Tiny fractures, p.54
Tiny Fractures, page 54
Needing to feel his skin against me, I push up the hem of his hoodie and shirt, which he hastily pulls over his head. I allow my hands to run all over his chest and back down to his stomach, purposely tracing his prominent scars, wishing my touch would erase them. My hands slide down farther and I fumble with the button on his jeans, undoing it. I hesitate for a moment, then simply slide my hand down inside his boxer briefs. I encircle him and stroke his hardness, surprising us both with my forwardness. He is thick and rock-hard in my hand, though his skin is silky as I stroke his length from the base to the tip. His hips buck slightly when my fist bumps against the ridge just under the head.
“Fuck, Cat,” Ronan groans, and his lips momentarily leave my skin. His eyes close, his breathing heavy while I caress him.
I enjoy the fact that I can make him feel like this, that my touch gets him high. I slightly increase the pressure, tightening my fist as I rub him a few seconds longer, pumping him. My eyes are glued to his face, which looks almost pained with pleasure—his lips slightly parted, brows furrowed, eyes shut tightly as he focuses on my touch. I feel powerful at the realization that I can make him lose control, can make him surrender himself to me like this even after all he’s been through. But I become impatient, needing more of him, and I tug on his pants, wanting them off.
He pushes me back gently, and I sit first on the bed before pulling up my knees and scooting back to lie down all the way. Ronan stands over me, his glossy eyes roaming my body appreciatively, and I shiver under his gaze before he lowers his body carefully onto mine. His lips crash against me as he pulls my swimsuit bottoms to my knees, and I kick them off the rest of the way. I’m completely exposed to him, and his hands and mouth suddenly seem to be everywhere at the same time, his hunger for me seemingly insatiable. He kisses my neck and my collarbone, licking and nipping his way steadily downward. I moan loudly when Ronan’s tongue glides over my nipple, making it hard only to suck it into his mouth. His hand cups my other breast, his thumb teasing me, driving me absolutely wild. Heat and voracious want pulse between my legs, and they fall open.
“Ran, I need you,” I whisper, and Ronan pulls back, his hands on either side of me as he scans my face. Then he kisses me fiercely. He tries to adjust his position but winces, and his right hand snaps to his knee. “Are you okay?” I breathe, concerned.
Ronan doesn’t answer me. Instead, he kisses me deeply before pushing himself up and undoing the brace on his knee.
Although he moves more gingerly, his eyes are ablaze with want. He turns to his side to lie next to me, pulling me with him, facing me. I push his jeans down, and he manages to get them off the rest of the way, always gentle, always careful with his knee. Then his right hand moves around my thigh and pulls my leg over his hip, making me vulnerable to him. I’m beyond ready to feel him, aching for his touch there. My eyes flutter shut and my head falls back when Ronan’s hand moves from my back to my stomach, down between my thighs, then gently glides over that throbbing flesh that makes me pant out his name. He pushes me closer and closer to the edge as he strokes me softly, his fingers circling, sweeping, playing with the pressure until he finds one that makes me arch my back into him.
“God, Ran,” I whimper.
I moan, my breathing shallow, and I feel the pleasure build, threatening to overtake my thoughts and senses any second now. Just as I’m about to go over the edge, Ronan slips a finger inside me, feeling me like that while he continues to stroke me gently with his thumb. It’s all I need and I come undone, whimpering a moan with each orgasmic wave seizing my body.
“Fuck, baby,” Ronan groans quietly.
The ecstasy pulses through my veins and my hips grind against his hand. I never want him to stop touching me exactly the way he’s touching me right now; the ripples of pleasure rolling through me leave no space for thought or breath. It’s all-consuming.
But too soon, the waves let up, my climax waning, and I regain control long enough for Ronan to pull off his boxer briefs and roll onto his back. With both his hands, he grabs my hips and pulls me up and over him. I straddle his lap and, carefully, he pulls my hips down as he pushes up and into me. He watches me the entire time, making sure he isn’t causing me any pain as this is only the second time we’ve been together like this.
