Damage Me (Crystal Gulf Book 2) (11 page)

He’d been screaming, this man. As if someone was torturing him in his sleep. His screams had called to me. His fear met my fear. His sweat shone like mine. I could smell his terror from all the way over here. We couldn’t have possibly been dreaming about the same thing, but at that moment, when our eyes were locked and our surprise mixed with our horror, I knew our fears were intertwined, because I was screaming the same way.

After a few seconds, he cleared his throat and sat up, cringing as he rose. I spied a pair of crutches leaning against the couch and wondered if he was hurt. My body was stiff and my mouth tasted awful. My stomach rolled as pieces of last night came back to me.

How stupid could I have been?

“Don’t cry,” the man said. But, it was more like he ordered it. His rough timbre whipped out at me, causing my tears to burn. He rubbed a hand down his face and then ran it through his warm brown hair, causing its mess to intensify. “Please don’t cry.”

Zane’s smell clung to me. Cigarettes and vodka. I smelled like the horror I almost endured. My body shook. My legs barely carried me across the living room. Who was this guy? He was in Bach’s house, but that didn’t mean he was to be trusted. “Where is Bach?” My voice sounded so unlike me. It was airless, with no weight or body. I was hollow.

He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. When they opened, he met mine hesitantly. “He isn’t here. It’s just you and me. Is that all right?” he checked, watching me closely.

“Yes.” I hugged myself and cast my eyes around the room. I felt unlike myself. Before the party, I understood who I was. After it, I had a hard time remembering anything at all but the fear that had taken root in my guts. “Where is Bach if he isn’t here?” I returned my sights on him when he didn’t respond. His unwillingness to look at me made me feel … dirty. Dirty and suspicious. “I want Bach.”

“Bach had something to do. He’ll be back soon. My name is Dylan. I’m his roommate.”

Relief flooded me. “Aubrey’s dad?”

“Aubrey’s dad.” He looked relieved too.

“How soon will he be?” I was on the edge of breaking. I approached the cliff and teetered, looking over as if the fall would not break me. Behind me, there was Zane and his belt. If falling over the edge protected me, then I wanted to freefall into my pain. I could see it at the bottom of the cliff, this carnivorous black hole waiting to drag me down and change me. “I don’t want to change. I don’t want to be different. I was so afraid.” Tears burst through my eyes. “I want Bach!”

“Hillary,” Dylan moaned, as if I was hurting him. He struggled to his feet. I watched as he balanced with his crutches, gritted his teeth, and then began to come for me.

“Bach,” I blubbered senselessly.

“He’s not here. I’m going to have to be enough.” He balanced on his crutches, eyes helplessly roaming over my body like he was trying to figure out what to do. “What do I have to do to get you to stop crying?”

My lungs were too full and empty at the same time. My breaths were leaving me breathless. “Rewind time,” I pleaded, honestly begging this man to go back in time and change my mind.
No, Piper.
Two simple words would have saved me from the havoc ravaging my insides. “He hit me.” I gave up and fell over the edge, into the consuming fear I felt last night, fear, I dreaded, was permanent.

I ran at Dylan and threw my arms around his neck, clinging to his body harder than I had ever clung to anyone in my entire life. He stiffened, and one crutch fell, forcing him to balance on his right. I wasn’t protected enough. I was still exposed. So I crawled up his body and wrapped my legs around his waist, thinking that if I wrapped my body around him, Zane might not be able to get me again.

Finally, his arm came around me. He held my lower back and breathed into my shoulder. “I can’t rewind time. Trust me,” he said, his voice gruff. “If I could I would.” He fell back onto the arm of the couch and rested there, his breathing labored in my ear. After a few more minutes he released his hold on me and urged me away from his body. “Hillary,” he stressed when I clung to him. “I’m two seconds away from puking all over you. It hurts
so bad
.”

It was then I recalled many things. One, his crutches. Within my fear I went back to the few times I’d been here with Bach, Harley, Aubrey and Whitney, the mother of Dylan’s child. Dylan was away at war, and they were taking care of his child while he healed in the hospital. The second thing I recalled was the fact that I was wearing a skirt, and I was wrapped around a man like a glove. The last thing was the gruffness of his voice. He was in serious pain. I quickly unwrapped myself from around him and dropped to my feet, mortified but unable to stray far from him. I pressed my hip to his, watching the sweat drip down his face.

