CHAPTER 4
With her movable arm she grabbed the handle of his door. It was locked. She pounded on it with her fist. It opened and she pushed her way into the room. "You're late," was the first thing he said. "Are you alright?" he inquired, following her across the room with his eyes.
"No!" she cried. Black tears streamed down her cheeks and he took note of the blood coming from the wound on her throat.
"What happened to you." His question was a statement. The door clicked shut. He locked it and went to her. "What happened to you." He took her by the shoulders and she gave a slight cry of pain. He noticed her arm and how it hung limp at her side. Together they unbuttoned her jacked and pulled it off. "Your arm is dislocated. What happened."
"Someone attacked me," she exclaimed though tears. "Someone pulled me into an alley and…" She looked up at his face. It was placid. Not a bit of surprise or anger shoed through even his eyes. "Can't you even show the slightest bit of concern!?" she shot. "I swear I could have died and still your face would look the same!"
Her words wrapped around his heart until it burned. "Don't you dare say that," he snapped, throwing her and accusing glance.
She could see torches in his eyes and cowered in the blazing light of his stare. "I'm sorry." With her working arm she wiped the tears from her eyes. "I should not have said that." She had to bite hr tongue not to scream when he secured her arm back into its rightful place. She thanked him, and though still quite shaken, made them tea then sat beside him on the couch. "He was a poor man, you know, from the north side of the city."
"Hmm. That does not surprise me." He stared at his dark reflection in the circling liquid. "Did he work as one."
"No, as two. It was his boy that pulled me into the alley."
"You did not go willingly."
She scoffed. "Heavens no. The ruffian claimed that his father was injured; a shallow lie. So I did not for a moment consider that he spoke the truth." Her words trailed off the page of her thoughts as her eyes fixed themselves on his profile.
"What. What is it."
"Oh. Nothing. Nothing at all. Just for a moment you almost had a pleasant look on your face."
He forced a thank you but made no effort to explore what he had done no matter how much it pleased her. "When you are ready, I will walk you to your room." He stood.
"I'm not ready," she said.
He sat. He had imposed himself upon her at odd hours of the night and so accepted her desire for company in the waning hours of the evening. "He raped you."
"Had he, I should hope you would care a bit more." She stared into her lap then at the wall. "He tried and I would have finished wrenching off my arm to quit him."
"I am sorry that I seem not to care at times," he said, continuing the fast paced conversation.
She scoffed a second time. "At any time, love. Your heart is a desert of ice." She laughed. "And your skin only buries it a thousand miles deep with nothing good to surround it. Just blackness. And when I touch you, even slightly," she brushed his palms with her fingertips. "I feel your poor soul becoming even more hollow and cold." Her gaze touched his eyes. "I'm sorry you feel this way. I'm sorry you choose not to feel."
Like an owl seizing its prey, his hand closed tightly on her fingers. "You are the only thing I feel, because right now, at this moment, you are beside me." He seized her eyes as well. "And that is only because you are here."
This confession held no bias and was hardly a confession at all. She could not resolve to smile at him, strike him, thank him, or scold him. "Would you like to rest with me tonight?"
He shook his head twice. "Tonight I should like to think alone."
In her room, she praised herself for leaving him with a faint smile on his face. She bathed in the sadness at being denied his company. Her emotions were numerous and not all of them pleasant, but she relished her ability to form questions that sounded like questions.