A Tub of Cold Water

“How long has who been beating me?” I asked, trying to mask my quivering voice, but I found it pointless to do so.

Sawyer smirked at me. “I know you’re not stupid. I know that kid does something to you. He’s always got you hanging off his arm, like he’s trying to say something. Whenever he used to catch me giving a little hello, he used to pull me off to the side, threaten me.”

My eyebrows pursued a frown as I whipped my head toward him with a gape sitting in my eyes. “Skye? He’s never hit me! What are you talking about, threatening you?”

He waved his hands before him as his pale eyes regarded me, “Whoa, crazy, calm down. I see the bruise sitting on your eye, I just assumed it was him since he acts like a tyrant whenever you’re around. Anyway, he used to pull me off to the side and push me against the wall, tell me not to try to get involved with you. It was kind of fucked up. It wasn’t even like I was looking at you in any kind of certain way, either. If I just glanced up as you walked down the hall, try to give off a friendly hello since we were cooking partners, he would try to rip my fucking head off, you know?”

I covered over my bruised eye with a porcelain hand, my eyes dragging closed as I tried to swallow my groan. “Oh my god, no, I’m so sorry. He’s just a tad… overprotective.”

“Yeah, I’ll say.” Sawyer chuckled once before turning toward me with the clearing of his throat. His hand completely covered over mine for a partial second, “You know, carrot top, you can tell me. I mean, if he’s really doing this to you. I know how it is, you know, to have someone you love hurt you. I get it. It fucking hurts worse than the bruises, I know.”

“You know?” I whispered, trying my damnedest to keep the quiver and break from my voice. “You really know?”

Sawyer shrugged before clearing his throat once more. “I wish I didn’t. I wish I was like all of those social workers who say they understand, but they really don’t. But, I’m not.”

“What happened to you?” I continued to speak low and breathy as I moved two steps closer with my cheek practically resting on his shoulder.

Like the dark angel inside him, Sawyer shook his head and hummed low in his throat. That silent “Don’t touch” was screaming through my mind in that moment before I realized that this—his past—was his black downy feathers. I took one step back from him and looked back at the stars.

“Look, I don’t mean to—it’s just that—I’ve never told anyone anything about me. It’s not my style. You’ll just have to understand the dos and don’ts.” He tried to smile on that last sentence but found himself sighing instead.

I reached my hand to rest on his shoulder, my eyes gravitating back onto his as I gave him an encouraging half-smile. “I didn’t mean to pry. It’s your own business. I’m sorry, it’s just so liberating to know someone feels the way I do.”

“Can we just keep it that way? You know someone who feels like you do, and now I do too. You don’t have to tell me, and I won’t tell you.” His eyes bored into mine, shining in the light and making them a murky grey, “Savvy?”

I nodded, “Sure.”

“Good.” He nodded once for effect, I think, and then turned away from me.

It was a strange feeling, when he turned away from me, because I felt like without words spoken, our eyes conversed all on their own. Now that he had cut words and our silent secondary conversation, I was left staring a hole through the side of his face. I felt so mystified, watching him watch the stars. He truly did belong to the night, completely from his body to his tortured, broken soul. My eyes shot down to one of the dark scars poking from the confines of his dark red long sleeve.

“Is that what caused you to pick up the blade?” I asked so quietly, I wasn’t sure if I’d whispered it in my mind or not.

His head shot up, but he took his sweet time turning his eyes back onto mine. An exasperated sigh left his lips in a jagged rhythm, like he didn’t know anyone else knew about his out-and-proud scars. “Look, Aubrey, I don’t want to talk about this, I really don’t. Can’t you just drop it?”

There was that dark angel hiss he’d used in my dream. I almost asked if he knew about the dream, if he had somehow set it up with his mind. Then again, I knew that wasn’t possible—so the answer without all of the snide interrogation would be a nice, fat no.

“Okay.” I said, too ashamed to bring my eyes down on his. So I forced them everywhere else. Then, after a pause, I said, “What would you like to talk about, then?”

He looked at me for a beat before a boom of laughter erupted through his lips and he had to grip tighter on the slide so that he didn’t fall down. I stared at him, laughing too just because it was so contagious. It’d been so long since I laughed—it felt like years, when all actuality it had been a few long months.

“Why are we laughing?” I managed to get out through a bubble of giggles, my fingers wiping under my eyes as our laughter started to die down.

He hummed loudly before his laughter stopped altogether and smiled widely, “Well, I was going to ask what you did with your summer, but I thought about how mine was complete shit. I just assumed yours would be shit, too, and that made me laugh. When I think about it now, it’s really not funny at all.”

I laughed again and it felt so bubbly and amazing, like a shattered memory that I’d reassembled over time. It was horrible to think that Skye had been working on making me smile—making me laugh like I was now, but Sawyer had done so in ten minutes.

I shrugged and bumped my shoulder against his, “It’s a little funny.”

To which, he smiled and nodded, swinging his legs around and hopping down beside me. Sawyer leaned his back against the slide and crossed his arms over his chest. I was at another silent point, another spot of sewn lips and downcast eyes. The only thing I had on the mind was his glistening scars and the starlight they let off beneath the navy sky. I had so many questions about them, so mystified into silence because of them.

The silence that evolved around us was comfortable, a soft whisper of the wind and spotlight of the pale moon on just us. Like a silent film or a cliché production of flickering gazes and coy smiles, it gulped us whole and unforgiving.

