His to Keep by Lydia Goodfellow
Chapter Sixteen
Getting off the floor, I’m not sure how much time has passed, but it’s dark outside and the room is cold. My head throbs as I shuffle over to the basket and pull out a dry nightdress and underwear. With Callum still in the bathroom, I get undressed quickly. As I look down, my cheeks tingle with heat. This dress comes even further up my thigh. Are they getting smaller?
Callum’s reaction when I landed on top of him punctures my thoughts. Was his arousal because of me? Confusion burns, followed closely by the anxiety of being inexperienced. Momma avoided the topic, Gran forbidding her from having such talks with me. The only information Gran ever offered was sex being an act only for reproduction.
Instead, I had to rely on girl gossip in school and those times I snuck adult books at the library. But even then, even lurking in bathroom stalls and hearing girls talk about sex, things I never dared research on the internet, I never understood. And books were too descriptive and dramatic; I didn’t know what was real or what was the author’s wild imagination.
Frustrated, I rip back the covers and fall against the mattress. Glancing in the direction of the bathroom, only silence comes from behind the door. I bet Callum sleeps in there to avoid me. After being hateful toward him tonight, I won’t be surprised if he doesn’t speak to me for weeks after this.
Inhaling a deep breath into my lungs, loneliness swells in my chest. The ache in my heart is so strong and makes my stomach tighten. Shadows of branches stretch over the ceiling, reminding me of claws. I think of Father Aaron and that room. Lying on the large four-poster bed while he leans over me, staring at my body in ways that he shouldn’t. His hands claw and maul at my dress, trying to rip it off.
Jamming my eyes shut, I push the image out of my head. No. It will never happen. I won’t let it.
Rolling on my side, I force myself to sleep, finally drifting off. I dream of Gran and how she used to be when Grandpa was alive. When I’d sit on her knee, and she’d tell me I was her brightest star. Before she stole my light and dimmed me. But then Gran’s smile fades, her cheeks hollowing and eyes rolling back. As I reach out to touch her, she’s colder than a winter’s day. She’s dead, and I’m now sitting on the knee of a corpse—
My body is drenched in sweat when I jerk awake. It was just a dream—she’s not dead. She’s not.
Disorientated from the dark and too warm, I throw the covers off me and get out of bed. Licking my dry lips, I stagger to the bathroom to get a drink. Pulling down the handle to open the door, when light from a candle hits my face, I stop.
A shadow moves across the wall. It’s Callum, and he faces the other side. One of his hands is against the wall, back hunched over and head bowed. Squinting, I step a little closer, hand tightening around the handle as I look down and—
Oh.
My eyes widen. I should leave. Back out right now and go back to bed. But I can’t move. I’m rooted to the spot, unable to stop watching the way his hand moves up and down the hard length of his penis.
I’ve only ever seen one, and that was John’s. After what happened, I’d hoped to never see another again. Only Callum’s looks different. Less angry and abused. My breath catches in my throat, and I quickly slap my hand over my mouth. When he groans, I jump back and press my spine into the wall. As my heart thumps, I hope he didn’t hear me. I forgot he was in here. I didn’t think—
He moans again, and I’m melting, heat rampant between my thighs. I listen to his uneven breaths as his hand works on himself, and all I feel is hot. The material of my dress chafes against my suddenly sensitive skin, and I squeeze the hem of the tiny skirt, my lungs forgetting how to function. I can’t get what he’s doing to himself out of my head. The way his eyes are screwed shut, fingertips digging into the wall and sweat beading his skin.
I risk being caught to look again. The gap is just enough for me to see. To hear the vulnerability of his moans. With fire searing my insides, I’m hypnotized by the gentle and brutal way he jerks himself off, every movement getting quicker, more urgent. His breathing gets shorter, and then it happens.
His entire body stiffens. The moan that comes from him is long, filled with pain and pleasure and relief. His head leans back as spurts of liquid shoot out of the swollen tip into his waiting hand. Then he rests his forehead against the wall, breathing heavily into the tiles with his eyes still closed.
With shock and something I don’t know running through my body, I go back to bed before I’m caught. I wait for sleep to come back while trying to ignore the throbbing pulse in the center of my legs. The wetness dampening my panties. Callum doesn’t come out of the bathroom, and for that, I’m glad. I don’t want him to see the flush of my cheeks as I think about me doing that to him, eager to see that look on his face up close.
Maybe Gran’s right. I do have a demon inside of me. A monster she didn’t get rid of who is, only now, trying to escape.
* * *
When Momma cameto see me on rare occasions, she told me I was a late bloomer. When she asked if I’d started growing hair in unusual places at eleven, and I said no, she told me I was developing slower than she did. I wondered if there were something wrong with me. Laughing, she said no, and without Gran knowing, told me about changes girls go through to become a woman.
