23. 23

23

Ember

I ached everywhere; I was sore inside and out, and I had no idea if it would have been that way if the circumstances had been different. Why was I crying so hard?

I’d asked him to, begged him even. I’d wanted this done, and my virginity gone. Gone by my choice, with the man I wanted it to be, so why did I feel like my heart had just been broken?

“Em,” Ethan whispered, wrapping a blanket around me, and trying to push my hair back to look at my face.

“Leave me alone,” I hissed, burying my face in the blanket and hiding from him. It was childish, and cruel, but I had to reconcile things in my own mind, before I could talk about this.

He hadn’t done anything I hadn’t wanted, or asked him to do, but somehow it still felt like a betrayal, like he’d taken it against my will. How was that possible? Was I just so fucked up that I couldn’t seem to tell the difference between what I wanted, and what I felt I’d been pushed into?

“Em, please. Talk to me. Yell at me. Hit me. Just don’t push me away and lay here alone. It isn’t what you need right now.” Ethan stroked my hair, and I pulled away from him.

“Stop touching me. Just get away from me!” I screamed, going straight into defensive mode, into the ‘I don’t want to be touched’ mode. Into ‘the only way I can protect myself, is to curl inward and hide from the world’. I backed away from him, falling into a crouch on the opposite side of the bed, dragging the covers with me.

Ethan dragged his hands down his face, and I could see his cheeks were wet again. I’d hurt him while I made him hurt me, and yet I couldn’t find it in me to try and comfort him right now, because I was too conflicted and messed up. I needed time to think.

“Please, just let me be alone for a bit, Ethan. I need…” I stared at my trembling hands. “I need some time, that’s all. You… you only did what I asked you to do.”

“DID I?” He practically roared at me. “Then how come I feel like a fucking monster?” He charged out of the room, the door slamming so hard, it made me jump, and then I curled up again on the floor, in the corner of the room, letting the sorrow and shock wash over me, because I had to clear my own head before I could help him clear his.

I heard a further slam from downstairs, the front door? Did he leave? Did he leave me alone? I know I literally just asked for peace, and alone time, but did he leave me here? Was he coming back? What if he did something stupid, because I’d pushed him past a limit of his own, while I forced him to crash through my own boundaries?

He was right though, and it hit me just after that second door slammed, that being alone was absolutely not helping me. I needed to know that someone was there, especially if that someone was him, although oddly I also kinda yearned for my mum right now. She’d know what to say, how to help. She’d understand why I pushed things that far, that I needed to reclaim myself, and stop letting fear rule me.

Mums always know this stuff. Always know what to say, and when a hug is needed. Before my senior school hell, I always turned to her for advice, spent as much time with her as possible really, because she was my best friend. Right now, I needed that friend. Right now, if I hadn’t smashed my phone, I’d be calling her, crying over the phone, and begging her to say the things that would help me get my head straight again.

There was something else that used to help, after my life went to hell, and I couldn’t be close to anyone again. Something that dulled the pain, and lifted me out of the craziness of my mind.

I’d been sober now for more than a year this time, but a drink of something would help. It’d help me find clarity, or alternatively, it’d numb everything, so I could just remember how to breathe and relax. I knew I shouldn’t. Falling off the wagon would only put me back in that cycle of addiction, and desperately needing the next drink, and the next, until I was permanently intoxicated, and yet free.

I struggled to stand up, reminding myself of that burn between my legs, and I dragged the blanket up and away from there, to see if there was blood, because something had been trickling down my leg, something liquid. There was a pinkish fluid, and it had dripped down my legs in a few places, partially drying here and there. It made me feel dirty and sticky and disgusting.

My desperation for a drink was suddenly overridden by the need to get clean, so I headed for the bathroom, dropping the bedding in the doorway before I switched on the water and stepped into the cubicle. I grabbed the bottle of body-wash left there by the actual occupants, and started scrubbing my skin, trying to cleanse myself of the mess he’d left on me, and the mess of my mind, all at once.

Ethan

I COULDN'T FACE WHAT I’d done. Couldn’t face the fact that I’d forced that sweet, troubled girl into taking my cock, taking my cum, and I didn’t even give her pleasure in return. At least if she’d enjoyed it, I could try to reconcile it in my mind, because it’d be a reminder that she had in fact chosen it, and asked me to continue despite her despair.

