Page 55 of Traces of Her

She looks up from her nails, her brows slightly furrowed. “Why are you here?” she asks.

Sighing deeply, I cast my conflicted eyes to the ground, feeling the sadness fall upon my features. Steadily, my chest rises and falls as I let my eyelids close with ease. Her question threw me off, taking me by surprise and the emotions I’ve buried deep inside threaten to reveal themselves.

Slowly opening my eyes, I glance back at her. “For reasons you’ll never understand,” I whisper. My past would never make sense to anyone but me.

“Do you want to be here?” she blurts out.

Feeling the emotions drain from my face, my eyes grow cold once again. “Do you want to be here?” I counter, my voice harsher than I intended.

She ignores my question, answering mine with another one of her own instead. “So why don’t you leave?”

My face grows blank and expressionless as the numbness sets in. “Because I can’t,” I confess in a flat voice.

Lydia’s questions stop and we fall into a more comfortable silence, the numbness inside me transferring to her, wrapping around us. And that’s it, neither of us speaks another word. As the pain pills finally kick in, she slowly lies down on the blankets, as her eyes fall shut and her breathing slows down. Rising to my feet, I grab another blanket, carefully laying it across her naked, bruised and battered body.

Walking to the door, I pull it open, clutching the doorknob as I look back at her. “Jared,” I say quietly as she slowly opens her eyes, squinting against the light. “He’s the reason we’re all here,” I tell her truthfully as I slip out of the room.