CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I pressed a shivering hand against the white keypad in front of room Z15. The door leapt open and I moved inside. The lights flickered on.
The door closed behind me.
"I knew you would come."
Aaron's voice drew my gaze to his, but he wasn't sitting at the metal table where I always found him. No, this time he laid in his twin bed up against the wall.
"I figured it out!" I held up the iPod triumphantly.
He sat up and frowned at me. His fingers tapped against his bed sheets, just as I had pictured in my mind. "The song!" I took a deep breath, taking him in. "Your song…" He was shirtless, his chest bare, the words, The throne alone, a place to call home, bold, thick looping script across his chest. They words seemed so much bigger in person, darker. I'd never seen him without a shirt before. Not without the protection of a screen between us.
"What do they mean?"
He glanced down at his chest.
"The throne—"
"A place to call home," he finished for me. "You have to rule your life, Violet, or it will slip away out of your control."
I swallowed, considering the irony of the control he had within this cell, which was none.
"You have to sit upon the throne, you have to make it your own or someone else will run your life for you."
I could see the other words too, there were so many of them, written in the flesh of his chest. Some words stood out more than others. Rage. Destroy. Hate. Turmoil. Some were part of longer lines of text and others stood on their own, off-center and crooked.
"Now tell me."
"Tell you what?" I couldn't pull my gaze away from his chest, the bulge of his muscles, the words. I wanted, no, I needed to touch them.
"The song."
I sucked in a breath. "Oh, yes." I realized I was still holding the iPod in the air over my head. I quickly pulled my arm down and held it out in front of me. I moved through the songs quickly, quiet clicking sounds ensued. "I knew it. I knew from the moment I met you that I knew this song, but I couldn't put my finger on what it was."
I pressed play and the melody of Linkin Park's "My December" filled the airwaves inside Z15. I turned it up as loud as the little electronic would allow.
"I can't believe it took me this long to figure out. I love this song, have for a long time, but I rarely ever listen to my iPod anymore. Too much work to be done. Too tired in the evenings… too…" The image of him on the surveillance screen jumped in my head. All those hours I spent watching him, wanting him. Some nights he didn't touch himself at all. Some nights he would just talk to me, just lying in bed staring up at the little black globe in the corner. He would tell me about everything, outside of himself of course. One time he spent several hours telling me about Dr. Seuss. About how he wrote Green Eggs and Ham because someone challenged Seuss, claiming it was impossible to write a book with less than fifty different words in it. Dr. Seuss accepted and conquered.
"Words are power, Violet." He'd stared up at the globe like he knew I was watching. "They can create magnificent things and destroy even more."
Another time he told me about the sun, and how over one million earths could fit inside of it – the size of it unfathomable.
Aaron Whitman was unfathomable. The knowledge he carried. It seemed ridiculous how small he made me feel, like I knew nothing, like I'd lived in an isolated box all my life - though not in a bad way. I was in awe of him. Utterly and completely. I didn't have it in me to feel bad about that. Not right now.
I looked up and met his gaze, he towered over me. Taller, than I had expected. I blinked – and that's when it occurred to me, the span of that second where my eyes closed seeking solace behind my lids, that I realized something.
Aaron Whitman stood before me, no more than a few feet away.
I didn't activate the chains.
My breath caught in my throat. I'd never forgotten.
I could still push the button. The little remote sat heavy in my pocket now. But I stood frozen staring up into Aaron's twitchy gray gaze. I could smell the generic laundry detergent used on his clothes, the scent mixed with one I couldn't really put my finger on, but it was an all male, a masculine musk. It sucked me in, begged me to step closer, to breathe more deeply.
Push the button, Adeline. You don't know what he'll do to you.
I knew what I wanted him to do.
But he didn't do anything. He stood before me, just a few feet away as the iPod played the song there between us. His song. He started to sing along, the melody, the words, somehow more powerful now, now that I knew. They spoke about the cold, about snow-covered dreams, about pretending.
"Why this song, Aaron?"
His gaze jumped to meet mine. He continued to sing and we stood there just feet away from one another, my hands outstretched between us holding the iPod as it played until the song was over.
