I’d been dreaming.
I’d touched her in my nightmares.
I’d raped—
“Shit, shit, SHIT!” I scooted backward until I collided with the wall of the library. I drew up my knees, complete with undone jeans still clinging to my thighs, and huddled into a ball, breathing hard, coated in sweat, my cock glistening from being inside her.
From being inside her against her will.
Against my will.
Against everything that’d been right and true between us.
No.
Christ, no.
I buried my face in my hands, my bones cracking as I began to shake. It was worse than the snowstorm when I’d been curled at the bottom of Levin’s bed. Worse than any ice or chill I’d ever endured.
This shaking wasn’t because of an outward discomfort but because my heart was shattering, my soul was splintering, my very fucking hope at being human was lost.
Gone.
Shot to pieces.
Just like that.
The sound of Gemma sitting upright and the rustle of clothing as she readjusted the mess I’d caused made me moan under my tattered breath.
I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t stop the pressure, the swelling mass of grief inside me.
It quadrupled in size, clogging up my lungs until I gasped for air. It punctured my heart until it beat a dying drum.
I couldn’t stand the agony. I couldn’t stomach what I’d done.
“I’m sorry,” I grunted between my fingers. “So, so fucking sorry.”
I couldn’t look up.
Couldn’t see her.
Couldn’t bear witness to what I’d done.
But with my eyes closed, that debilitating lust came back. The whispers of doing to them what’d been done to me hissed in my ears.
Take her.
Finish her.
Come in her.
My hips rocked up on their own accord, making me almost vomit all over the carpet.
God, when would this shit end?
When would I be sane again?
When could I trust what I saw and what I heard were real and not my rotten-riddled past? When would I be myself again? Be that kid who’d loved others more than himself? Who knew that violence against violence only equaled more pain? Who still believed he was worthy of something good?
I wanted good.
I wanted kind.
I wanted safe and sheltered, love and peace.
I wanted things I’d forgotten I could never have. Things that I’d forgotten the meaning of. Things I didn’t fucking deserve.
My eyes burned even as my cock still begged for a release.
I wanted to cry.
I wanted to come.
I wanted to rip apart my ribs and throw my fucking heart out the goddamn window.
I dug fingers into my eye sockets, doing my best to erase the images of sex and sadistic pleasure. I could barely breathe, I teetered on a panic attack, yet my cock continued to bob between my legs, continued to frustrate me with need, to ooze with cum that I would never spill.
And suddenly, it was all too much.
I couldn’t contain it.
My body wasn’t strong enough to bottle up such suffering. It was gnawing at me, hissing at me, ripping me into bloody pieces.
Soaring to my feet, I staggered sideways as vertigo threw me off balance. Kicking off the goddamn jeans, I spun to face the wall and drove my fist into the embossed wallpaper. “Fuck!”
I grunted as my knuckles bellowed.
“Fuck you!” I bellowed as I struck again and again. I hurled fist after fist, left and right, pummelling the only thing strong enough to embrace my rage, my agony, my misery. “Fuck all of you!”
Something cracked in my hands.
My arm gave up screaming at me to stop punching a wall with a broken bone. My entire body shut down, giving me the quietness I needed just to strike and strike and strike.
To smear the wall with my blood and do my best to stem the tears running down my cheeks.
I lost all sense of time.
I gave over every shred of myself, feeding every molecule into my fuckedupness.
I beat that wall until my hands were pulp and the wallpaper hung in tatters by the light switch.
And then...only then...
Only once I gagged on air and sweat dripped off my eyelashes did I spin to face her.
Only once I couldn’t remain standing did my arms fall to my sides and my chin raise, and I forced myself to look at her.
To look at how much I’d failed her.
Failed because I failed at everything. I’d hurt her because that was the only thing I remembered how to do. The only example I had to follow.
I was exhausted.
Done.
I had nothing left.
No evil whispers, no manic delusions, no awful reality.
I was swimming in misery.
I crashed to my knees as my eyes caught hers, and I grunted with so much fucking pain.
She sat primly on the floor, her cheeks glittering with tears, her hair full of static and crowning her like a halo.
She looked as if a bear had mauled her. As if she’d gone to war with her biggest enemy and only just survived. Her lips were swollen. Her shirt torn. Her legs red from rubbing on the carpet.