Behind The Mask (Nurses Book 2) (7 page)

“Knight, can you hear me?” I hear whoever this voice is. It sounds like an angel, maybe this is the angel of death coming to take me to Hell. This place seems like my own personal hell already, so I have no idea where she would take me. Something is gripping my hand, feather light, then it’s gone. I thought the angel of death was supposed to hold your hand to the afterlife? That hand, that touch, it was so soothing for the 10 seconds it was touching me.

“Gage. Call me Gage.” Maybe if I say the words out loud then maybe this will all go away. I will go back to the rehab, and I will be ok. I will snap out of this. I will be in my room where I’m safe. These are just nightmares.

I squeeze my eyes shut really tight. I can feel the sweat coming out of my pores and running down my face. I can feel the presence of this girl, the one who keeps talking to me. But in the desert there were no girls. At least not one that would speak to an American soldier. They would be behind their burqas, and if you looked at them, they would look down. So, I know this still isn’t real. Thank fuck for that, because if I wake up and I’m still in that hell hole of a place or if I have to see the life drain out of one more man, I think I will go insane. Well, even more insane than I already am.

Nothing is working, nothing is snapping me out of this. Plus, I don’t hear that voice anymore. Maybe that was all in my mind, too. Mysterious women don't just show up to help guys like me out. They show up to fuck, but that is mainly when I’m in a bar and able to tell them what they want to hear. They don’t just talk to me out of the kindness of their hearts.

“Ok, Gage, do you know where you are?” My dick instantly goes to granite. It has been months since I have sunk myself into a warm, wet pussy that just hearing this voice again gets me on edge. I haven’t opened my eyes, but her voice has instantly turned me on. I squint one eye open just to see who the hell it is talking to me. It’s that pretty little nurse, Cori. I can’t help but open both of my eyes and see her on her knees. It pisses me the fuck off. Beauty like that doesn't belong on her knees like some dog unless she has a dick in her mouth. That pisses me off even more. Just to think of her on her knees for some other man has me seething.

The rest of what I say is a blur that I would rather not remember. I do know that I can’t keep my stupid mouth shut. I always have a way of putting my foot in my mouth in some way or another. Cori left me here though because I’m an asshole. But, thankfully, Allyn is the one who found me, cursing and scolding myself and helped me back into my chair. When Cori stormed off, I forgot that I was a legless man. I forgot that I couldn’t stand without help. But that is what I did, I stood and fell flat on my face. It’s karma’s cruel joke on me. I made a nasty remark to Cori that she didn’t deserve. Karma, that bitch, paid me back by not letting me remember that I don’t have a leg.

“Now, look, boy, we’ve all messed up with a woman some time or another. Stop beating yourself up and just get better, which is when you make a move. When you healed what’s on the inside, you can fix the mess you make on the outside.”

“Oh yeah, what makes you think I want to make a move?” I growl out, because apparently in the span of two hours, meeting this woman has made my desire shine through to everybody. But I want to hear what this old timer has to say.

“Son, a woman like that, all the men want. You can’t help but not, she has a personality that makes you want to be around her. But I will say this, she hasn’t been here but a few days and any man worth his salt can see that she is damaged. Wounded even. If you kept up with the news you would know why. But I can see you don’t, because you have no idea what I’m talking about. That girl was in the prison riot. The one on the other side of town. Plus, no man would forget he doesn’t have all his parts and try and stand if he didn’t want her.”

He must see the confusion on my face because he just sighs and wheels away. Mumbling something under his breath about ‘clueless young men these days’, and if I didn’t know any better I would have thought he was a girl with as much gossiping as that man does. But he does make me curious as to what prison riot and why she would be connected to it.

Not long after Gage had his flashback, I see Allyn go in the day room. Wonder what the hell is going on with that, they don’t strike me as besties, but a little time later I see Allyn wheel out, muttering to himself. Must not have been as friendly as I thought.

The work day flies by, and when I open my front door I let out a long sigh because sometimes it’s lonely not having someone happy to see me at the end of the day. Maybe I should get a dog or a cat. Rescue a good one from the shelter, maybe it will be a life saving a life. Damian would shit if I got a dog since he cuts my grass. The thought of him stepping in dog shit makes me giggle because I wonder how his cool and collected self would react.

Once housekeeping was done cleaning Gage’s hall, I thought maybe he would go back to his cave and leave well enough alone. But, nope, he I guess wanted to make amends with me. Every time I turned around he was trying to talk to me, and tell me jokes. A few times I would chuckle because I couldn’t help it. It helped the time fly by, and I found that secretly I enjoyed having him there. Plus, the eye candy was fantastic. He really is gorgeous. Having all of these people around has made me open up a little bit. I don’t tell them anything about me, but I do talk more than I have in months.

My house seems so empty, not that it was ever full of anything except partying. But now it just seems so lifeless. Almost like a recently deceased person was here and nobody has inhabited it again. I guess that is kind of true because I’m not the same as I once was. But instead of how everyone talks of a rebirth when they change, I just fade away.

Stripping off my scrubs and making my way to the shower, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I hate mirrors. I want them all gone but Damian refused when I asked him to take them out of my house. He said something about ‘one day it will all be better.’ Yeah, fat chance of that. Things won’t ever be the same. I will never be that carefree, fly by the seat of my pants girl again. But I’m realizing that it is ok, I don’t need to be the party girl. I’m good with fading away into the background. I’m good with being the unnoticeable one now.