"The cold broke me, Violet, but I didn't stay broken." He stepped closer to me as the song started over. My hands bumped awkwardly against the tight muscles of his stomach. "Sometimes the thing that breaks you is exactly the thing you need to put yourself back together again." He pressed his hand against my cheek. Hands that were always bound to the table. Hands that were free now, warm, against my face. My lids dipped at his touch. I had only dreamed about it. "It's December now, isn't it?"
I opened my eyes, looking back up at him. "Yes." I paused. "It's December 4th."
He nodded, the smallest crook of a smile forming the corners of his lips. "I could smell it on you. The cold. Sometimes you have to embrace the things that destroy you. Sometimes that's the only way to survive."
"And you embraced it, the cold?" I tried to focus on his words, to understand why he talked about the cold when my skin was so hot. The trembling in my fingers long gone – replaced with a different sort of tremble – a need.
"I had no choice." He tapped his fingertips against my cheek. "Your skin…" His words trailed off, his fingers tapped more quickly. "I've thought about this a million times and finally…" He reached his other hand out and touched my hair. I realized that I hadn't stopped to fix it on my way out of the house. It hung in a loose, messy ponytail. I cringed internally. "Like fucking satin."
I reached out and pressed my hand against his chest, moving the iPod into just one hand. The warmth from his skin flared inside mine along with something else. Many things, lust, fear. They swirled around inside me, though I couldn't seem to settle on just one. They were all a part of me in that moment. Aaron Whitman was a part of me.
"You drive me fucking wild. Do you know that?" He stared down at me and I melted, right there in the middle of Ward Z. I was Aaron's puddle to do with what he wanted. "I can't get you out of my head. It doesn't make sense." He moved closer, his sock-covered feet bumped against my boots. "It wasn't supposed to be this way. Violet. My one letter away. I'm not supposed to want you like this." His fingertips pressed harder with each tap against my cheek. His other hand twirled my hair. His breath fanned out across my face, warm and minty. Purgatory stood out starkly on his forehead. "I wasn't supposed to ever want anyone – not again." His words were a whisper between us.
"Aaron—" That's when I felt it. The pain. It radiated from my scalp as Aaron yanked on the hair he'd wrapped around his wrist.
"It's wrong, Violet." He jerked down so hard, my neck arched to the side, blaring pain. He jerked me toward him as he moved, dragging me, forcing me on the bed.
"Aaron, wait, ple—"
"Shut up!" he shouted over me. I laid awkwardly on my side with my neck arched, his fist still wrapped firmly around it, my scalp screamed out in pain. "You don't get to talk." He shook his head back and forth quickly. "No more. Not from you. Violet, my one letter – No!" he shouted and let go of me, backing up multiple steps. His gaze flickered all over me, the bed, around the room. He ran a shaking hand through his hair. "You're not mine." He shook his head some more. "You're not." But there was something tortured in his gaze.
"Aaron." I took a deep breath and slowly sat up. Fear had won out inside me. How quickly the situation had changed in just a matter of moments. It became crystal clear to me that I had made the biggest mistake of all. Richard had been right. What was I doing going to see a patient in the middle of the night? I had become careless. I was in a room alone with a patient in Ward Z without his chains activated. A violent merciless, mentally unstable criminal stood before me. It didn't matter how attractive or interesting he could be, he was here for a reason – so quickly I was able to forget that.
I inched my hand down toward my pocket where the remote sat, the one that could activate the chains.
"No, don't you do that. Don't look at me like that. Like I'm some sort of a mistake. Like you were wrong to come here." He paced back and forth, his long legs eating up the space in the room. My iPod laid discarded, forgotten on the white tile floor, the fall didn't stop the song, and 'My December' continued to play. Aaron's mantra, a musical bubble around us. "You don't get to do that!" He yelled the words at the top of his lungs, so loud they drowned out the music. "You don't get to regret me. That's not what you get to do. You don't get to. You don't get to. You don't get to!" He shook his head. "Why are you like this?" He stopped pacing and stared at me.
I swallowed, inching my hand lower still. "Like what, Aaron?"
"Like—" he gestured at me "—this, fucking arrrggh!" He moved toward me, grabbing stack of books piled next to his bed and threw them against the wall behind me.