But there is no pain, only pleasure as he enters me. His eyes shut when I lower myself onto him all the way.
My body is primed and ready for him. I hold my breath at the sensation of him stretching and filling me, taking up all available space, and I marvel at the feeling that we were made just for one another, like two pieces of a puzzle fitting perfectly.
“I love you, Cat. I’ve always loved you,” Ronan breathes as he begins to thrust up and into me over and over again. He moves slowly at first, giving me time to adjust to him again. The way he feels—his fingers delving into the apples of my hips, his delicious thrusts—and the sound of his husky voice swirling all around me flood me with overwhelming love for him.
I don’t know what to do with my hands; all I know is I need to hold on to something. As if he can read my mind, Ronan guides my hands to his shoulders and I grip them tightly, digging my nails into his muscles while he cups my butt with his hands, splaying his palms over my cheeks, and continues to drive us on, his movements becoming faster and harder, matching our breathing, edging us to nirvana. I let my head fall back, eyes shut, feeling only him. God, I’ve missed him so much.
Unexpectedly, with one quick movement, Ronan holds on to me and flips us so I’m on my back and he’s between my legs, supporting himself on his forearms, our chests touching. I look at him, his eyes bright, glossy, fiery, his body burning as he thrusts, hard, and I’m no longer able to contain my moaning. I say his name over and over again before, finally, I’m pulled beneath the waves of pleasure again. I’m vaguely aware of the way Ronan’s breathing changes, how his muscles coil and his thrusts become less refined—more desperate—as he, too, seeks those few moments of blissful oblivion. I know he’s there, is on the cusp of climaxing, and I move my hips to collide with his. Ronan’s face momentarily takes on a pained expression before he seemingly falls into the void and comes. His head dips down as he breathes fitfully against my neck, his body tensing and releasing with each orgasmic shockwave rocking his body until he stills inside me with a deep, quiet exhale.
Tuesday, October 26th
Ronan
“I’m not okay.”
I’ve been home for just under three weeks now, trying to settle into a new routine. I finally went back to school last week, but I have a hard time focusing. I can feel my grades slipping; I’m way too behind from missing almost two months’ worth of classes. Plus, I keep having to leave early because it’s still too exhausting for me to sit in a chair for more than a couple of hours. My body gets stiff, every bone starts to ache, and I end up calling Steve or my dad to come get me and take me home.
I haven’t been able to keep up with the work because my mind is still so damn foggy from the meds I’ve been prescribed. It’s not the pain pills now—my doctors have been weaning me off those—but the anti-anxiety medication Doctor Seivert prescribed when she found out about the nightmares.
I’ve been having night terrors every night since I was in the rehab hospital. Some nights are better than others and I’m able to wake up by myself. But most nights I can’t, and the terror goes on and on until either my dad or Steve shake me into consciousness. I always startle awake, drenched in sweat, my breathing out of control, and my entire body aching. It’s to a point now where I’m afraid to go to sleep and I fight it for as long as I can until the exhaustion overtakes me, pulling me under and into darkness.
Each night leads me through the same hallway, into the same living room, facing the same person, feeling the same pain, the same fear. It’s relentless, and I’m fucking exhausted from the fractured sleep; the short, interrupted nights. So exhausted that I find myself zoning out or falling asleep in class, unable to focus or form a coherent thought. I doze off when I’m with my friends and Cat. She never says anything, but I know she’s worried; they all are. I keep feeling their eyes on me, especially Shane’s, who I think can sense my downward spiral.
I’m burdening them with my shit. I know everyone is ready to get back to normal, move on with life, and I’m keeping them stuck in this hole. They’ve all had to adjust their lives for me and it makes me feel guilty.