“Where are you hurt?” He didn’t look hurt. His shorts went to his knees. His shirt covered his chest. Although his pain could be hidden, like my own.

“Get my crutch.”

Under different circumstances his harsh order would have offended me. In this case, it was welcomed. He knew what to do. With a shaking hand, I retrieved his crutch. After all, I had just crawled up his body and sobbed into his ear. I wiped at my eyes, but more tears followed. My brain was scattered. What did I do? Did I go to the police? Did they already know? How did I get to Bach’s house? I couldn’t remember anything after … after …
Zane hit me
. The memory was foggy but clear enough for the terror to resurface. I stepped even closer to Dylan, so that both my thighs touched his left one.

I wanted to get as close as I could.

He looked at me once he regained his composure. “Sorry,” he said, taking a deep breath. “On my leg. Too much weight on my leg and it feels like it wants to explode. I didn’t want to tell you to get off …” He let it hang there.

“While I fell apart?” I mumbled, wanting him to hold me again. I felt exposed. I was out in the open. It was cold, and I was going to get hurt. In my gut, I knew the moment I was alone Zane would come back. I stepped even closer to him, reaching out to grab his arm.

His dark blue eyes regarded me carefully. “Any closer, Hillary, and you’re going to be on my lap.”

A blush, hot as fire, raced over me. I released him and stepped back. “I’m sorry.”

He pushed upright and shuffled away from me a few feet. Facing me, he addressed me from a safe distance. “You didn’t fall apart. You’re not going to do that. You’re not going to let some evil fucker take your light.”

Dylan and I had just met. I’ve never said a word to him before today. Never looked into his eyes. Never touched him or heard his voice. But at that moment, I understood what he was saying as if he were talking to my soul. My heart broke. It cracked, falling through my rib cage, displacing inside of my body until it was no longer whole. Because Dylan knew it. Dylan knew what Zane had done, and deep down so did I. I didn’t feel like me anymore. My skin felt different. My voice smaller. My eyes blurrier. It was a quiet shattering breaking my body. It was soundless. But inside it was deafening. My insides felt bruised, manhandled. My soul had been tampered with.

The world went on. The sun shone. The waves probably rolled in. The only person in the entire world who knew I was damaged was Dylan.

My legs gave out, and I fell, curling into a ball on the floor as my heart bled. When I closed my eyes, I felt him on top of me. I could smell him. See him. Hear him. The taste of beer was thick in my mouth. My face throbbed from his fist.

I. Could. Not. Breathe.

“Hillary.”

“I can’t get down on the ground. Hillary, stop.
Please,
” Dylan begged.

“Don’t cry. You’re breaking my damn heart, baby.”

“Hillary.”

I was lost in last night, stuck like a nightmare. It replayed in my head. My mistakes were magnified. Drinking a drink I left with a man I did not know. The wrong taste. The evil of him. Going upstairs with him. Letting him get me into a closed room. Drinking with him. Wearing this. I did this. Dressing up and playing with wolves.

“Hillary!” Dylan roared. “Shit. Get up. Stop crying. I don’t know what to do. I can’t get on the floor. If I do, I won’t be able to get back up. Damn it.”

I curled up tighter and sobbed, mad at myself at the same time I yearned for my safety. It was a crippling feeling to want to punish yourself at the same time you wanted to save yourself. I tried to pull my skirt down, tried to smell something that wasn’t Zane—I tried to just be me. But my skin was crawling.

Just when I felt like I would snap and break, there was an arm around me. Dylan placed his palm on my stomach and pulled me, so my back was against his chest. I fit perfectly within his body, tucked inside of his arms. His arms felt like shields. Zane couldn’t get through them.

He rested his head on mine, placing his mouth right over my ear. “You’re safe. You’re not there anymore. Tell yourself this. Do it,” he ordered.

I found my voice. “I’m safe.” I didn’t feel safe.

“You’re not there anymore. You’re in my house with me.”

“I’m not there anymore.” It felt like I was still on that bed and Zane was pressing into me. “I’m with you.”

“You still have your light. You were light, weren’t you, Hillary? You were good, huh, baby?”

I nodded, bawling into the pain like spitting into the wind. It was covering me in filth.

