Seeking Nirvana (23 page)

He was standing in the center of the
room. His hands nestled in his front pockets. “Excuse the humble abode. I wasn’t expecting company.”

I hu
ng my head, and shifted on one of the wooden slabs beneath my feet. I watched as it popped up and dipped back with the pressure of my shifting body. “I–I don’t even know why I’m here,” I spoke to floor. “I just––”

“I
know why you’re here, darlin’.”

Did he? By fuck he was a better man than I was because I sure as fuck didn’t know why I was automatically drawn to him while channeling such anger.
Surely I should want to be alone.

“You do? Mind telling me then?
Because, I cannot do this.” My entire being was shaking ruthlessly. My nails ravaged the back of my hand with uncontrolled restraint. The sooner the pain and heat started to ebb, the harder and faster I would grate, the quicker my breathing became, the more forceful my choice of instrument to harm would get. “I can’t take this anymore, Walker. I can’t…I can’t.”

I wanted nothing more than to scream at the top of my lungs, to smash something, or someone because now more than any other time in my life, I actually felt like a
fucking victim. And Kady Jenson may be a lot of things, but a victim isn’t one of them. I was consumed by this immense form of hate, of self-loathing, I don’t know, it’s hard to explain. All I was aware of was that form of incomprehensible duty and need, to rid myself of every negative thought in my mind, and turn it into something concrete, something to make it easier to deal with. But I had no idea how.

In the upper periphery of my vision, I noticed him approaching me slowly.
Stock-still, my sight throbbed as I focused on the flooring, when heavy black boots where placed in my line of vision. “You need help,” he said simply, while rough hands gently encompassed my own, drawing an end to my persistent grating.

I felt my agitation rise and steam all but came from my ears.
“Fuck you,” I snapped, pulling my hands away from his warm, gentle hold and shoving him hard in the chest. “Fuck you, you’re just like him. I am not”––I pushed at him again––“fucking crazy. I am not”––shoving wasn’t helping, he was too strong and my attempts to move him were futile, so I just lost it, and lashed out at the one person who I thought understood me, and began hitting ferociously at his chest. “I am not fucking crazy. I’m not delusional, God-fucking-dammit.” Before I could stop, I slapped him right across the face, his head whipping to the side with my attack.

My hand promptly rose to my mouth; I
was standing in shock-horror as he craned his head around to face me. A chasm of understanding looked back, and that made me feel even more like shit.

“Walker, I’m s––” I gasped
, tears streaming down my cheeks.

He stepped toward me, his jaw taut.
“Do you want me to help you, Kady?”

“How are you going to help me, Walker? I’m not going to the––
”

Eyebrows touching his hairline, he lifted his right hand, urging me to shut up.
“Shush, Kady. It’s okay. Remember I told you I would never judge?”

I nodded.

“Well, I’m not going to start now. You can trust me, Kady, you know that, it just takes a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Do you want
me
to help you, darlin’?”

Back
pressed against the door, it took all of my courage and all of my pride, to release two simple words. I needed it. I needed his help. I nodded my head, “Help me.”

I stared him in the eyes as
his hand came lightly crashing down on my body. The warmth of the jacket removed from me when he fisted at the collar and unpeeled it down my arms. I was covered in goose bumps and shaking incessantly. He tossed the jacket behind him and I heard it land with a crash onto the coffee table.

“Turn around, Kady.”
I knew he could sense my hesitancy, because his hands came to rest on my upper arms, he twisted me around to face the door.

My body would have usually screamed in delight at having his fingers
linger and glide across my flesh. But tonight, the only reaction he was provoking, was me cringing. I just hit him, I was angry. I didn’t deserve the level of tenderness he was freely giving up to me.

And I didn’t
want it. I wanted to be hated with the same degree that I was hating myself, at that point.

Gathering my
drenched tresses, he swept them over my right shoulder and leaned into my left ear. “Hands on the door,” he ordered, his breath warm, his brogue dark and husky. I did as instructed, allowing my head to fall forward against the barrier, also.

I gasped suddenly as h
is hand trailed over the skin of my upper back, before trailing down my spine. My shoulders juddering as sob after sob escaped me. “These are not tears of sadness, Kady,” he breathed in my ear, his fingertips continuing their chosen path down my back. “They are not tears of pain. They are not tears of fear. They are tears of anger, tears of rage. A rage you don’t know how to deal with, a rage you cannot escape from.”

Concentrating on his voice, I was vaguely aware of his hands position on both my hips, and my tight,
wet, satin dress rising up over my thighs, over my ass. I was exposed, but I didn’t care. Every muscle throughout my body was tensing with absolute, definitive ire, and I would have sold my soul to The Devil to make it end. I needed it to end.

“You’ll feel better in a moment, Kady. I promise.”

My back was left cold as he stepped aside. He fondled my naked behind, his rough, calloused hands scraping and grazing over my flesh before retracting. Before registering it, his palm connected hard and fast against my buttock, the snapping sound of the blow booming around the empty apartment. I tossed my head back with a whimper, eyes flared with shock.

What the fuck?

The bite of his hand remained, the heat of his impact absorbing into my flesh, making my nerves sing as he united with my flesh again and again and again. Tears pricked my eyes, as my backside prickled with each consistent strike he issued, the sound of the mighty blow intensifying the release I felt, along with the action itself.

With
each sharp sting that his assault left behind, I allowed myself to sink into, to become one with. The help at his hand was issuing precisely everything in which I needed, which I wanted. It turned all the raging emotions, the anger and the hate, the fear, into pain, into something tangible, something which I could channel, something which I could focus intently on, and overcome.