Every day after that conversation, I waited for something to happen to my body. Eventually, it did. Hair appeared at thirteen, my period at fifteen, and my breasts around the same time. Though I didn’t feel womanly like Momma said, and I still pondered on the thought that something was genuinely wrong with me. Now, I know there is.
I’m all too aware of my body and the changes I neglected to notice before. The dementing ache and burning up like I have a fever, all for watching Callum in the bathroom. These new feelings scare me and kept me awake all night, even after he’d long blown out the candle and fell asleep in the bathroom.
Maybe nothing has been innocent between us since the moment I was locked in this room with him. What he did last night wasn’t innocent, and me watching him definitely wasn’t. I should feel shame in myself, yet I don’t. If anything, it’s only opened the door to questions.
Does he do that often? And if so, how often? Most of all, why didn’t it repulse me like John’s did?
The next morning, after getting up early and dressing in a new dress, I fix the sheets I tossed and turned in just as Callum comes out. He’s freshly showered, hair combed back in a way that makes my insides feel funny. When our eyes meet, a flash of him spilling into his palm shoots through my mind. Diverting my gaze, I rush past him into the bathroom, ignoring the confused crease between his brows as I slam the door behind me.
I take my time with my morning routine. Dinner is a long way away, and I don’t know how to be in a room with him anymore or act around him.
Knowing I can’t hide in the bathroom all day, I eventually leave after pulling the deepest breath into my lungs. Callum’s over by the window with his hands in his pockets, gazing out at the trees swaying in the overcast day.
Even though I know he won’t talk to me because of what I said yesterday, I stand next to him anyway. After a while, he finally glances at me, and I warily meet it.
Yesterday’s anger toward him is long gone. I understand why he didn’t tell me about Father Aaron’s plans for me. But while I want to trust him, there’s a part of me that’s telling me to be wary. To not drop my guard too much around this mysterious man. He hasn’t tried to hurt me in any way. In fact, he’s been decent and careful and respectful when he could have easily overpowered me. Taken whatever he wanted from me. If he wanted something.
My entire body reacts to his stare. A look of endless blue. The sky. The sun. Heat. Burning. “When was the last time you were outside?”
He looks back out the window and lets out the deepest breath through his nose. “When we moved here.”
“Where did you come from?”
He shrugs, but I feel like he’s holding back. He knows where he came from. “It was a nicer house than this.”
Silence comes, and I pick at the peeling paint on the windowsill, not daring to look at him as I ask, “Why do you think you’re an abomination?”
He doesn’t say anything right away, and I worry he hasn’t heard me until he mutters, “I just am.”
“There’s not a reason?” I angle my body to face him. Something he looks uncomfortable by. “I mean…you can’t just say you’re an abomination without there being a reason—”
“There is a reason,” he cuts me off. “I was born from sin.”
“What sin?”
He leans against the windowsill. “Why should I tell you since you think I’m a no-good liar?”
“Because you practically yelled it at me, that’s why. I think I have a right to know.”
“A right?” His eyebrow rises.
“Yes.”
His gaze pours into me, so intense I can no longer breathe. “Fine. I’ll give you the reason you’re searching for to be repulsed.”
“Wha—No!”
“My father raped my mother repeatedly since she was a girl, and the moment she became a woman, I was conceived. That woman was his own sister. It’s Penny, if you haven’t fucking figured it out yet. Think you have the right to know now?”
My eyes bulge.
His eyes cloud with anger and disgust as it takes me a moment for the words to process. Father Aaron raped Penny, his sister, and got her pregnant? If I thought this family couldn’t get any worse, it just did.
This is the reason Callum cuts and why he ripped his own back to shreds with a whip. He’s punishing himself for a crime he didn’t commit.
“I’m sorry,” Callum says next, guilt marring his features. “That was too much.”
“No, I am. I shouldn’t have pushed.” What did I do?
He was made from incest and it’s the reason he believes he’s an abomination. Why he thinks I’d be nothing but repulsed by his presence. I get it now. They say anyone made from that kind of wickedness is born with abnormalities, but there’s nothing about him like that. He’s more like an angel fallen from heaven. Why can’t he see that?
“You told me, so I’d be repulsed by you?”
“Has it worked?” He turns to me, the side of his lip lifting into a smirk, so like Father Aaron’s, I want to smack it off his face.
“No.” My teeth grit. “The only person I’m revoltedby is your father. How you were created isn’t your fault. It’s how you act that matters. And you’ve done nothing to me—”
“Not yet.”
“You’re not Father Aaron.”
“I’m more like him than you think I am.” His eyes moving slowly down my body, and everywhere he looks, I feel. Like he’s touching me when he isn’t. The fever comes back, and I’m shivering by the time he’s finished. Wrapping his fingers around my throat, his thumb is feather soft as he brushes it down my neck. “We both want what isn’t ours to have.”
Before I can say anything, he removes his hand and walks away, and we continue dancing the silent dance in hell.