The Starkest Truth (A Breaking Insanity Novel Book 2) (24 page)

After stripping down to my bra and panties, I sat on the edge of the bathroom vanity. Pinching the razor blade between my fingers, I sliced through the flesh on my arms indiscriminately. Every patch of skin on my arms that was unscarred became scarred, repeatedly. The pinch and the stinging aftereffects only endured for a second, coercing the more horrid thoughts out of my head:
 

Go deeper, Nikki. Cut down to the bone.
 

No matter how many times I sliced my flesh, or harshened the pressure, I couldn’t feel the orgasmic feeling I once did. I fingered the bloody blade, watching the crimson red liquid cover my arm. Turning my forearm up, I traced a vertical line up the inside of my forearm lightly, intending to go deeper.

“Nik? Nikki! Stop.” Firm hands surrounded my arms, stopping me from my intended purpose

As I struggled to push Eric away, I further stained his bloodied shirt with mine. “No. No! Leave me alone. Get your hands off me.”

“Nikki, focus!” He touched my face tenderly, forcing me to look into his softened eyes.

I shut my eyes, frustrated with the tears that began to fall.

He took me into his arms, slipping me off the counter. As he rested his chin on the top of my head, his heavy sigh expanded his chest, pressing it against the side of my cheek.

“I don’t know what I did so wrong to make you treat me that way after… What do I have to do to make you stop pushing me away and punishing me? I feel like I’m not in your world anymore. Just an outsider wanting to get in—dying to get in. You’re making me feel the same way the world does—like I don’t belong anywhere. I belong with you, but… It doesn’t matter what you do or don’t do. I’m addicted to the way you hurt me—emotionally and physically.”
 

The sound of his hard, slow swallow served as the only answer he would give me.

The distance gaining between us became the equivalent to that of the Grand Canyon. I gently gripped his upper arms, trying to pull apart from him.
 

He firmed his hold on me, locking me against his form. “You’re being careless. What the fuck were you thinking? Did you forget the fragile state of your pregnancy? Did you forget about what I told you to do? Do you not give a shit about our baby at all?” His eyes fell upon my face with an emptiness that made me feel every single cut on my arms and legs all at once.
 

In the moments I spent in the bathroom, I’d completely forgotten about what was growing inside of me. With my neck suddenly weak, my head dropped.

Slowly letting me go, he reached down in the sink cabinet, and pulled out the first aid kit. I rested my head against the adjacent wall. Staring into space, I let him tend to my wounds. Tears constantly streamed down the balls of my cheeks.

“Why…Nikki?” he asked quietly after he finished bandaging up my arms.

When the question remained without an answer, he grabbed my chin, forcing me to return his gaze. “Of all the things to make me think—all the things to get me back to you—why did you think making me think you fucked Preston would do the job?”

My eyes widened in alert. Instead of defending myself by telling him the truth, I was stunned with the knowledge he was fully aware of how severely he had pushed me away. “So I am losing you?”

“That…didn’t come out the way I wanted it to.” His chest heaved as he took in a deep breath and let it slowly unfurl. Running his hands through his hair, he mucked up the perfectly molded style. “Fuck, Nikki. You haven’t lost me. There is some shit I don’t want you to be a part of. And it’s because I love you. Can’t you understand that?”

At the sound of the word love, my heart shattered. It sounded different from the first few times he’d professed his feelings for me. I couldn’t direct it as one thing or the other. I didn’t know if I believed him or not. Oftentimes, I felt like I was looking at him—looking at Ethan without provoking his appearance. Other times, it seemed like the line between the two men was beginning to blur, and I didn’t know which side was genuine anymore. Eric was the cold, hard exterior who could terrify with the emotionless way he dealt with things. Ethan was the vulnerable heart who could be the sweetest thing I’d ever known.

I shook my head with fragility. “You thought I was stuck on the logical. I’m the most illogical person on Earth.”

“Don’t you think you’re exaggerating just a little bit?” he asked, lifting his brow.

“Am I? I should’ve known…” Closing my eyes, I prepared to face the worst. “I was sleeping and I thought it was you. Preston…went down on me.” I eyed the clenching of his fist and the visible tension that took over his body. Unable to meet his gaze, I continued, “When I woke up and saw it was him, I…” Shaking my head, I stared intensely at the splattering of my blood on the floor.
 

An invisible trap closed in, stealing away my hold on the truth. I knew if I told him the complete truth, I would lose any and all glimpses of Ethan. The Eric who was cold and calculating would return, and he would make a mistake that could cost more than we could afford. He would kill Preston. With the connections Preston made known to me, he would take a vengeful piece of whatever was left of us. So I lied. “He held me down and masturbated on me.”

“I know you never fucked him,” he responded with an acidic edge.
 

My head snapped up to regard him. My mouth gaped at him in utter shock. “Did you know before you pinned me in the bathroom and said those things to me?”

With his eyes falling away from me, his bottom lip disappeared into his mouth.

“You always think the worst of me.”

He tilted my chin to look at him. “That’s very fucking false.”

“Whatever you thought, why would you think I could ever willingly sleep with Preston?”

“I never did,” he shot back with flippancy. “But I wonder why you didn’t say something the second you had a chance. Did you want me to think something happened? I think you did. It was a fucking game to you. I was just playing your game the way you wanted me to, Nik. Granted, it’s fucked up you wanted me to think you did. I had to punish you. You know why I know you didn’t fuck him? Why I know even if he had tried to force himself on you, you would’ve fought—you would’ve killed him if he tried? I meant to ruin you for anyone else, and I know I succeeded. There’s no way you could fuck any other man, let alone let him fuck you. It’s pointless. You’re a smart woman. I know you’re aware. I am and will always be the only man that fucks, sucks, licks, and owns your pussy.”

