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Chapter 10 (Lou-Lou)
I'm lying face down on the bathroom floor wishing I wasn't such a fucking coward.
Wishing I had the strength to just stick this fucking needle in my arm and end my miserable life. Wishing my self-preservation would just give up and call it quits.
I'll never be normal...no matter how hard I try.
I'll always be dirty and ruined.
I'll always feel his hands on me, touching me in places he shouldn't be touching me and forcing me to do things that little girls shouldn't be forced to do.
I'll always hear my father's voice warning me that if I cry...he'll only make it worse.
God, I wish I was able to cry instead of tremble and shake all the time. I wish I could cry and wash all these sins away.
I squeeze my eyes shut as tremors hit my body with a force great enough to make me start dry heaving.
I feel a pair of arms around me and my first reaction is to start kicking and punching especially when they start shaking me. “No, don't fucking do this to me, Lou-Lou,” Ricardo screams.
I open my eyes and relief splashes across his face. He picks up the needle and examines it. “Thank god,” he whispers when he realizes the heroin was drawn up but wasn't injected.
“Tyrone didn't do anything wrong,” I tell him.
I really don't want him blaming Tyrone for any of this. None of what happened was his fault.
“It's me. I'm so fucked up.”
His face falls and he tries holding me but shudders slam through me again and I roll out of his arms.
I curl up in a fetal position on the floor, my cheek resting against the cold tiles.
I look over and see Ricardo lying beside me on the floor, reaching for my hand. “Please let me in. You don't have to go through this alone.”
The agony in his voice when he says that only makes this feeling worse. I don't want him to care about me, because when he finds out the truth—when he see's how dirty I am...he'll be gone.
And even though we hardly know each other...there's something about him that makes me believe in things again.
Things like fairytales and happy endings.
My chest caves in when the truth rears its ugly head.
Girls like me don't get the fairytales.
Because the white knights never want the dirty, damaged girls.
They know there's nothing left of us that's salvageable...nothing left of us that hasn't already been taken and destroyed.
And saving us? Will only ruin them.
“Leave.” I get up and shove him away. “Just leave me.”
I need him to leave me alone, I don't want to infect him with my poison. I don't want him to see me for what I really am.
My skin crawls and I have to get rid of this feeling.
There's only one place to do that.
I expect him to walk out the door when he watches me haul myself into the bathtub, but he doesn't.
“I'm not leaving you,” he says. “You can scream, you can shove me, you can beat the shit out of me for all I care, but I'm still not leaving. I already told you, if you want to shut the rest of the world out and lock away the key—push everyone away and be a bitch in order to protect yourself...that's fine. I won't stop you and I won't judge you...but you will let me in.”
I rest my head against the porcelain. “No, I won't.”
“Too late. Because whether you meant to show me or not—I see you, Lou-Lou. And I'm not going anywhere. Let your guard down with me for one night. That's all I'm asking for right now. You can go back to being the tough girl who thinks I'm an asshole tomorrow.”
I open my mouth to tell him to leave again but he strips down to his boxers and walks over to the tub.
He goes to turn the water on but I halt him. “I never fill the tub with water.”
“I'm sorry. I just assumed—”
I cut him off. “There's no point.”
“Why?”
I tell him the biggest truth of all..the truth that I'm forced to live with. “Because the water doesn't wash all the shame away...nothing does.”
That's the monster in the dark that keeps me imprisoned ...that's what kills my soul over and over, every single day.
It's not the despicable acts committed every night in my childhood bedroom that ruined me...it's the shame it caused.
The shame that never goes away.
Before I can stop him he's climbing into the bathtub and wrapping his arms around me.
I squirm and try to get out of his hold but he latches on, refusing to let me out of his embrace.
I start pounding on his chest, wishing he wouldn't waste his time on a girl like me...a girl who's tarnished and unclean.
I launch my fist into his chest again. “I refuse to break. I won't let you break me, Ricardo.”
He lifts my chin and looks at me. “I don't want to break you, Lou-Lou.”
He leans his forehead against mine. “But sometimes you have to break in order to be fixed. And if you trust me enough to fall apart, I swear...I'll put you back together again.”
I feel something inside me crack and I fall against his chest.
Then I do something I've never done before.
I let him in and I show him my scars.