Total pages in book: 15
Estimated words: 14237 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 71(@200wpm)___ 57(@250wpm)___ 47(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 14237 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 71(@200wpm)___ 57(@250wpm)___ 47(@300wpm)
I sucked in a breath, shooting a glance at the library doors to make sure Tess stayed away like a good esclave.
“Go on,” I said quietly.
He didn’t look up, preferring to keep his eyes on the swirling, rich patterns of the carpet. “I’m…I’m sick.” He growled under his breath. “No, that’s wrong. I’m diseased. Not physically but spiritually. There’s something broken inside me. I’ve felt it ever since I hit puberty…fuck.” He laughed coldly. “That’s a lie. I’ve felt it for far longer than that. Even when I was a boy, I felt different whenever I’d see violence in a movie or watch lovers have a quarrel in public. I’d get hot and tight, and I didn’t understand what the crawling, gnawing sensation was until I had my first wet dream.”
I waited for him to gather his thoughts, not making it any easier on him. I might not care what he had to say, but I gave him the quietness he needed to spill his confessions.
“I dreamed of blood,” he breathed.
It was my turn to stiffen.
His story so far sounded eerily close to mine.
“I dreamed of fucking a girl and hurting her.” He winced. “I woke and found my sheets a mess. And ever since that day, I can’t get those fantasies out of my head. I hid from them for as long as I could. I had a girlfriend in high school—for a couple of weeks at least. But she dumped my ass when she got sick of my lack of interest. I’d burn in shame whenever she’d reach for me because her innocent, gentle hand only made me soft.” He wiped his mouth. “There I was, a fifteen-year-old guy, and I couldn’t get it up. But whenever I’d break my self-control and watch porn late at night, I’d get hard as a fucking rock.”
“What sort of porn?” I asked, surprisingly unshocked at his forthcomingness.
He didn’t raise his eyes. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this stuff. I’ve lost it. What the hell am I doing—”
“Keep going.” I crossed my arms. “I’m listening.”
He flinched and didn’t reply.
I stayed quiet, letting the temptation to unburden himself outweigh social niceties. Finally, he cleared his throat and muttered, “I’d watch bad stuff. Choking. Breath play. BDSM but…not the role-play kind. The real kind where the tears are real, the pain is real, the blood is…real.”
I unwound my arms and gripped my knees. I reneged on what I’d just said. “You’re right. I have no idea why you’re telling me this. No one in their right mind would come to a stranger’s house and confess all the nasty shit inside them.”
His grey eyes met mine, swimming in troubles and begging for salvation. “I-I have nowhere else to go. My mother….she, eh—” He cleared his throat. “She’d been ill for most of my life. Recurring breast cancer with periods of remission. It finally claimed her last month. I gave up my attempts at trying to be normal—working a dead-end job and pretending to fit in—and dedicated myself to being her caregiver for the past four months. She, eh, told me things…toward the end. She told me who my father was.”
Ah, so it was a deathbed confession.
Something that’d eaten her alive and now she’d passed that demon onto her only son.
Stupid woman.
Why couldn’t she have let that filth die with her?
She’d only condemned her son to a worser fate.
“Is that why you tried to kill yourself?” I asked clinically, feeling no emotion to the thought of him alive or in a grave.
“No. I mean…it was the slippery slope that led to it but no. You have to understand, I loved my mother. She was my only family but…she never seemed to love me in return. I’ve grown up forever trying to apologise for something I didn’t understand. I always felt like I’d done something wrong and, until she told me the truth about my father and not the scripted lie that some asshole got her pregnant then ran off, I always felt like she blamed me for something.”
“Blamed you how?”
He shrugged. “For living in a country that wasn’t hers? For keeping her away from her parents and whatever extended family she had?” Sighing heavily, Henri added, “Whenever I’d ask why I didn’t have grandparents to visit or cousins to play with she’d change the subject and say it was just us.” Raking his hands through his short hair, he caught my eyes. “Just us was lonely. But now it’s just me? It’s fucking excruciating.”
I would never admit that I knew exactly how crippling loneliness could be.
Clearing my throat, I asked briskly, “Do you have any idea where the rest of her family are? Go grace them with a visit instead of me.”
He dropped his grey stare. “There wasn’t a shred of information or paperwork in my mother’s estate to hint where she’s from. Not a single name. Not a whiff of an address. I have a feeling she might have been French Canadian, so perhaps I have relations there. She raised me bilingual—French and English. She also taught me Spanish but never told me why, or how she knew it.”