Echo (Black Lotus #2)(43)

He then stands, walks over to the bed, and sits down next to me. He doesn’t touch me, although I wish he would.

“I hurt you today.”

“I’m okay,” I whisper.

He then looks down at my knuckles that are wrapped in band-aids. “My shattered mirror tells me otherwise.”

“Bad memories.”

“Did it happen a lot?” he asks on a voice that’s barely even a whisper. Like he’s afraid his words will break me, and for the first time in a long time, I feel like they possibly could. That I’m not as tough as I used to be.

I give him a nod, but it isn’t enough for him when he urges, “I need you to tell me.”

I hesitate, licking my lips, wanting to give him the honesty he’s asking for but also terrified for him to know.

“Tell me, Nina.”

“Please . . . don’t, don’t call me that.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, looking away from me. “It’s all I know you as.”

“Look at me.” He does. “This is me. This is what I want you to know.”

“Elizabeth,” he murmurs, and I nod, affirming, “Yes . . . Elizabeth.”

“Tell me then, Elizabeth. Because I need to know you, to figure you out.”

“Yes,” I respond. “It happened a lot. It was dirty and gross and—”

“What did he do to you?”

I swallow hard, scared to say the words. My hands fidget nervously, and when Declan sees, he covers them in his own.

“I’ve never told anyone,” I confess. “Only Pike knew, and he was there. I didn’t have to say a word because he saw it all.”

“I told you about my mum, remember?”

“Of course I remember.”

“I opened up to you about something I had never spoken about to anyone. I gave you that piece of me. A piece that makes me embarrassed and ashamed.”

I remember seeing his tears when he told me he cowered under a bed while he watched a man shoot his mother in the head. A shot that killed her. He thinks himself weak and a *—those are the words he used. He made himself vulnerable to me, so I’ll give him what he’s asking for, something I’ve never given anyone.

“It started on my tenth birthday with him forcing Pike to have sex with me. He would take us down to the basement. There was a dirty mattress he kept on the floor. He’d watch us while he sat in a chair and jerked himself off. Most of the time he would get up to cum on either Pike or myself.” Saying the words turns my stomach, and I can already feel the wave of nausea come over me. “We would be down in that basement at least four times a week. A couple years later was when it switched and Carl started touching me.”

I stop and drop my head. I can’t bear to look at Declan anymore when I start to feel the filth crawl along my skin. Tears burn the backs of my eyes as I try to keep them at bay, but they come anyway.

“Don’t look away from me,” he tells me when he tugs my chin up to face him.

With my head up but my eyes closed, I say, “It’s humiliating.”

“I don’t care. I don’t want you hiding from me. Look at me and trust me enough to give me this truth.”

So I do. I open my eyes, and while tears continue to fall from my eyes and drip off my chin, I tell him everything that happened in that basement. How Carl would rape me, sodomize me, piss on me, beat me, and whip me. How he’d cum on my face and laugh at me while he’d wipe it off with his finger and force me to lick it. How he’d piss on the mattress and shove my face in it, force me to finger his ass while he’d beat himself off. How it didn’t take long for him to turn me into a machine because it’s what I had to become in order to survive.

I sob as I give him this sick part of me, and explain why I started having sex with Pike by ourselves. Explained how it soothed me and provided an escape for me. I rip myself open and let the rot fall onto Declan’s lap as I reveal my twisted childhood to him.

He listens, never interrupting, but encouraging me to go on. His eyes are wide in disbelief and pity, and I know he will never look at me the same way again. He now knows the reality of my pathetic existence. The worthlessness of my body, the one he used to look at in amazement and admiration. He’d call me perfect, beautiful, and flawless.

But now he knows the truth.

This body was never something he should’ve valued. Anyone would be foolish to value the pile of shit it is. It’s simply a capsule—fancy wrapping paper—that conceals everything I’m made of . . . sewage.

“Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

“Because I was scared if I did, I’d lose Pike. I feared going to another abusive home and being alone. Pike was all I had; I didn’t want to be without him,” I try to explain.

“He used you.”

“Who? Pike?”

“Yes. If he loved you like you claim he did, he would’ve pushed you to get help, to get you to a place that was safe.”

Shaking my head, I refute, “It doesn’t work like that. And he did love me. He gave his whole life to me. I was always safe with him.”

Declan bites down hard causing his jaw to tick, and I tell him, “You won’t ever change my opinion of Pike. I don’t expect you to understand, but we were just kids. We did what we could to survive. Whether you believe it to be right or wrong, what’s done is done, and looking back won’t change anything.”