Repeating
his blows twice more, Walker had managed to transport me to the dark place in my psyche, the place where I could block out everything, the resentment, the frustration and chaos that I had been consumed by, and deal with only the pain and shock which my being distributed over me physically.

His thrashes
were my anchor, pulling my down, leveling out my conscious and reminding me that I am human, something I hadn’t felt for a while. Once he planted his final spank, he leaned down to my ear, his breathing ragged. “That is what you came for, Kady,” he whispered, his hand massaging the sore area. “You came here for a release, a release that only I can understand, and only I can give.”

And with his words, I realize
d in that moment, that the negativity which I felt a moment ago had dissipated. His assault left me feeling grounded. It left me feeling numb. It left me feeling free.

I was
serene.

Feeling wary, I twisted my body around and gingerly scoured my eyes up the length of his body. He
was standing feet shoulder-width apart, hands behind his back, while he stared at me with hard, bottomless voids. Head held high, his jaw tight, he sucked in a breath and I watched from my own personal bubble of serenity, how his chest expanded with his intake. The Walker I had come to know, the fun-loving, carefree, joyful Walker had vanished. In his place was a man defiant, imperious, a man who was made from stone, who remained firm, calm and collected while my wits were scattered, after attempting to rationalize exactly what the fuck had just happened.

“How do you feel now, Kady?”

How did I feel? I felt like a contra-fucking-diction that’s what I felt like. Blinking my eyes closed, I allowed my mental state to fall back into some lush, plush cushions and relax. The fogged up form of emotions had gone; the negativity had vanished, like it was beaten out of me with each despotic swipe he delivered. Now, I was tranquil, like each collision was my own personal sedation, my own personal heroin.

Nevertheless, my mind now had room to process new feelings, and at th
at point, confusion was taking the stand.

“You feel better now, don’t you?” he pressed again while I opened my
lids and gawked at him with glazed eyes.

“I–”

“We’re more alike than you think, Kady.” Hands remaining locked behind his back; he stalked towards me, his eyes inexhaustible. His gaining proximity had me lifting my head to maintain eye contact. Head dipped, he whispered in a husky intonation, “We’re cut from the same cloth, Kady.”

What? What the fuck does that mean? No. No, we are not cut from the same anything. I would never do what he just did to me, to anyone. I shook my head, the corners of my mouth tipping and twitching with tiny, disbelieving grins. “No, Walker. I am nothing like you. I wouldn’t do what you just did to me
, to anybody.”

I watched as his brow arched haughtily, “No?”
Arms unlocked, he pressed his hand firmly against the door next to my head, while the other dipped between my thighs.

“Walker, stop it,” I made a futile attempt to batter his wandering hand away, while sensitivity
spurted from the connection of his gentle fingertips over the blemishes of my ‘tales of an unremembered story’. “Stop, please.”

“Regardless of whether you like it or not, you must accept it, Kady.”

“No! I am not like you.”

My thighs were free of his wandering touch, the door was free of the
pressure he maintained against it as he pushed himself back two steps. “No?” he challenged again.

Adamant,
I watched as he hastily ripped his plaid shirt open, the poppers clicking as each one was pulled free. Stripping the material from his arms, he tossed it on the floor, before curving his arms over his head to grasp the neckline. His body folded, his muscles stirred as he drew the white tank top over his head and let it meet the shirt on the wooden slab flooring.

As he reared, my mou
th was agape. My first instincts were right; he was built like an Irish God. With broad shoulders, defined lines and that V, which turns smart women into a puddle of mush. His six-pack was tensing with each uneven, ragged breath he drew in and exhaled. What I didn’t expect to see, was brutal, arcane scars covering his entire tanned torso. Deep, silver stripes and wild, round blemishes stared back at me.

Throughout the mass of self-mutilation that I was studying, the one that demanded attention was
the pale, distorted, withered flesh covering half of his left pectoral and ribcage. It shone slightly. Fuck, was that some sort of skin graft?

“
Desires remain, even if the memory doesn’t. Don’t tell me that we’re not alike, Kady.”

Blindly seeking the doorknob behind me, I pulled the door open, stagge
red back into the hall and ran down the stairs, stopping myself from taking them two at a time. By the time I reached the second floor, I could hear him calling my name, his tone desperate and fraught. Yet, I didn’t allow him to stop me. I kept running. I had to keep running.

Stepping out into the cool nightly breeze, I folded my arms over my chest, and found myself
drifting through the night for the second time in as many hours.

I wasn’t like him. I couldn’t
be. Those scars were…they…hideous was to too much of an ugly word to use, they weren’t hideous. They screamed pain. They screamed anger. They screamed self-loathing. Now it all made sense. No wonder he always had his torso covered. Did he feel ashamed by them? Or was he ashamed that he had done it to himself?

The air was left fresh after the downpour of the
evening. I gazed up and lost myself in the vastness of night, the sky clear, the glittering stars looking down upon me as I silently prayed for a form of guidance, a form of understanding. I didn’t feel the breeze. The night had withdrawn any form of feeling from me, and I suppose I was beyond gratified that one man could take away the pain and anger that the other inflicted.

T
he verities the he succeeded in doing just that by issuing pain on me himself, was a challenging concept to grasp.

My mind rolled like a marble in a maze. And each time
, that damned marble would hit a dead-end.

Why was this so hard? When did my life become so twisted, so problematic and rival that of a damn soap opera? If Walker was right, and his form of release is what I craved, then surely Liam’s strike earlier wouldn’t have been so much of a shock.

God, attempting to differentiate between that and a form of deliverance was beyond challenging. Is it even considered possible to draw a line between abuse and what Walker had just done to me?