Chapter twenty-three:

 

 

“Here you go,” I say as I press the ice to her cheek. I wrapped the ice in the only dish towel I found in the kitchen.

Carrie winces and I say I’m sorry because I honestly don’t want to hurt her, but the bruise is getting worse and I need to do something to help.

“I can’t feel my arm,” she says, her voice still hoarse. “It hurts, Ethan. Can you help me?”

“Of course,” I say. “That’s what I’m trying to do now.” And I smile.

“I think I need to go to the hospital,” she says.

I ignore her comment and continue to press the ice to her cheek.

“Ethan, I need to go to the hospital. I think my arm’s broken.”

“It’s not,” I say.

“I really think it is.” Her eyes are pleading when I look at her. When our eyes connect. Her face is a mess. It makes me feel bad. I’m not bad, but I feel bad. “Please,” she says.

“No, I’ll untie your arms. We probably just need to get the circulation moving,” I say, feeling annoyed that she’s pressing the issue.

I can tell that her arm isn’t broken, so I know she’s just trying to trick me, though I don’t know why she’d want to do that. I don’t want to hurt her. I just want to keep her safe; she knows this. That’s all I ever wanted to do. Or at least she should know this.

I push her up to sitting and I try to untie her hands. The knots are very tight and I can’t get them undone.

“One minute,” I say, and I lean her against the sofa so that she’s sitting up. I walk to the doorway and I hesitate at leaving her. She’s acting strange and I don’t like it.

I realize that I don’t trust her.

She’s watching me watching her. Her eyes are like an owl’s—big like saucers, curious, wary, wide, and watchful. I swallow and leave the room. I click the door shut after me and I go back to the kitchen and I get the scissors from the drawer. I saw them earlier when I was tidying up. They’re big and clunky, like dressmaker’s scissors, not typical kitchen scissors.

I close the drawer and go back to the living room. Carrie is sitting where I left her, her head resting on the back of the sofa with her eyes closed, but she opens her eyes and looks up abruptly when I come back in.

Her eyes widen even further, if that were possible, when she sees the scissors in my hand.

“For the ropes,” I say, and I smile but she doesn’t smile back.

I want to tell her that she’s being really fucking unfair with me. I haven’t even gotten angry at her, not even once. I haven’t hurt her—all of her physical injuries are down to her own stupid actions, not mine. And I haven’t even told her how sad she made me when she vanished. Or all the things that I was accused of because she left. But she’s acting like I’m a dangerous criminal, like I’m in the wrong here.

And I’m not. She is.

I sit next to her on the sofa, our bodies so close together that I can feel the heat coming from her. I use the scissors to cut the ropes from her wrist. It takes a lot of time because they’re not very sharp and they’re big and clunky. But eventually her wrists are free.

She acts as if they’re not though, so I put the scissors down and I take her wrists in my hands and I rub the life back into them. Her arm is bruised and she winces when I touch it, but I don’t think it’s broken. I don’t think.

Her cheek looks really bad though, and the cut on her head probably needs cleaning out so it doesn’t get infected.

“Look what you’ve done to yourself,” I mutter.

I shouldn’t mutter—it’s rude to talk in whispers—but I can’t help it, and the words slip out before I can stop them.

“You did this, Ethan. You do know that, don’t you?” she says. And she looks like she might cry again.

I look up from her arms and wrists and I stare into her face. Her sweet, beautiful, tortured face. I take her chin in my hand, and I can feel the tremors of fear running through her.

I don’t like that.

I don’t like that she’s afraid of me.

I’m a good guy. I’m not bad. But she’s acting like I am.

“No, Carrie, you did this to yourself, my love.”

She pulls her chin free of my grip. “This is all your fault. But you can stop it all. You can untie me and go and we can forget this ever happened. I won’t tell anyone, you don’t have to worry about that.” Her voice shakes, yet she sounds strong and confident. That’s the Carrie I used to know. That’s how she always sounded.

Even when she was afraid, she was strong.

Even when she felt weak, she carried herself like she wasn’t.

Determined and unwavering. That’s how I would have described Carrie, my old Carrie. The Carrie that I loved. I haven’t seen much of her since I got here, but I see her now, and it makes my heart soar. I smile, and she takes that for a good thing and she forces a smile back, which makes my smile grow even wider. And this is better. This is going much better.

“It’s all got a bit out of hand, hasn’t it?” she says.

And she reaches up and touches my cheek and smiles. My hand falls from her face and touches her hand. And I want to kiss her right now. Her touch is so gentle and caring. I feel safe and loved and wanted here with her. And it’s all going to be all right. I just know it. I knew she’d come around. I fucking knew it!

I lean forward, holding her gaze, and now I’m the one who’s shaking. I’m the one who’s afraid. And it’s perfect. It really is. Because that’s what we should be afraid of, isn’t it? Love. Love is scary and wondrous. It’s imperfect and perfect all at the same time. And Carrie is love. And I love her. And she loves me. And she encompasses everything that love is about.

Our faces are close together and I press my lips to hers. And at first she hesitates, but I’m not mad because I get it. And it’s good that she’s a little afraid of our love. And I tell her that.

“It’s okay to be scared. I’m scared too. It’s been so long, it will be like our first time.” I lean across and kiss her again, and this time there is only a little resistance from her. “I’ll make you forget you ever fucked him, I promise. You don’t need to be ashamed.”

Our lips are touching.

My lips are hot against her cold.

Soft.

Gentle.

I groan against her mouth, and I think she groans too.

My tongue reaches out for her, wanting to move against hers. I want to taste her. To be with her in every way. I groan again, and this time I know that she does too.

She pulls back, and I’m breathless and I’m smiling and I’m excited and nervous, and it’s like our first time all over again. Her hand isn’t on my face anymore, it’s on my chest, holding me back as if she doesn’t trust herself. As if she can’t contain her longing for me.

“It’s okay,” I say. “It’s all going to be okay.”

“It is,” she says, and I smile, and God she’s perfect. Even with her face all fucked up, she’s perfect. Inside and outside and everything in between. And I can forgive the mess, and her whoring ways. I can forgive anything and everything when she looks at me like that.

Her arm reaches back and I see it too late.

The scissors are in her hand and she stabs them into me.

And thank God they’re the bluntest fucking scissors ever, I think as I move my hand to block the scissors from gutting me.

They slash into my hand, and blunt or not it hurts like hell. I cry out and she screams as she reaches back to stab me again. Or maybe she’s in shock by her own actions. I know I sure am. Either way, I’m quicker than her, even when I’m in pain, and I turn my hand into a fist and I smash my fist into the side of her face. The side that’s already black and bruised.

And that’s not going to come out in the wash, I think grimly.

She doesn’t cry out as she falls back against the sofa and her body goes slack, and I’m panting and gasping. I’m in pain and I’m in shock, and I’m angry and I’m furious and I have so much energy moving around my body that I don’t know what to do with it.

And my counselor-slash-therapist-slash-Mr. fucking Jeffrey was right all along.

Sometimes we do lose control when we don’t mean to. Sometimes we hurt the ones we love, even when we don’t want to. But sometimes, the ones we love the most hurt us the most, and we can’t control ourselves.

And though we might not remember doing it, that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.