Sweet Soul (Sweet Home #5)(78)

Tired and numb, my head fell back against his shoulder. Levi sighed into my hair, his forearm wrapping around my chest. I stared straight ahead, focusing on a single chip of paint on the white wall of the bathroom. My eyes itched at how raw they were, yet my tears had dried. It wasn’t because I felt any less hurt, but my tear ducts were exhausted.

I was exhausted.

I’d been exhausted now for two years.

And I was done.

“Bella mia,” Levi said softly and dropped a kiss on my shoulder, “how are you feeling?”

“Tired,” I replied. Levi’s arm tightened across my chest and I lifted my hands to wrap around his wrist. I needed to feel that he was truly here with me. I didn’t want to be alone. I was tired of being alone. “I’m so tired of it all.”

“Of what, baby?” Levi asked cautiously.

“Of it all.” I dug my fingers into his arm. “Of why some people make it their life’s mission to cut others down. Of why some people live only to make others suffer. Of those people never understanding what it feels like to be on the receiving end, to be living in a constant nightmare of their making, their face the demon, their voice and treatment the dagger in the heart.”

With his free hand, Levi brushed back the hair from my face. Picking up a sponge to run over my body, the feel of water trickling over my cold skin, soothed some of the ache.

I blinked away the blurring of my eyes, and said, “My mom was the product of people that purposely kept her down. It was why she needed the drugs. Why she turned to drugs. To numb the pain. Because it isn’t a pain you can relieve with pills. This pain exists too deep, it’s as unreachable as it is untreatable. It exists on its own plane, and only if you’re lucky can you cope with it.” I sighed. “My mom wasn’t one of those people. She took the drugs to numb it, until the drugs took her. She didn’t fight. She didn’t even try.”

Levi ran the sponge up my arm, bringing it to my hands on his wrist. I felt his chest tense against my back, and I understood why when he took one of my hands and pulled it back. I left it hovering where he left it, and with the sponge, he ran it down my inner wrist, the warm water running over my scar.

I felt his breathing change, grow choppy, and with a cut and sad voice, he asked, “What happened, Elsie? What happened to you to make you do this. To want to end your life?”

He peppered kisses along my neck, and instinctively, I tipped my head to the side to allow him access. I knew he was trying to help me, to show me with his pure heart that he was here for me, he was caring for me, but his question evoked memories I’d tried to keep hidden, locked away. His question set them all free.

As though as I could physically feel the darkness those girls brought into my life, my body tensed as I heard their laughter flood through my mind, and their words skewer my soul.

I gripped Levi’s arm and he pulled me as close as he could. “Her name was Annabelle Barnes, and she came into my life when I was sixteen.” I paused, her name pulling difficult feelings from within.

“When you were in the group home?” Levi asked.

I nodded my head, as he repeatedly stroked back the hair from my forehead. It felt nice. “I was put into the group home when I was fourteen, after my mom passed. There was no room left in foster care, so they took five of us and put us in the group home. The women that cared for us were nice, and the other girls…” I shrugged. “I didn’t speak to. I didn’t speak to any of them. The only time I would was when one of the staff asked me to answer them back. Most were fine with my notes, so I could mostly keep my voice hidden. They didn’t judge me, the girls ignored me, and I kept to myself. It was a lonely life, one I didn’t like, but I didn’t hate it either. I missed my mom something fierce, drowning in a world of little hearing and no purpose, but I was carrying on. I was getting through.”

I flinched, remembering the sound of Annabelle walking through the door that first day. Of her putting her things on the spare bed in my room. Of her angry eyes and her haunting face.

“Then when I was sixteen,” I explained, “Annabelle came to the home and my life changed.” I shifted against Levi’s chest, but he held me close.

“I got you, bella mia. I got you.”

I closed my eyes and exhaled through my nose. “From the minute she arrived she was angry. I don’t know what had happened to her in her original home. I never found out, she never talked about it, but it made her bitter. Nasty. It made her cruel… and I became her target.” I shrugged. “I was an easy choice, I suppose. I was quiet. I stayed in my bedroom, reading and writing poetry, while the other girls in the house immediately wanted to be her friend. I think it was fear of her that had them going along with anything she said.”

Levi’s hand had stopped moving on my head, and I could hear his heavy breathing. I could practically feel the anger radiating from his body. But now I’d started, I wanted him to understand. It was the final part of me that was hidden—it was the most important part.

“At first I’d feel her stares as we were driven to school by one of the staff. She’d sit opposite me and she’d watch me, silently, no expression on her face until I was unnerved. That quickly escalated to whispers with the others girls, pointing at me and laughing—but always where the staff couldn’t see. I would never have told on them, I thought it would only make matters worse.”