What kind of asshole keeps fucking a girl when she’s sobbing, and trying to fight him off? What kind of monster abuses consent in that way? Maybe she was never emotionally capable of giving that consent in the first place. She’d been abused. She’d grown up in that insane house, with god only knows what kind of influences, and she’d been forced into things at such a vulnerable age.

I had to focus on what I could do to try and make things right. Starting with finding those fucking keys. I’d dragged on some clothes from my bag, and headed outside to try and retrace my steps. I roughly knew the point on the small dirt road where I’d taken the keys and thrown them, because while I wanted her to think all hope was gone, I wasn’t stupid enough to know we wouldn’t need them back at some point. I was just reckless enough to fucking throw them though, wasn’t I?

I climbed over the fence into the field belonging to some farmer, hoping it wasn’t inhabited by a fucking bull or something. Did I watch the keys arc in the darkness? Well, no, I couldn’t fucking see, but I knew roughly the direction or the angle, so I just had to do it like the police do, checking inch by inch, foot by foot, until I had to be upon them.

The torch I’d found in the kitchen was flashing back and forth, to try and pick up a glint of light rebounding from metal, but nothing was catching the light, and after about thirty or forty minutes of desperate searching, I had to accept the fact that I wasn’t fucking finding them before morning.

I retraced my steps to the small house, letting myself back inside, and that’s when I found Ember, curled up on the sofa, wearing someone’s damn robe, and with a tall glass of something she probably shouldn’t have. In fact, it was a mostly empty glass.

I stalked across the room and grabbed it, taking a sip of the last little bit of the clear liquid, praying it was water. It wasn’t, though. In addition to forcing myself on a troubled girl, and stealing her virginity, I’d also pushed a fucking alcoholic back off the wagon. FUCK .

I threw the glass across the room, ignoring the sound of glass shattering, as I grabbed her arms and dragged her up from the sofa, getting in her face, while she grinned belligerently back at me. Fuck me. Why didn’t I realise she’d look for some kind of fucking escape from what I did?

“How much have you had?” Ember shrugged, looking like she didn’t give a fuck, even though her face was still pink, and her eyes puffy from crying. Her hair was wet, and she smelled fresh and clean, because of course she’d run to the bathroom to wash away my touch. My inner bastard was already wanting to put my touch back all over her, but I fought back the urge, shaking her lightly in my grip.

“What the fuck have you done!” She giggled, her lips trembling, finally opening her other hand, which I hadn’t even noticed was clenched and bleeding.

“It was that, or this,” she whispered, as I plucked a bloody razor blade from her palm. A razor blade . She’d been this close to something that could end her life, and for that one reason alone, I was glad she’d picked alcohol instead.

“Did you hurt yourself? Em, look at me. Did you fucking cut yourself?”

She giggled again, lifting her bleeding hand again, revealing several cuts on the inside of her fingers, and her palm.

“It stings, Ethan, but not as much as my pussy does. You forced your big man dick in me, and it still hurts.” Without my grip on her arms, she staggered back a step, almost falling over the small coffee table, and I barely caught her.

I pushed her back down to sit on the sofa and dropped down beside her, taking her cut hand in both of mine, carefully checking it over, while I cursed myself for causing all this damage to this fragile young girl.

Legally she wasn’t a kid anymore, but I sometimes wondered how much her abuse had stunted her mental and emotional development. Here was a prime example of why I should have kept pushing her away. Drunk, or halfway there at least, gripping a razor blade so tightly that she’d cut her hand, and she didn’t even seem to notice at the time.

I led her to the bathroom, finding some first aid supplies to clean the cuts, and patch them up with a few plasters wrapped around the fingers.

Em giggled softly, seeming to stagger on the spot as I finished up, and gently kissed her palm.

“I’m sorry, baby. I never wanted to hurt you like this. I should have refused, but I just wasn’t man enough.”

She shrugged, dragging me back toward the bedroom we’d mostly made a mess of, dropping down onto the bed, and seeming to fall asleep almost instantly.

With no other options, and unwilling to leave her alone in case she got sick, I retrieved the bedding from the hallway floor, and climbed onto the bed behind her, spooning myself around her, and covering us both up for the night.