The Contradiction of Solitude (27 page)

Scratching and clawing. Breathy, aching silence punctuated by frantic movements.

I grabbed the doorknob and froze, scared to go inside. Because when I did, everything would change. There would be no going back.

Scratch. Scratch. Groan.

The sounds were icepicks to my eardrums.

The blackness.

The emptiness.

I couldn’t remember.

I couldn’t forget.

I watched Elian get out of his car and for the briefest of moments I smiled. True and genuine. My heart wanted to dance right out of my chest and into his arms.

Remember.

I can’t forget.

My bloodied fingers, curled into fists, and smashed through the window. Glass splintering. Raining on my feet. Pain. Agony. Relief.

And all I saw was the blood.

Always the blood.

Elian looked up at the noise. The shattering glass echoing in the air.

I was a little girl lost. And he was desperately searching for me. He didn’t realize that he should be terrified of finding what he was looking for.

Or did he?

I was beginning to think that Elian saw more than I wanted him to.

That he
knew more.

My door opened and slammed shut. “Layna!”

Then he was there, beside me, taking my injured hand in his.

“What did you do?” he demanded. So stern. So worried.

Sticky, warm, drying on my skin. I pulled my hand away and held it against my chest. The blood smearing on my shirt, dripping on the floor.

“Let me look. You may need to go the hospital,” Elian exclaimed, taking my hand again. I let him this time.

He pulled me into the kitchen and turned on the lights. I squinted and blinked, wishing I could shield my eyes. The faucet ran with cold water and he washed the blood away.

“There aren’t any cuts on your wrists or arms. You’re lucky, Layna. You could have done some serious damage!”

I watched as he patted me dry and examined my wounds. “Some of these are pretty deep. You might need stitches.”

“No.”

“Layna—”

“No,” I said more firmly.

My hand stilled on the doorknob. I could hear him inside. His voice low. Rumbling through the walls.

He was inside. I wanted to know what he was doing. Who he was talking to.

Scratching. Terrified.

I shouldn’t go in.

I had to.

“Layna, please, let me take you to the hospital.” He wrapped my hand in a towel. The white already turning red.

“No.”

Elian sighed. He looked so tired. Like he hadn’t slept in months. He reeked of cigarettes and exhaustion.

Had I done that to him?

I smiled as he wrapped the towel tighter.

“Do you have bandages at least?”

“In the bathroom. Bottom shelf of the vanity.”

He was gone. Off to get the things he needed to take care of me.

He came back with a box of Band-Aids and antiseptic cream. His shirt stained with the blood of my deception.

I smiled wider.

I watched him as he tended to my cuts. When he was finished, he tossed the towel into the sink and washed his hands. Ridding himself of all traces of me on his skin.

“Why did you do that?” he asked.

“Why did I break the window?” I needed clarification. There were so many different answers to that particular question.

“Yeah.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

His jaw tensed as he looked at me. “You hurt yourself.”

I nodded.

“I don’t understand you.” He was so bewildered.

I wanted to touch him. To absorb him through my fingertips.

“I don’t understand
myself.”
It was almost a shriek.

Scratching. Groaning. What was that noise?

“Why are you here?”

Elian rubbed at his temple. His hair was too long. It hung in his face. I couldn’t see his dancing green eyes.

“I think I know why you didn’t tell me about your father.”

I waited. I wouldn’t offer anything.

I waited.

“It can’t be easy having
that
follow you around your entire life.”

I didn’t nod. I didn’t deny. I did nothing.

I waited.

“I freaked out. I know that. Maybe that wasn’t fair to you.”

Not fair to me.

He asked me to wait in the car. Why couldn’t I do as he asked? I always listened. I was his good girl. He loved me best.

He promised he’d find me a star.

Where was it?

I wanted my star.

“I just don’t understand why you have all of…those reminders. Why would you keep anything that had to do with such an awful person?” Elian rubbed his temple harder. His voice shook. He was struggling.

“Why do you keep that? It’s…it’s morbid, Layna.”

“Do you think I’m like him?” I asked. Quiet. Whispered. Barely heard.

Elian stopped rubbing his temple and stared at me. And I could see his eyes. Finally.