My dad is in New York full-time now, traveling only occasionally for work and to see Penny in Virginia. She comes to visit my dad on the weekends. Even this stranger had to adjust her life around me. Penny has stayed with us twice now and it’s still awkward as hell having her in the house. It startled the shit out of me when I got up that first morning she was here after I came home from the hospital. I slowly figured out a way to get down those damn stairs by myself with my crutches just to round the corner and see a woman standing in the damn kitchen. For a second, I thought it was my mother—even though she and Penny look nothing alike—and it took me a good minute to get my heart rate under control.
Steve has been taking online classes to stay on top of his credits before eventually moving to Boston, though he told me the other day that he wasn’t sure when that was going to happen. He feels obligated to stay and make sure I’m okay. Pile that on top of everything else.
And then there is Cat; beautiful, smart, kind, perfect Cat. Always by my side, loving me through everything, sacrificing her time with her friends to stay with me when I’m too exhausted to hang out with everyone, which has been happening more and more lately.
I haven’t been to Shane’s in over two weeks now, turning down most opportunities to hang out, and when they come over to spend time at my house, I end up getting fatigued so quickly that I either fall asleep on the couch or need to hobble up the stairs and to my room.
We were all supposed to hang out at Shane’s last weekend to celebrate Tori’s birthday, but I couldn’t muster up the energy. Fuck, I couldn’t even get out of bed, feeling the need to just sleep all day after almost no rest the night before, which was riddled by one nightmare after another. I ended up completely bowing out, urging Cat to go have fun, and, in the end, Steve and Vada picked her up and took her to Shane’s with them.
When Cat came over on Sunday, after I again declined to hang out with everyone, Cat told me she felt like I was withdrawing, and maybe I am. I don’t know. I just know that being around Zack, and Vada, and Shane, and Tori, and everyone else has been draining rather than invigorating. I don’t want them to worry about me, so I put on a face when I’d rather be alone. Really all I want is to sleep a dreamless sleep and not fucking wake up.
I have thought about ending it with Cat, for her sake. It would hurt more than hell, more than the physical pain my mother inflicted on me, to let her go, but maybe it’s best for her. She would have a chance to move on from this. I’m a burning, sinking ship, and she doesn’t need to be dragged down to the depths of darkness with me. She is too good, too perfect to be with someone as broken as me, and I don’t know how I can give all of myself to her when I’m half of who I used to be, and even that past version of me was nowhere near good enough for Cat.
It’s late Tuesday afternoon and I’m sitting in Doctor Seivert’s office. It’s a change from before when we would have sessions at my house, but she thought the change of scenery would be good for me, so my dad has been dragging me to her office twice a week for the past week or so, since my right knee still is not nearly well enough for me to drive myself. The doctor says it’ll take six to nine months to be fully healed, and even then I’ll likely have pretty significant limitations. It’s depressing to think that I might not be able to play hockey again or workout and run the way I used to.
Last week I found out that Drew was named captain of the varsity hockey team, purely based on seniority, since it’s pretty clear I’ll no longer be able to play. I anticipated this, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t affect me. I put so much damn effort into being good enough, into living up to my mom’s expectations of me—getting good grades, excelling at whatever she asked of me—and in the end, none of it mattered. It was never good enough, and in just minutes she managed to destroy everything I had ever worked for.
Yesterday was the preliminary hearing, the day when some random judge would decide whether there was enough evidence that my mother beat the living shit out of me, tried to end me, and should stand trial for what she did. Luckily, I didn’t have to testify, didn’t have to face her. There was enough evidence even without me present. The prosecutor came to our house on Friday and it was really the first time I heard about what some of the evidence would be. Although I was vaguely aware of Steve’s presence while I was on the ground, struggling to breathe, I hadn’t known that Zack was there too, that he had caught part of what happened on his camera. I haven’t seen the footage; I don’t think I’m ready, that I will ever be ready, although I have a feeling sooner or later I’ll have to watch it and relive everything.
In the end, the judge ruled that my mother should have to stand trial, which is preliminarily set for spring, though the D.A. told my dad that these things sometimes resolve beforehand, which would be the case if my mother changed her plea to guilty. God, I wish she would; I wish I wouldn’t have to testify, wouldn’t have to relive everything she has ever done to me, talk about it to strangers.
