Bloodstained Beauty

by Ella Fields

  I heard her, felt her, before I allowed my eyes to savor the sight of her in a pair of denim shorts and baby yellow T-shirt with frilled cap sleeves.

  The pale hue to my Dove’s skin and the fluttering of her skittish pulse in her neck had me pausing with the towel around my hand.

  “Great,” I muttered as she turned and made haste out of the room. “Just as she’s acclimating, I had to go and kill someone.”

  Thomas came to my room not long after I’d seen him walk out of that basement with blood smeared on the towel in his hands, but I didn’t answer the door.

  He stood there a few minutes, then I heard his soft footfalls fading down the hall as he chose to let me be.

  I’d been thankful, and then I’d been angry that I’d been thankful he’d left me alone.

  My head swam in a million different directions, but the strongest current kept taking me back to the night before. When he’d shared intimate parts of himself, and then refused to keep his hands off me long into the night.

  Matching that man with the one downstairs was hard, but it wasn’t as hard as it should’ve been. Which was troubling, to say the least.

  After Lou had braided my hair into some twisted looking rope, I’d walked downstairs to get breakfast and coffee, and I knew, after seeing those two men in the kitchen, who observed me with clear intrigue, what kind of visitor Thomas might’ve had.

  I didn’t even bother asking where he was. I’d merely smiled and nodded a quiet hello, forgot about any food, and took my coffee upstairs to find Lou.

  I shouldn’t have gone back in search of food.

  Thomas knocking on my door that afternoon reminded me that I hadn’t been back downstairs since I saw him, and I still hadn’t eaten.

  The door was open, and he strode in, his gaze on me as he said, “Lou, go draw me a picture with a really big sun on it?”

  Lou Lou looked from Thomas to me, and I smiled in encouragement. “And maybe some rain.”

  “A sun-shower?” she asked.

  I squeezed her hips, setting her on the floor. “Yes, I love sun-showers.”

  “Me too!” She raced out of the room.

  Alone, Thomas shut the door and came to sit beside me on the bed. His hand reached up, and his eyes seemed to ask permission, to which I just kept still. With his thumb smoothing over my cheek and his warm palm pressed against my skin, I could almost forget what he’d done that morning.

  Almost. “Is your visitor still here?”

  Thomas removed his hand, as if knowing his answer might force me to push it away, and he’d rather do it himself than have me reject his touch. “No.”

  Silence descended, and I shifted on the bed, tucking my knee beneath my chin as I studied him. “Why do you wear suits all the time?”

  Seeming a little shocked, his lips parted, and his eyes skated down his clothing. “I’m a businessman. It would do me no good to appear otherwise.”

  “Your friends,” I started to say, then thought better of it.

  “What about them?”

  I pulled the memory forward of the shoulder-length blond hair on one, his jeans and T-shirt, and tattoos. Then the almost shaved head of the other, and his cargo shorts and wifebeater. “Do they work in the same line of work as you?”

  Thomas scrunched his nose. “Some might say yes, but there are differences.”

  “Including your wardrobes.”

  He sighed. “You don’t like my suits?”

  I laughed, partly because we were discussing suits when I assumed he’d just killed someone hours before, and partly because he looked downright perplexed I was questioning his clothing choices. “No, it’s not that I don’t like them. I guess I was just wondering.”

  “I want to be taken seriously and”—he paused, weighing how much he wanted to admit what he was about to say—“I guess, after wearing them for so long, I forget what else I like.”

  The day in the woods swam in, and our date at the coffee shop, as I murmured, “Jeans and a black polo shirt.”

  He met my stare with wonder filling his eyes. “Can I kiss you?”

  It hurt, the word no threatened to reduce my mouth to cinders, and so I just shook my head.

  It was his eyes that gave away any sting my reluctance caused as they turned from hopeful to downcast. Then he stood, adjusting the sleeves of his jacket before checking his pocket watch.

  “Your visitor is dead, isn’t he?”

  “Yes,” he said with his back to me.

  His hand wrapped around the doorknob, and I asked one more question. “Who was he?”

  “Someone your precious fed sent. To retrieve something precious from me.”

  I sucked in air so sharply, he pinned me with one last look over his shoulder. “It was kill or risk everything, Dove. There was too much at stake to let what I feel for you tamper with my better judgment.”

  “Girl, you’re testing the limits of that man’s feelings.”

  I looked up from where I’d been studying the back of a paperback in the library. “I’m sure he’s fine.”

  Murry’s incredulous laughter and my own lies made me cringe.

  I slid the book back onto the shelf and plucked out a different one. “Did he send you to check on me?”

  He scoffed. “No, he’d sooner chase you down himself than be made to look a fool asking where your feelings lie.”

  I smiled, opening the paperback and flicking through the time-worn pages.

  “So where do they lie?”

  I snapped the book shut, placing it on the small pile I’d gathered on the side table. “I’d rather not talk about it.” I raised my eyes to his, offering a closed-lip smile. “No offense.”

  He lifted a shoulder, then straightened from the shelf he’d been leaning against. “No problem, but tell me this, are you afraid of him?”

  “No,” I said immediately.