“I don’t know. I just don’t know what to think. This is a lot, Layna. Do you know what he did to Amelia—?”

I gently laid my hand over his mouth, pressing down lightly with my fingers.

“If the words hurt. Don’t say them. Don’t give them that power, Elian.”

“What does all that mean? The articles? Why do you keep them? Why in the hell would you want to? Make me understand, Layna.
Please.”
He was so, so broken.

So, so sad.

How could I explain to him
why
? How could I split myself open and let him see the ugly, ugly parts of me?

The parts that were slowly eating me alive?

“Please, Layna,” he begged. He pleaded. He was asking for things I wasn’t sure I could ever, ever give him.

“He’s my father, Elian,” I said, as though that would explain anything. Everything.

Elian shook his head, hatred deep and raw flared to life in his dancing green eyes. Hate. Hate.

Loathing.

I shivered. Intense and overwhelming.

I felt it.

I squeezed my injured hand. I felt the blood pumping, oozing heat coating my palm.

“He’s a monster, Layna. He’s not a father. He’s the fucking devil!” he spat out. Revulsion, disgust, falling to the floor. We left them there. With the dirt and dust and other things to throw away.

“He’s my father, Elian,” I repeated, a bit more emphatically. Understand. Don’t make me say it.

Elian gripped his head in his hands and looked as though he were going to be sick. I was making him sick. My father, who he was, what he had done, was making him sick.

I felt
him
so strongly in that moment.

My father.

He was there in the empty beating of my ravaged heart.

Thump. Thump.

Daddy.

Stories and stars and rides to nowhere. Things I couldn’t stand to remember and things I would never let myself forget.

Daddy.

I shivered again.

“Blood is thicker than all things. It’s syrup and strings and tattoos and nightmares. Elian, he’s all I have. All I’ve
ever
had. Don’t you get that?” I asked, becoming frustrated. Understand. Don’t make me say it.

“That’s bullshit, Layna. Are you saying you don’t blame him—?”

“I blame him, Elian. I blame him for all of it! All. Of. It! He is a horrible, horrible person. He did horrible, horrible things. I know that!” My voice rose. I couldn’t control it. I was being driven to the brink. I wasn’t ready.

I wanted him to know.

But I didn’t want him to see.

Some things were unavoidable. And even as I fought to hold on to the secrets, I wanted him to have some of my truth.

Incontrollable. Inconsolable.

“I feel it, in here,” I patted my chest. Just over my thumping, thumping heart.

“The monster. My father. It’s all here…” my voice drifted off, landing somewhere out
there.
In the dark. Where it was safe.

Not safe enough.

“What are you saying?” Elian asked, bones broken, hushed silence.

I looked at him. Stared hard. Deep inside. I wanted to reach in and pull out his guts and let them drip between my fingers. To keep it always. For me.
Mine.

“I’m his daughter. He’s my father. We are one and the same. The compulsions—the need to…hurt—it’s there. I’m not sure how to fight it.
If
I want to fight it.”

I felt panicked. I couldn’t breathe. The room was closing in around me.

The pounding of my heart calmed me.

It devastated me.

I was destroyed.

Elian deserved more than that.

Elian deserved exactly what I wanted to give him.

I was ripped in half. The devil and the girl. Both fighting, kicking and screaming, for supremacy.

Elian grabbed my hands and wrapped them in his, lifting them up to his mouth.

He kissed each knuckle. One. At. A. Time.

“Don’t say that. You’re nothing like that. You’re soft. You’re gentle. You’re sweet and light. You are nothing like that darkness.
Nothing
.”

I wanted to have his confidence. I wished I could look at the woman I had become and feel anything like hope.

Delusions. Fantasies. Madness.

He kissed my hands. Delirious. “Don’t let me drown, Layna. And I’ll keep you out of that dark, dark place. I promise. I won’t let you down. We owe each other the chance to have the best we can give. Just please don’t let me slide under the water. Don’t let me suffocate. I need the air. I need
you
.” His eyes beseeched. His lips moved over his words. A prayer. A demand.

“I
need
you.”

He needed me.

I
needed
him
.