Though, that wasn’t the only thing on the mind. Why now? What was this dark angel looking for in this depressed damsel that he wasn’t looking for two years ago? Why was it when I was finally accepting the love that Skye could give me did this boy slyly reach his hand out to brush his spliced fingertips against my arm?

When I looked up next, Sawyer’s watery eyes regarded me, studying me like you’d study a flower or a painting. His eyes started on mine before venturing up to the crown of my head, taking in the ringlets that spiraled down to the middle of my upper arms. His route changed as he took in the sweatshirt that I’d slept in and the sweatpants that Skye had set me up in. I could see his eyes wandering up my torso before they found mine again. His stare was thoughtful and probing, like he was trying to find true meaning behind my life, like he was trying to tell himself that Skye really was abusing me.

He just would never know how wrong he really was.

My eyes shot back up to the moon before I sighed out and shook my head, “I should probably get going.”

The sides of his mouth pulled down into a small pout before he too shook his head. “I don’t want you to go.”

A coy smile tugged my lips and burned my cheeks with a blush. Was I really blushing? “Me neither. But, I have to.”

“I could walk you—you know, make sure you get back safe. You never know the others who belong to the night. Fucking psychos.”

I laughed and nodded, tossing myself down the slide and waiting at the bottom for Sawyer to slip down himself. He took my hands and pulled me from my spot. We stood toe-to-toe, his hands holding mine as he stared a thousand miles into my eyes. The moon was making me feel translucent, lighting me like I was among the stars.

Where I thought he was going to chastely kiss me, he whispered a soft caress in that husky dark angel voice that I yearned to hear, “You truly belong to the night, Aubrey.”

I smiled and nodded, whispering a small thank you before Sawyer sighed and only kept one hand, tugging me along through a field. The walk was silent, that sort of comfortable silence that I was going to love. It was a silence I was unfamiliar with, one that I wish I had recognized before meeting Sawyer.

My hand wrapped around his upper arm as I leaned my head against his shoulder, my eyes closing halfway as I lost myself in the slight chill of his hand, wishing for this night to be stilled by forever. His skin was colder than normal, only slightly, but it was a noticeable chill that made me want to hug myself closer to him. So, I did.

It was well before long that I realized where we were heading, and it wasn’t back to Skye’s house, like I had planned on. I wanted to give Chris the night away from me to cool his head, but hope wasn’t on my side tonight.

“Where are we going?” I asked in a hush, my heart hammering against my ribcage. I knew he would be sitting up waiting for me to come back, but I could only hope against hope that he had retired to a drunken sleep, the kind where World War III could break out in his front yard and he would snore and grunt before rolling over beneath the sheets.

“I’m… walking you home. This is where you live, isn’t it?” Sawyer’s bewilderment was unnerving at this ungodly hour in this ungodly predicament he’d thrown me in, unbeknownst to him.

“Yeah—it’s just—I wasn’t planning on being here tonight. That’s all.” I whispered slowly and lowly to keep the quiver and quick gasps out of my voice and contained in a throbbing ball centered in my chest.

Abruptly jerking us to a stop, Sawyer grabbed both my hands and turned to face me. I couldn’t hide from his inquisitive eyes here, and something told me he knew that. “Aubrey, what’s wrong? Are you—cold?”

“No, no, Sawyer, I’m fine.” I smiled forcibly, but he could see that it didn’t touch my eyes.

“Aubrey.” A gruff, thick, hoarse voice sounded from the far right. I jerked my head toward it, but was welcomed by unwelcoming, blazing chestnut eyes, much like my own.

Such a thin man shouldn’t look so large and powerful, so intimidating and burly. He stood somewhere just a couple inches past six-foot and the thickness of his arms was the same as the thickness of his skull—and that was thicker than the damn Berlin wall. His pecks and abs were pressed against his white cotton t-shirt, his jeans a wrinkled mess from where he was leaning against the door.

“I’m coming, dad.” I said loud enough before turning my eyes back to Sawyer. “I have to go.”

Leaning down quickly, he pressed that chaste kiss that I’d wanted back at the park against my cheek and smiled quickly, his definitely touching those gorgeous eyes. “I’ll see you tomorrow. I hope I didn’t get you into too much trouble.”

Yeah, if I can walk by then, I thought wearily as I turned back to my father after sending a warm, hopeful smile to Sawyer. I walked up the driveway, the walkway, and stopped at the screen door that my father hid behind, standing in the darkness of my living room. He, too, belonged to darkness. Though, his spot was surrounded by flames and screams of girls being raped in the night. People commonly referred to that man as Satan, but I believed he possessed the form of Christopher Nicholas Ackman.

“Please, daddy, I’m sorry I forgot about the kitchen. I’m sorry that I ran away from you. I really, really am.” I beseeched, forcing tears to stay out of my eyes because he usually hit me harder when I cried.

He nodded, drinking in the apologies like he drank his vodka—quick and unforgiving. “Well, gentle little Aubrey, we’ll see just how sorry you truly are, won’t we?”

With that, he pushed the screen door open with a punch as it slammed into the brick of the house before he grabbed my upper arms and dragged me inside. He threw me into the wall opposite of us as he threw the door closed with a crash. He started coming at me while he cracked his knuckled and stretched his arms out, that satanic gleam in his eyes shining against the moonlight like sheens of red wine or spilled blood. I had hoped against hope that this wouldn’t go down tonight, I had hoped with all of my being that I wouldn’t feel the punch of his fists or the sting of his kick.

But, as I said just before, hope wasn’t on my side tonight.