Own Me

Chapter Sixteen

♔ Chapter Sixteen ♔

I stayed with Sawyer until I fell asleep, lying beside him on the floor. Tears streamed my face, but I didn't care. Guilt was pouring out of me. I'd never felt like more of a vile, disgusting person.

I must have spent hours lying there, staring over at his knocked out face. The blood that had dried from his nose, the bruises that were forming all over his skin. I'd listen to the sound of his breathing, with my hand over his chest to feel to the continued rhythm of his beating heart. It thumped repeatedly against my hand, slow, but still there. I almost felt relieved. That was when I fell asleep.

When I woke up, he still lay there. I heard him grunting in pain, as he struggled to sit up beside me. He coughed, pushing himself up off of the floor. I crawled off of him and sat cross-legged, waiting for him to say something. It took him a while to realise where he was, what had happened. He looked down at his hands and his arms, his naked body.

"Sawyer," I mouthed. I wasn't looking at him. I looked at my hands, resting on my knees. I didn't really know what to say to him, what to expect from him. "I'm sorry."

When I did look up, he was looking away, out the window. I watched as he walked out of the room, and left me sitting there. I got up, and followed him meekly out into the hallway. He'd gone into the bathroom, but had left the door wide open so I could see right inside. He was staring in the mirror right in front of him, his fingers tracing over the bruises that now marked his flesh. The blood that had dried there, from his nostrils, down his cheeks, his lips, his chin. The bruises that now scattered his flawless skin.

I couldn't tell what he was thinking, what look he had on his face. He just seemed so still, so unprocessed, that I just stood and watched his every move. The silence that floated all around us became heavy like smoke. I felt uncomfortable, even being here. His face was just a reminder of everything I was trying to hide inside. The viciousness I never knew I had. The need for me to be in control, for me to hurt him.

"Sawyer," I said again.

He ignored me. Didn't even bother looking at me. I heard the bath running, after that. I stayed in the hallway, halfway between the door of his bedroom and the corridor, watching him. He was still fully undressed, from the night before. I couldn't even tell how long I'd been here, how long I'd been asleep. It still looked like daylight outside, but late in the day.

He grabbed a towel and hung it over the sink, and once the bath water had filled boiling hot, he stepped into it. His whole body sunk in, with the smoke pouring off of it from the heat, and as it did, he twisted his neck to look out into the hallway, his eyes hitting mine.

He looked away almost a second later, but I knew what it meant. I came slowly towards him, into the bathroom. I couldn't even remember if I was wearing clothes anymore. I stepped into the water, feeling it burn my skin, scalding it, but I didn't care. The pain was a good kind, a pain that I had been craving more and more recently. I slipped into the water, entangling my legs with his, sitting opposite him, and waited.

He dipped his head under, and the water turned pink from the blood. I sat, soaking in it, and watched him the whole time. The water was crystal clear but with a growing pinkish tint, and it was easy to see his whole body lying near mine. He had a smaller frame than me, I'd noticed. A smaller body. But he was lanky, and had his shoulders constantly slunked. It was an awkward posture, but I'd gotten used to it.

It was the way he held himself that captured me, like all of his insecurities were holding him down every second of every day. His sexuality, his shyness, his self-hatred and loathing and disgust. Looking in the mirror and seeing something so unrecognisable glaring back at him. Sawyer wasn't very good at hiding it, but I was. I'd grown so used to my loathing that you could hardly even tell I was rotting away inside. My eyes roamed over his bare skin, seeing the bruises that scattered it, seeing him run a sponge over himself, as calm as ever.