I regard the scars on my face as an annoyance because people stare. They think that I did something wrong. It seems to be the mentality of how we live in the world. Blame the perpetrator for everything he did, but most importantly, blame the victim. The victim’s actions caused the perpetrator to assault her. The victim wanted it somehow. But believe me when I say I never asked for this. I never asked for the scars on my face or the scars on the inside. I never asked to be used as his chew toy and bear the weight of being
that girl from the prison
every day. The news has dubbed me ‘the survivor’ but I feel anything but. Nobody really survives being raped repeatedly. They just learn to cope with the real world afterward. They become a phoenix of sorts, rising up from the ashes of the person they used to be. It is completely the victim’s choice in how they deal with the new life and the hand that life has dealt them.

The steam of the shower blocks my face from the mirror, almost blocking me from going into an even darker place. Stepping into the streaming water, I just let it cascade down my back, trying to loosen up the worries of the day. Trying to erase the memories from my mind, almost as if I can make the memories go down the drain, never to return again. Thoughts of Gage enter my mind as I soap my hair up, and I’m startled by it. I haven’t had any interest in any guy since all of this happened. Not that I am interested in him, he is a crude man. But why do I keep thinking of him? More importantly, how am I going to get rid of this attraction? He is a mean, angry, rude person, but I also get that he is wounded, damaged, scarred just like me.

After my shower, I put on my scar cream, knowing that the effort is futile. It will be a lost cause because this deep of a scar will never go away. I will forever be the girl with the X carved on her face. Depressing thought.

Now goes my routine: eat dinner, flip through the TV, go to bed, have a nightmare, then go to work. It seems since everything, it never fails. Night after night, day after day, the routine never stops. A night never goes by without waking up drenched in sweat, ready to puke because I can smell his rancid breath on my face. I can hear his laughter in my mind, and I can feel the slice of his knife flaying my skin open. Every night, I swallow a scream while my mind replays the horrors of being raped multiple times by multiple inmates. My mind replays the video on a loop. Multiple times of being raped, beaten, cut, sliced, raped some more. It was hellish hours that still play out every night in my dreams.

Dinner goes down like a bland rock sitting in my stomach. Nothing more than a watered down TV dinner, something that has too much salt that will probably give me cankles. Not that anyone is going to see my cankles, but I still want to avoid them. But that can wait for another night, I’m too tired.

Lying in bed, I will my body into what will hopefully be a dreamless sleep, and my thoughts drift off to Gage. Green eyes seem to be watching me when I close my eyes. In my mind, I know this is a one-sided attraction, but it’s still an attraction. Which I guess is progress for me considering I haven’t found anything attractive since the riot. But there is a magnetism, a draw, a force that makes me want to be around him. Crazy because I only met him today, but my body feels as if he’s an old friend. Someone it has known for years, someone who is comfortable to the core to let them see every flaw.

For the first time since the riot, I’m contemplating getting out my battery operated boyfriend, just by thinking of this man. It has been so long that even here in this empty room a nervous energy takes over. What if it hurts? What if I can’t do it? Will I ever be able to be intimate again with not only this but with an actual person?

All of these questions hang in the air, and I decide that there is no better way to know if it will be bad than to try it. I feel self-conscious, feeling the bumps and scars along my stomach leading toward the little tract of hair I keep. Separating my folds, I circle my clit with my index finger. A shiver instantly goes down my spine to my toes and my thighs spasm. I dip my finger lower and am pleasantly surprised when I feel a wetness that I didn’t think would be there. Thinking of Gage, I almost immediately feel a surge of wetness and a warm feeling low in my belly, a need that hasn’t been there in so long. The feeling of wanting someone catches me off guard, and my breath hitches in my throat.

Cutting my vibrator on, the buzzing sound fills the air. It’s almost a comforting sound because it cuts through the silence with its rhythmic hum. Lubing up the tip with my juices, I center the tip at my opening and start to push in. A panic starts to take over me, and I start clenching around the intrusion. I take a deep breath because I realize that I’m not in pain, I just need to calm my body down. This isn’t a bad thing happening, I just need to remember that. After calming myself, I start to move the vibrator and to my surprise, it actually feels good. Feels like heaven actually, but as the time goes by, I feel my orgasm is just out of reach. Frustration starts to take over and sweat beads on my forehead from this exertion. My breathing comes out in short pants, sometimes cut by moans. I am so close, but I just can’t grab onto that toe curling feeling. 

In my mind’s eye, I’m imagining Gage laying me down and loving my body the way it should be. No scars, no wounds, no secrets, worshipping my body as if it’s a thing of beauty and not unsightly. This would be the dream that all women have. A man who worships a woman, cares and nurtures a woman, making her feel good from the inside out, making her skin glow in happiness. Of course, that is not Gage and that certainly isn’t me. But thinking of sharing such a tender emotion has me reaching my orgasm in a rush. One that hasn’t happened in months, and it makes me cry out. I cry out to the only thing that hears me, the walls. A wave of sadness blankets my body at the thought that the walls are the only thing here for me.

I clean myself up and finish going through the process of getting ready for bed. I notice though that while I may feel sad for wasting my big o on the walls, I feel happier. Lighter even, and for the first time in a long time, I sleep without dreams.