His eyes locked with hers. “The one who had the camera.”
Her body shivered with the mixed messages her brain was sending to it, oscillating between arousal and grief and rage and pain and arousal again as his words slowly penetrated her mind.
“You saw it,” she whispered, horrified, humiliated.
He stepped between her legs, his hand tilting her jaw and his thumb tracing her mouth in a move she recognized instinctively as his.
“Every. Single. Second.” His thumb pillowed her lower lip, his eyes intense on hers, his body pressed against hers, everything about him fierce and powerful and so dark she wanted it all for herself. “You didn’t go through any of that alone.”
Somehow, knowing he had seen it, that he had experienced it with her made her feel a little less lost. Knowing he had seen her be used and discarded, and knowing he still wanted her, it made something in her chest go tight in a way her heart bloomed. He had seen her at her worst, witnessed as they broke her, found her in the jaws of death, and somehow, he’d still found her worth saving. Even after all of it, he had brought her to his house and given her a safe space to heal.
Something in her fragmented heart softened.
They looked at each other for a long, quiet moment.
"I'm yours." It was sinking in, truly sinking in, how much his she was. A man didn't witness what he did everyday for her for no reason. He might not feel emotions as he said, but there was something solid, tangible, unbreakable between them, and they both knew it.
His nose brushed hers again. "All mine."
She could pinpoint the moment the course of her life changed six years ago. And sitting there on the countertop, six years later with the same man, with little slivers of secrets and silence, she knew the course of her life was changing again.
Chapter fifteenLyla
The next few days passed in adapting to her new life beyond her bedroom.
Waking up to the view of the beautiful mountains on one side and the sea on the other thrilled her every day. As did finding a fresh red rose and little notes on her bedside table. Notes that elicited different reactions in her.
The ‘I got the piercings for you’ made her breathless.
The ‘Did you know you snore?’ made her frown.
The ‘I liked the dress you wore yesterday’ made her cheeks warm.
And so on and so forth.
Little notes, every single day.
She enjoyed the long showers she took, avoiding the bath mainly because of the memories she associated with being in a tub. She started using her tablet for everything. From searching ‘how long should I boil pasta’ to ‘is it normal for rape victims want to have sex again’ to ‘best shows to binge’？ And the answers she didn't find, she asked Dr. Manson, who told her that yes, it was completely okay for survivors to want intimacy again.
Searches got varied, and life got a new routine. She tried different things and learned she had no talent for painting, didn’t enjoy being online for more than a few minutes, and didn’t like making jewelry. What she did like was cooking—or rather learning and experimenting—and reading, though she was a slow reader. And it wasn’t a physical book from the library she was enjoying reading either, but one she’d found online and had Bessie help her buy. It had showed up on her search when she’d looked for ‘raped heroine romance’。 She’d been skeptical that there wouldn’t be many but surprisingly, and tragically, there were. It seemed being forced was more common than she’d thought, even in the outside world.
The book she was reading dealt with a normal woman who had been raped at a party, her struggles and how she fell in love again with a wonderful man. Parts of it, Lyla could relate to. Those parts—feeling dirty, hating her body, being depressed—those made her feel seen, acknowledged, like someone had reached inside her and told her it was okay to feel the way she did. But other parts—mainly where the heroine was falling in love with a gentle, caring man who told her how much he loved her and how beautiful she was every other page—she couldn’t relate to.
She put the tablet down, staring out at the sea, imagining what it would be like. She imagined a good-looking, non-violent, gentle man, imagined him easing her into soft kisses, imagined herself sleeping with him for the rest of her life… and felt nothing. The more she was learning about herself, the more she was understanding that the love in the movies she watched with him wasn’t something she’d ever understand.
The scene in her mind changed. She imagined herself running in the dark, getting caught by a man who was darkness himself, telling her she was his as he claimed her, making her feel safe and protected and unreachable for any other monsters. She didn’t need a good man telling her he loved her; she needed a dark devil to tell her she was his.