“You can’t let him take that from you.” He shook me when I sobbed. “You’re not going to let him take that from you. Promise me.”

“I promise,” I whispered, but it felt like it was already a lie.

Light could only take so much darkness. Too much and it got blown out, like a candle, leaving a smoke trail and the smell of burning things behind like a reminder you would never be bright again.

He held me tighter until my sobs turned into quiet tears. “Can we get off the floor?”

I rolled over and blinked my tears away, staring into his eyes. They were the darkest blue I’d ever seen. Almost cobalt, with darker flecks of blue around his pupil. They were stark against his pale face and warm brown hair. His chin was overrun with hair; it traced down his strong jawline and peppered his throat, as if he hadn’t shaved in a long time. “Yes.”

Reluctantly, I let him go and pushed to my feet. Without asking, I grabbed his arm to help him up, watching the way his teeth ground together and his leg shook to carry his weight. He groaned when he was standing, balancing on his left leg. “Crutches,” he snapped, wobbling.

I quickly ducked under his arm to support his weight, wrapping my arms around his waist. He leaned against me immediately. Our height difference and weight was undeniable. He was as tall as Bach, easily over six feet, and heavy. I barely came in at five feet four inches. The smell of body odor emanated from his arm pits, but I ignored it, preferring it over cigarettes and vodka. He balanced half his weight on his left leg and half on me. I stuck my foot out and snagged one of his crutches where they lay on the floor. After a little maneuvering, I managed to get it under his armpit. He rested on it while I got the other one.

“What do you need?” He could barely meet my eyes.

“I don’t know.” What I wanted wasn’t something he could give me, unless he let me wrap myself around him.

“Do you have a phone?”

I shook my head. “It’s at home.”

He licked his lips and thought, appearing helpless again as he stared at me. “Are you hungry?”

“No.”

“Do you want anything to drink?”

“No.”

“Do you want to change?”

I looked down at my clothes and bit back my tears. “Yes, please. A shower too?”

“Of course. There’s a bathroom in the hall. I’m sure Harley has clothes here you can wear in their room. I’ll be in here. If you need anything it’s yours, baby.”

My body temperature dropped at the prospect of being alone. I stared at him and then at the hall. It was such an open house. The kitchen and living room were connected, without a wall to block them.

“Go on,” he urged softly. “I’ll be out here the entire time.”

The hall was short, only a crawling distance from the bathroom and the two doors within it. The wooden floors were cold beneath my feet.
Where were my shoes?
I couldn’t remember exactly how I’d lost them, but it was there, in the back of my brain. I lost them while I fought off the monster.

“You won’t leave?” I checked.

He looked down at his leg. “Where am I going to go?”

I thought about it and then nodded.

While he struggled over to the couch, I left him. My body felt weightless, like I would drift off at any minute, but at the same time it felt weighed down, as if I were trudging through mud. The two opposing sides, of being empty and stuck, made me unstable. I found Bach’s room and then his dresser. Finding one full of his underwear, I tried the one beside it. Harley’s panties, these sexy lacey yellow things, littered the inside. I slammed that one shut too until I found a safe option. I picked a pair of jean shorts and a tank top. Once in the bathroom, I set Harley’s clothes on the counter and turned on the light.

My reflection stared back at me. My hair was a mess. It was all over the place. My cheeks and eyes were red, stained from crying. My mouth was open in an “O,” as if in perpetual shock. But all of that paled to the dark purple bruise over my right eye. The sight of it sent me over the edge. I grabbed hold of the counter as a tremble rocked my body. For some reason, the sight of my bruises filled my brain with my mother’s image. How could I tell her? I fell to the floor and curled up. She would annihilate me. She would imprison me. She would go to jail because I knew in my heart she’d kill Zane. She’d get the gun my grandfather gave her she kept in her safe and end his life. I’d lose her. That sent a cold numbness over me. There was no way I could tell her what happened.

“Hillary!” Dylan shouted through the walls. “Shower! Now!”

His order forced me into action. I peeled my clothes off and then shoved them into the trashcan. I’d burn them if I could. Crawling naked under the hot water, I let it mask my tears. I washed my body four times. Once to get the smell off. Two to keep it off. Thrice to make sure it was gone. And the last time to make sure I smelled like Harley’s orange and honey body wash.