  “Disgusted with him?” A brow lifted.

  That one I was incapable of answering as quick, and I sighed, taking a seat in the armchair beside my borrowed stack of books. “It’s not that. I mean, I knew, and I thought I’d wrapped my head around it …”

  Murry’s voice softened with understanding. “Then it actually happened.”

  “Yeah.”

  He hummed, surveying the hall behind him quickly. When he looked back at me, he said with a lowered voice, “Lou Lou … she caused fractures in his exterior. But you? You charged in and demolished every single one of his defenses.” He tilted his head. “I don’t know how, but you’ve changed him.”

  My words were all breath. “I don’t know either.”

  A heavy pause made the echo of my heartbeat frighteningly loud.

  “I guess there is no how.” His eyes darted to the side table, then back at me. “There’s just you.”

  With that, he left me to digest what he’d said, and my gaze followed where his had swung to the side table.

  To where that small brown journal sat.

  Everything warned me not to touch it, but with Murry’s fleeting glance, and the way it was left out in the open … I didn’t listen.

  My fingers wrapped around the smooth leather, and I opened it.

  I’ll breathe for you

  as you thaw

  and hold you

  as you melt

  and wait for

  the moment you ignite

  and catch fire

  in my arms.

  Stop thinking the story is over

  when you reach

  the end

  the end

  is merely a guide

  from written certainty

  to the wonders of the unknown.

  Pages upon pages of poetry stared back at me.

  No dates and no time stamps.

  Just words.

  Shame has no place

  where her heart leaves its trace.

  To realize you were lonely

  is to measure your past

  against your present

  and long
for the future.

  Lie to me, Dove,

  then grip my skin tight.

  Lie to me, Dove,

  then whisper your sighs.

  Lie to me, Dove,

  then give me your cries.

  Lie to me, Dove,

  then cradle my thighs.

  Lie to me, Dove,

  then make it all right.

  Lie to me, Dove,

  then kiss me good night.

  Oh, sweetheart

  don’t overthink it;

  it’s just your heart

  and my heart

  learning to beat

  to the sound of

  eternity.

  You are an addiction

  that shallows my lungs

  with every inhale.

  But not just words. Dark, haunted, and beautiful emotion.

  I’d almost thought he wasn’t writing about me until I saw the one on the last page.

  Lie to me.

  The last line had been written harshly, the tip of his pen indenting the page with his pain.

  Pain that I’d caused.

  With guilt tearing at my chest, I left my book selection behind and blinked back tears from blurring my vision as I left the library.

  “Enter,” Thomas clipped as soon as I knocked on the door.

  He looked over when I did, and I shut the door behind me. “Is Lou asleep?”

  “Yes.”

  His blunt answers reminded me of the first few interactions I’d had with him, and I told myself I deserved it, then raised my shoulders and feet, moving deeper into his room.

  There was no sign I’d been in there. None. The remains of our dinner had been cleared and the bed made. The scent of our time together long faded from the cavernous space.

  “What is it you need, Dove?” he asked, unclipping his cufflinks and tossing them onto a glass tray on the black dresser.

  You, I tried to say, but the word wouldn’t budge past my teeth.

  Instead, I did my best to ignore his glacial stare and pulled the journal from behind my back. “You … you wrote all these?”

  Ice blue eyes flared as they caught sight of his words, his heart, in my hands.

  His tone was as crisp as his stare, when he finally said, “What did you think I did in my spare time? And with that journal?” When I hesitated, he laughed bitterly. “Don’t answer that.”

  The small journal weighed down my shoulders and my heart as I said, “Thomas, I’m—”

  “Back to Thomas now, are we?” He unbuttoned his shirt, his frustration making a few pop and sail to the floor, rolling and scattering. “Look.” He sighed, walking closer but stopping a few feet away from me. “I never asked you to like or share my job with me. All I hoped was …” he trailed off, a hand rising and fingers pinching the bridge of his nose.

  I took a step forward. “Was what?”

  His hand slapped to his side, and his white shirt gaped open, that sculpted body doing its best to draw me closer, but I stayed put. “All I hoped was that you’d like me, that you’d maybe want to share my life with me.”

  Knowing I shouldn’t, but that I didn’t want to lie, I opened my mouth. “Those aren’t the same thing?”

  “No. I’ve already told you. I like what I do, as sick as that might make me appear, but it’s not my life.”

  I glanced around the extravagance of the room, unable to stop my eyes from narrowing.

  His laughter was dark and riddled with exhaustion. “Forget it.”

  I placed his journal down on the end of his bed. “I don’t want to.”

  “You sure could’ve fooled me,” he muttered, tearing his shirt off and reaching for the button above his fly.

  “Tom,” I tried again.

  “Just go, Dove. It’s been a long day, and quite frankly, I don’t care to have you torment me any further tonight.”

  His tone offered no room for argument, and really, I had nothing else to give him.

  Except me.

  So I backed up toward the door, watching his smooth back as his body heaved with heavy breaths. Then I left.

  Thomas was called out to a job the next morning.

  He left without a goodbye and had been gone for ten days.