His words…angered me more than I could show. Instead of apologizing to me, he was content to make me feel worse. “Why can’t you just apologize for thinking the worst of me?” I asked, my voice wrought with anger.

He never gave me an answer.

“Did you kill him?”

His eyelashes darkened his eyes. “I was stopped.”

“Killing Preston isn’t going to solve anything. It might actually make things worse.”

“Don’t be so fucking naïve.” He touched my face lovingly, a stark contrast to the look in his eyes. “Believe me, he paid for going after you. If he comes within a few feet of you again, no one will stop me. I’ll kill him sooner than I planned. Maybe I’ll fuck you in front of him after I cut off his cock and serve it to him like it’s his last meal. Maybe I’ll fuck you first…maybe I won’t. The sequence of events won’t really matter, because in the end, trust me, Nik, you won’t be able to stop me.”

I pushed him away and made my way back to my bedroom. As I sank on the burned and gasoline scented bed, I curled into a ball. The medical tape on my arms and legs pulled and pinched my skin.
 

“What the fuck happened to the bed, Nik?”

“An accident,” I said quickly. “I’ll order a new one tomorrow.”

I felt the pressure of his body force the bed to bow. Grabbing my waist, he pressed his form forward, imprisoning me beneath him. “You want my attention? You got it. I’m going to eat your pussy and make you come so hard…so many times you won’t be able to feel your limbs anymore.”

I lifted my head up to regard him with coldness in my eyes. “Did the warmth of another woman’s pussy help you get over the fact that your stepbrother violated you? Probably didn’t, did it? You should stop using it as a device to cure what’s wrong with us and to make me feel better about what Preston did to me.” Resting my cheek fully on the mattress, I softly dismissed him. “Just leave me alone.”

Grasping my chin, he forced me to look into his eyes. As the tears streamed down my cheeks, he faltered. His eyes remained cold, piercing my exterior.

I covered my eyes, wishing he would stop looking at me, touching me, and would go away.
 

There was nothing worse than having the person you cared about doubt you—believing that you could do something so cruel—believing you wanted to be a whore, worse yet, believing that you were one. I’d never felt any lower. I was surer than ever about the one thing I was uncertain about.

Again, he attempted to roll me back underneath him.

“No,” I moaned. “Go away! You know what I want? I want you to leave me the fuck alone. You don’t help. You never do. You make things worse. You make me worse.” I snatched back from his attempt to touch me again. “Go away.”

He didn’t fight for me. He didn’t possess me, forcing me to forgive him as he hurt me and made me come, washing away what Preston did to me, until I fell into the emotional numbness like I secretly wanted him to. Alternatively, he lifted off the bed.
 

I pulled my head from my mattress, watching as he disappeared out the doorway and down the hall.
 

He didn’t understand, or either he didn’t want to. My mind and heart were trapped within his black hole. I just wanted him. I only needed him, not his blanketed cure for everything—the source of control that fell at a little over nine inches between his legs. I was saddened that he might never realize he didn’t need it to control me, when he had my heart.
 

When I heard the front door to the house latch, he took what little hope I had for us to make it past our mental, physical, and verbal disasters and return to some semblance of the way we should be—the way we were before mayhem uprooted both of our lives.

“THOSE PATIENTS AREN’T going to move themselves. We’ve got three red priorities, Eric.” Aimee tapped on the computer I was staring at, pulling me out of wherever the hell my mind went. Stuck between discharge notes and deciding where to start my rounds, my feet were planted to the floor, preventing me from tackling my job.

“Mrs. Jackson was moved to yellow and transferred to CCU,” I finally responded. “Second was moved to green and transferred to the children’s ward. Third a new arrival?”

“Heart attack…or mini-stroke is my guess,” she said with a shrug. “I’m waiting on a consult from the cardiologist and labs.”

I nodded without giving her direct attention. “He should’ve been transferred by now.”

“He said he’s waiting on someone.” She took a deep breath. “God, do I hate the difficult ones. Tell you what, I know Dr. Markesh handed you an acopia. I’ll take yours, if you take mine.”

Sighing, I rubbed the bridge of my nose. Hard to argue with that. The code acopia referred to hypochondriacs. “Bed?”

She slowly smiled. “Seventeen.”

“There’s my boy.” Vic, out of his normal uniform of Italian suits and into a hideous hospital gown, made me grin a little.
 

He threw his newspaper down and gave the nurse behind me a huge smile. “Hey there, pretty girl. Come to give my cock a sponge bath? Maybe you should use your mouth, eh?”

I glanced back at a shaken nurse—another whose name I couldn’t remember. “This guy can be an ass. Give us a few minutes.”

“Yes, Dr. Brenton,” she said with a nod.

I watched her leave, listening to her footsteps fade before I opened my mouth again. “Taking on more than you can chew?” I asked, eying his newspaper. “You need to make the move to this century. You can read those on these new fangled things called tablets and laptops.”

“I like the smell of the paper.” He folded up the newspaper and ran it underneath his nose. Taking deep whiffs, he began to smile like someone who took a hit of heroin. “Reminds me of a time when things were so much simpler. All this technology is doing us no good. There’s a reason cancer is spreading like it is.”