Page 151 of Love Unwritten
“When I was picking up the pieces, I accidentally cut myself.” My breathing is shaky. “My hand hurt like hell, but the pain in my head was finally quiet, at least for a little while.” I trace over one of my hand tattoos. “I felt relieved.” A sad laugh escapes me. “It didn’t last long, but it didn’t matter. A new coping mechanism was born.” My scarred hand forms a tight fist.
“The cutting only got worse when my mom moved out before my twelfth birthday and filed for divorce. Spending weekdays with her and weekends with a living nightmare of a father nearly wrecked me, but thankfully, my mom was finally awarded full custody right before I turned fourteen.”
Rafael lifts my palm with the scar to his mouth and kisses it. The gesture is small, but it has an incredible amount of sway over my heart.
A heart that Rafael is slowly earning, piece by broken piece.
He doesn’t release my hand, and I don’t try to pull away either.
I don’t think I could, even if I wanted to, based on the way his grip tightens when I speak again. “I saved the piece of the mirror until I found better…alternatives.”
“Do you still have them?”
“What?”
“Your alternatives.”
My body turns rigid against his. “Why?”
“I’m not going to judge you for your answer. I’m just curious.”
“A couple of years after I stopped for good, I got rid of almost everything.”
“What did you keep?”
“A piece of the mirror. I tried to get rid of it, but I just couldn’t yet.”
He sits in silence for a minute, and I don’t push to fill it, instead allowing him to process everything I threw at him.
“How long did this go on?”
“Long enough to do some damage to my body.”
“Did you ever…” His voice drifts off.
“Try to kill myself?” Might as well ask it point-blank.
He nods, and a muscle in his neck tics.
“No, probably because my mom got me the help I needed and a full-custody agreement we both desperately wanted. It was a long battle because my father had connections and his hometown rallying for him, but eventually, after a physical and psychological evaluation, the judge ruled in my mom’s favor. I’m not sure how much longer I would have lasted spending time with my father. Without my mother, he was…”
A monster. My mom was a buffer, so once she left, I faced his wrath on my own, and it was truly a miserable place to be.
The arm wrapped around me tightens. “He was what?”
I fiddle with one of the buttons on his shirt and accidentally graze some of his chest hair.
“Actually, you don’t have to tell me.” He stumbles over the words. “I know it’s not easy to talk about the past.”
“That’s the thing. Opening up to you isn’t difficult at all.” When he isn’t fighting tooth and nail to keep me away, Rafael makes me feel safe. Like the demons from the past can’t get me, no matter how much I talk about them.
He makes my head quiet.
Rafael seems to sit with that for a few minutes before we continue talking. This time, we stick to safer subjects, talking about the plan for the rest of our trip, how the animals are doing without us, and how excited Nico is about performing at the Strawberry Festival soon.
I nearly forgot about that one, in part because I didn’t want to think about Hillary coming to visit. For Nico’s sake, I hope she does make it, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.
Rafael’s deep, soothing voice eventually lulls me to sleep, and I don’t even wake up when he carries me to my bed.