  Yet I refused to leave. Not out of fear of what waited beyond the castle’s walls, but because anytime the thought even touched my mind, a searing pain would grip the organ in my chest, stalling my heartbeat and stealing my breath.

  I bandaged my bruised feelings, my worries, and my longing by spending time with Lou. But after hours spent indoors and despite the size of their home, she grew bored as summer dragged on.

  “Are you allowed outside?” I asked one morning as I helped Murry clean up after breakfast. He’d tried to stop me but gave in days ago when I didn’t relent.

  “Of course.” Lou sucked jelly from her fingers, then released them with a loud pop. “Oh! You haven’t met Jeffery, George, and Babette.”

  Murry cursed, a plate falling from his hands and into the sink.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Fine,” he said, reaching for a dish towel and drying his hands. “Miss Lou, how about you go grab your hat, and we’ll show Jemma together?”

  “Okie dokie.”

  I waited until she’d left the room. “I’m sorry, I forgot that—”

  “No,” Murry cut in, hanging up the towel and then untying his apron. “That threat is gone, and most wouldn’t dare enter this property. But … I’ll come with you.”

  It wasn’t until I saw the three huge pigs in a pen half an acre behind the house that it clicked.

  The pancakes Murry made threatened to somersault out of my mouth, but I painted on a smile when Murry raised a brow, realizing his earlier hesitance wasn’t so much about Lou Lou’s safety.

  It was about what they used the pigs for.

  The pen was huge, and next to it sat a barn that had seen better days. Probably many years ago at that. The wooden doors were half opened, stuck in the dirt-crusted ground, and the white and cream paint was missing from most of the exterior.

  Lou tossed the pigs a small bucket of scraps, laughing as they snorted and hobbled over to the fence.

  Leaving them to eat, we strolled to the other side of the property, toward the woods that separated Verrone and Clayton land, Lou Lou racing through weeds that were almost taller than she was.

  We stopped beside what I thought, when I’d looked out my bedroom window, was a dam, but was actually a neglected pool.

  “Why is it,” I asked, a hand over my eyes to shield them from the sun’s glare, “that the inside of the house resembles the period it was built in, not a speck of dust or wear in sight, yet out here …?” I trailed off, knowing Murry would catch what I was saying.

  Lou Lou skipped over to a patch of wildflowers.

  “To scare people off.”

  Murry’s words made sense, but it seemed a shame that a place I once thought of with such reverence in my child-size heart looked as though it’d been abandoned.

  We ate lunch together, and then Lou and I retired to the living room upstairs for a Disney movie marathon.

  It was just after dinner, and Lou Lou had passed out with her head on my lap when Thomas’s shadow spread over the arched entryway, followed by the man himself.

  “Hey.” I tried to tamp down the relief, the persistent burning and longing dancing through my bloodstream by stretching my arms, being careful not to wake Lou.

  Thomas paused when he saw she was asleep, then frowned down at the food stuck to her cheeks. “She’s six. She’s allowed to go to bed dirty every once in a while.”

  “I can bathe her,” he said, bending to brush some golden curls from her sticky face.

  “You’ll do no such thing. I’ll run a washcloth over her face and hands when she’s in bed if that’ll make you happy.”

  He finally looked at me then, and dark pillows sat beneath his eyes, making the blue that much more vibrant. “Murry said you went to see the pigs.”r />
  “We did.” I bit my lip. “You know, my dad always said to be wary of a man who owns pigs.”

  His eyes were on my mouth. “Your dad’s a smart man.”

  “Babette is my favorite.”

  His brows furrowed as he studied me. If he was waiting for me to make another remark about his reason for having them, he’d be waiting a while.

  When he realized that, he rose to his full towering height and went to leave.

  “I missed you,” I blurted.

  All the oxygen in the room seemed to disappear as his body locked up.

  Then, slowly, he pivoted and strode back, gripped my chin, and tilted my face to his. After staring his fill and finding my eyes reinforced my words, as well as the grip my hand had as it wrapped around his wrist, he pressed his mouth to mine.

  After ten blissful seconds, where I felt my heart shrink and heal a fraction more, he took his lips away, and left me with whispered words, “I’m glad you’re still here, Little Dove.”

  A little while later, after Lou was tucked in bed with her face and hands clean, much to her dismay as she smacked and whined at me, I went in search of my monster.

  The door to his room was open, but he wasn’t in there. Nor was he in the study or the library.

  Searching downstairs, I heard voices funneling down the hall from the kitchen.

  “It’s not that pipe. Here, get out of the way,” Thomas said.

  I watched from the doorway as Murry crawled out from beneath the kitchen sink and grimaced, rising and using the countertop for support.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Something’s blocking the pipe. I have a feeling it’s built-up food, but I can’t get the sucker undone.”

  Thomas, who’d changed into jeans, a T-shirt, and his slippers, slid the tool bag closer, already ducking beneath the sink.

  Murry looked at his hands, disgusted, and stormed out of the kitchen.

  I smothered a laugh and went to sit by Thomas on the black and white floor.

  “Hi, Monster.”

  “Hi, Dove.”

  I smiled. “Where’d you go?”

  “Do you really want to know that?”