go and cry until I have no more tears left.
“You’re not a monster,” he says.
“I stabbed him!” I yell through my own tears.
“You had no other choice,” he says. “Kill or be killed.”
I close my eyes and let the full depravity of my actions wash over me like the ocean water washes over the beach. This is what Eli meant when he told me I needed to face my own sin. The sole reason for me wishing I would be punished over and over again.
I didn’t know. I couldn’t remember.
But now that I can, the memory is eating me alive.
All I see is Chris and his blood-drenched chest, eyes wide open, begging me to help him. And I refused.
“Please … make it stop,” I beg, my fingers digging into Eli’s shoulders as images of Chris’s dead body flash into my mind.
I was drunk. Foolish. And so out of it that I must have stumbled out of my apartment and ran as hard as I could. Until I no longer had the will, no longer had the energy … and collapsed in the park. Where my brain locked itself out of the memories it needed to hold close … just to protect me. There’s no other explanation for me losing so much time, and I’m only now starting to remember glimpses of this frightening reality.
“I can’t take them away,” Eli says. “ I told you, it would be harder than anything you’d ever done. This was never going to be easy.”
“Why did I want this?” I mutter. “I would’ve been better off not knowing.”
“Because your soul knew it needed to release this. Your mind was drowning in pain,” he replies. “And now you’ve released it from the burden of keeping it a secret.”
He’s right, but I don’t want him to be right.
I sniff, trying to cope with the immense feelings overwhelming me. “It hurts. It hurts so much.”
“I know …” he whispers, and he tilts his head down and presses a soft kiss onto my forehead. “But I will be here every step of the way.”
“Why? Why didn’t you call the police if you knew? Why didn’t you have me arrested?” I ask.
He looks at me, and for the first time, it feels sincere. “Because this is what we do. We punish the sinners until they repent.”
I lean back and lick my lips. Even though I’m completely naked, I’ve never felt this warm and comforted before. As weird as it may seem, skin to skin with my chest against his is the only place I feel safe right now as though he is the only person on this earth who could understand what I’m going through.
“All this time, I thought you were lying. That you were keeping me here for your own dirty needs,” I say as I listen to his heartbeat, the sound keeping me in the here and now. “But you were just trying to make me see the truth.”
He lets out a long-drawn-out breath. “And now you know why.”
“How did you know what to do?” I ask, frowning.
His brows rise. “It isn’t sex. It’s what the brain does when it is in pleasure mode.” He taps his temple. “You shut off and allow yourself to leave all your presumptions, your self-consciousness, and your insecurities behind. And it allows me to apply certain … tricks to get you to see your own sin.”
I swallow hard. “The knife.”
He nods.
That same knife I used on Chris is now on the floor right beside this armchair. I almost tried to use it again, but I couldn’t. Not just because the memories flooded back inside … but because deep down, I couldn’t hurt the man who had brought them back.
The man who feels as though he was sent to judge me.
The man who I thought was my punisher.
But is he really?
Or is he my savior?
His thick chest muscles tense as he wraps his arms around me and gets up from the chair.
Enough? What is?
“What are you doing?” I ask, wishing we could just stay there for a moment so I could bask in his warmth and forget all my sins, if only for a moment.
“Shh,” he whispers.
The air he exudes is both powerful and peaceful at the same time. Like a man wishing to save me, and I can’t help but feel at awe at his commitment. At how he did all this to me just to show me what I had done. Just to make me remember.
And for some reason, I feel