against Adam as he holds me. I mold into his hard form like he’s the canvas and I’m the paint. Resting my face in the curve of his warm neck, I can’t keep my eyes from fluttering shut.
Everything aches. Both sides of my jaw throb as they swell, and my stomach is raw. Adam shifts my weight in his arms to shove open his door. He strides into the room, lowers me on the bed, and drapes a blanket over me. My eyes drift open when he stalks to the dresser, tossing the recorder on it. He grabs his phone from his pocket, punching keys.
I watch him closely through heavy eyes. The way he clenches his jaw, his thumb darting across the screen. A vein in his forehead looks like it might burst.
He won’t look at me.
After a second, he slides the phone across the dresser and works the buttons of his shirt. His movements are stiff, like he’s refraining from tearing the material apart.
“Adam,” I say faintly, exhaustion draining me.
He tenses, the muscles in his shoulders constricting.
“I just . . . I wanted to thank—”
The door opens, dragging my gaze to Aubrey. When I look back, Adam’s already in the bathroom, the lock clicking behind him. My chest deflates as I stare at the closed door.
When Aubrey removes the blanket and starts slipping off my shoes and scarf a few moments later, she’s nonchalant to the point I wonder how often she deals with stuff like this. I wince when she cleans and dresses the open wounds. But I’m glad she works in silence. My body sinks into the mattress, and my eyelids lower.
Soon, she covers my naked body again, and I find someplace between restlessness and sleep.
I drift in and out for a while, my mind wavering from clarity to fuzzy clouds, then back again. Somewhere along the line I faintly register movement in the air as Adam paces from one spot to another. I don’t know how much time has passed before I feel, then see, him watching me, but sleep tugs at my consciousness and pulls me back under its spell.
When a crash whips me from my subconscious, my eyes flutter open to find a room cloaked in darkness. It’s not long before I spot Adam’s broad, shadowed form sitting on the ground—his back against the wall, elbows resting on his knees and hands gripping his hair.
The video recorder is in shambles on the floor beside him.
After a moment, I realize he’s shaking. It’s not a small, illusive shake. In fact, I don’t think ‘shake’ does it justice at all. Waves of intensity radiate off him, tension rolling through his muscles like thunder roaring beneath his skin. I swallow as I watch him in utter silence, not daring to make a move.
Not because I’m scared.
Because I’m captivated.
A violent war wages inside his head, and it shows with every twitch, every clench, every ripple overtaking him. He doesn’t just blend in with the darkness surrounding us. He sucks it dry with every inhale then feeds it with each exhale.
It’s madness begging to be released. It’s pain so forbidden you can’t cry. It’s an explosion of everything I am when I reach my darkest days.
And I’ve never seen it look so beautiful.
Peeling the covers off my naked body, I slip from the bed and drift toward him like an invisible rope is tied around my chest. His energy is the grip tugging me closer. I carefully guide his hands to his sides and crawl into his lap. He doesn’t look at me, but his knuckles curl and his breathing picks up. For a long moment, I just stare into his shadowy eyes in admiration.
I reach up, bringing my hands to both sides of his face, and lazily trail my nails from his temples to the bottom of his chin. A tremor slides over him, vibrating against me. When I cup his cheeks with my palms, he finally looks at me.
“Does it hurt?” I whisper.
He narrows his eyes, a swallow passing through his throat.
“When you lock yourself away like that, does it hurt?” I drag my fingers to his thick strands of hair. “Can you tell me . . . can you tell me what it’s like when you let it out? Is it everything I imagine?”
His gaze flicks between my eyes, and I wonder how much of me he sees. Here I am, completely naked, yet I feel so deep in layers I can hardly breathe.
“I want you to show me. I’m not afraid.”
A low rumble escapes his throat as he allows his gaze to wander lower, his lips twisting as though he’s in physical pain. “You should be. I would tell you to run”—his strong hand clutches my throat, and I gasp as somersaults go off in my stomach—“but I’d only catch you. And then I’d crush you.”
“So crush me,” I breathe, my chest pounding to a new beat. “I don’t want to be whole anymore. I want you to see my pieces.”
It’s in the moment his pupils expand so wide they’re completely black that I know.
There’s no going back.