Yesterday was a hell of a day, and the night that followed was one of the worst yet. Every time I closed my eyes, I was right back on that god damn floor, feeling like I was drowning from the inside as my mother’s face, contorted in anger, loomed over me while she beat and kicked the life out me. My dad woke me up five or six times and then ended up just sleeping on the floor next to my bed because the dreams were nonstop and I couldn’t wake up from them by myself. Eventually, at around four in the morning, I just dragged my ass out of bed instead of going back to sleep, and when my dad joined me in the living room a couple hours later, he looked as sleep-deprived as I’ve been feeling for the past month.
I actually fell asleep during my math class today, just passed right out with my head on my desk and only woke up when Vada roused me after class had ended. My instructor stood next to her, a sympathetic look on his face, and told me to go to the office and have my dad or Steve come and take me home so I could get some rest.
My teachers have been cutting me a ton of slack, but that doesn’t mean my grades aren’t suffering. I just can’t keep up with classwork, never mind homework, papers, and projects. It’s a lost cause at this point.
“I’m not okay,” I say again, more to myself than to Doctor Seivert. We’ve been sitting here for the last half hour, talking about the preliminary hearing and, for some reason, I suddenly felt the urge to let her know what’s really going on inside me.
Seeing her for the past month and a half has felt like a delicate balance. Open up just enough to make these hour-long sessions pass, but not enough that I break open completely because I constantly feel like I’m toeing the line of losing myself forever if I open the door too far. Things have been bubbling under the surface, and I feel like I’m getting worse rather than better, which is something I’ve been realizing for a while now. The dark thoughts have been encroaching on my days and nights, but it really hit me last night while I was sitting in the living room in the dark with Onyx by my feet. It was quiet in the house; Steve and my dad were finally getting some rest now that I was awake and not interrupting their night with my near-constant nightmares.
My mind wandered to the bathroom upstairs—like it has so many times these past couple weeks—and the unlocked medicine cabinet that holds my painkillers and anti-anxiety medication. There’s enough that, if I took it all at once, I would be asleep within half an hour—quickly enough that neither Steve nor my dad would know what I had done until it was too late. And the idea that I could just do it—end it all—that I had control of at least that aspect of my life, that I could just finally go to sleep without being afraid, excited me and scared the shit out of me at the same time. And what scared me even more was that I knew exactly how I’d do it, how to increase my chances of keeping a significant number of the pills down long enough to do what I so desperately wanted them to do.
I can’t describe the stillness, the peace, and the calm that came over me when I realized I had that power—that I could just end it. And they would all be free—Cat, my friends, Steve, my dad, hell, even my mother would finally get what she’s been wanting since the moment she found out she was pregnant with me.
“Can you elaborate on that for me, Ronan?” Doctor Seivert asks, and puts her notepad down on the little glass table beside her black leather chair to rest her hands on her lap. I fucking hate glass tables.
Doctor Seivert is wearing a beige knit sweater—it looks soft, like cashmere or something fancy—and she has on black trousers that only reach her high-heeled, boot-clad calves.
“I’m so damn tired. All the time,” I say without looking at my therapist. I keep bouncing my left leg and I can feel how tense my shoulders are. My eyes are burning from the lack of sleep and I shut them tightly while pinching the bridge of my nose between my left index finger and thumb.
Doctor Seivert doesn’t say anything, which is her way of urging me to continue talking.
“All I want… is to go to sleep.” I raise my eyes now, looking at her, and even though I don’t want to say the words that are burning in my chest, I hope to god she can read my face and understand what I’m trying to convey to her. I need help before I do something really fucking stupid.
She nods slowly, her lips parted as she leans forward slightly, lessening the distance between us. “Ronan, are you having thoughts of suicide?”
Her forward question is a shock to the system, and I feel shame wash through me when I nod my head yes.
“Tell me about those thoughts,” she urges, her voice soft as she interlaces her hands and scoots her chair toward me a little bit more.