My hand had almost reached its destination when he lunged at me. Just inches away when Aaron's hard, sinewy body landed on top of mine and pressed me back against his thin mattress. The back of my head hit the cold, hard wall. Stars flashed in front of my eyes just as Aaron's lips came down on mine. The warm, wetness of his mouth surprised me more than the pain of my head. I had expected pain – for him to take the remote from my pocket – for him to do anything except kiss me. But he did. He kissed me. Our mouths melded together as if they had done so many times. As if they were supposed to be together.
I had expected only rough, destructive interludes with Aaron, but this proved me wrong. In spite of all the aggression he had displayed moments before, his lips were kind, gentle against mine, perhaps a little desperate, but pliant against my own. I'd never been kissed like this – like I was some sort of fragile flower, one that needed to be caged, protected, and yet taught some sort of lesson all at once.
Scorching heat spread across my body. I didn't know how he did it, or what it was about him that could change my emotions so quickly, sending them flipping and flopping through my body like a tornado, but he had made an art of it. His lean body caged mine awkwardly, half against the wall, half against the mattress a book wedged in between. The uncomfortable twist of my back made my bones screech out in pain, yet, in spite of that, I clung to him. The slow creep of my hand down toward the remote that would yank Aaron away from me and chain him across the room had ceased. One hand buried in his hair, the fingertips brushing hard against the scar along his temple and above his ear. The other ran up and down his stomach, the skin there jumped in reaction, as if it was thrilled with my touch.
The thin sweater I wore seemed suddenly feverishly hot, like some sort of parka and I desperately wanted it off. I wanted to be skin to skin with the hulking man who imprisoned me against his bed.
"I'm going to be inside you, Violet. Over and over and over until there's nothing left of either of us. Until your skin bleeds and you're nothing with me or without me. Until you're everything." His words were a thick rumble against my lips, nearly sending me over the edge.
This was what I wanted. What I'd needed for a long time. His touch. His body. All around me, all over me. It was wrong, but I was beyond caring, beyond doing the right thing. How could something that felt so right, be wrong? It couldn't be. This was where I belonged – with Aaron, in his bed, with the words in his skin, pressed against me.
"Aaron," I moaned his name against his mouth. He kissed me harder; he seemed to devour me, his hands fumbling with my shirt.
"Violet." My name sounded broken on his lips. Not a moan or plea, not the deep rumble from moments before. It was something else. Something that sent fear daggering its way through me, down to the deepest places inside me. I felt it then, his hand. He had found the remote. Before I could stop him he jerked it out of my pocket, breaking our kiss. I didn't have time to panic, to stop him.
He jumped off me, the remote in hand. A look of acceptance covered his face, there was something bitter about it. "You're not mine."
"Aaron." I held my hands up. "Wait. Let's talk about this."
"There's nothing to say Violet." He shook his head hard. "This is wrong."
Something inside me wanted to laugh, to fall over on Aaron's twin mattress and giggle until I cried. Oh, the irony. I was the doctor, the one who should have been ethical, thoughtful, careful, of breaking through the forbidden doctor-patient barrier, and yet here he was claiming this was wrong. Not me.
"It doesn't feel wrong," I whispered.
Something in his gaze wavered, though instead of giving in, he looked broken, utterly shattered, as if I had just given him the most tragic news he'd ever heard.
He pushed a button. His body twisted and contracted in pain as fifty thousand volts of electricity pumped into his bracelets. A fail-safe taser on the remote. I'd forgotten about it.
"Aaron!" He fell on the floor immobilized. I scrambled over and yanked the remote out of his hand. "What the hell? Why—"
"Leave." His voice barely held above a whisper. "Now."
"But—" I could feel it then. The embarrassment. It shouldn't have reared such an ugly head, but it did. Aaron Whitman could have had sex with me right there on his twin-sized mattress. I would have let him. He could have used me, could have forced me to take him out of this place. He could have done so many things. Yet, Aaron chose to shock himself into a stupor. He chose that over me.
The remote and my iPod hung loose in my hands as I left Aaron's room and made my way out of Ward Z. My back twinged, remembering the pain from just minutes before, but it was my ego and feelings, bruised and smashed up by Aaron Whitman, that hurt the most.