Page 30 of Shattered Souls

There’s a rough sketch of a lighter and a flame that burns into a skull. Another one is a crying angel with its wings draped over its exhausted body in defeat. A butterfly trapped in a bag unable to escape. A knife piercing through a skull. My hand stills over the sketch of a pregnant woman, pregnant with twins, her face is beautiful as she peers down at her swollen stomach but it’s the babies within. One of them is black with what looks like rot while the other cries blood into her womb.

Hyde’s hand comes into view and he slowly spells out I DO TATTOOS.

“These are amazing.” I admit. The work is full of emotion and pain, something I relate to far too well.

He lifts his hand again to spell something out but instantly drops it. His face twists for a split second before he reaches down and grabs a pad of paper and a pen.

Why won’t you sleep in your room?

He turns the pad and lets me read his scratchy handwriting. For someone who does such beautiful art, he needs to work on his penmanship.

“It’s too quiet.” I walk back to his bed and plop down once more. He brings his pad over, scribbling once more, and sits beside me.

If you just made it through the weekend, Seek was going to move you out of there.

“So why don’t you?” My voice grows sharper. “You seem to have just as much control as him, but you refuse to do anything. One second you’re touching me in the shower, and the next you act like I don’t exist.”

I’ll admit I touched myself that night, imagining that my fingers belonged to the mute man in front of me—and every fucking night since. But I also started to miss the way he took time to spell things out for me with patience I wasn’t granted from his brother.

It’s complicated.

“You have paper, and I have time!” I plop backwards and immediately moan at the feeling of his plush mattress.

The pen scraping against the paper relaxes my muscles. The sound vanishes and I look up at him and the pad of paper now facing me.

I’ll let you sleep in here tonight, but you have to be secured to the bed.

“Yes,” I sit up and crawl towards him. “Yes. Yes. Yes! Please.” He sucks in a breath at our proximity, and I laugh. “Fuck, I could kiss your crazy ass for that.”

He grabs the junction of my cuffs and slowly leads me to his headboard. He brings my wrists to the corner and with his free hands spells out for me to lay down. I lay flat against the mattress and watch his tatted torso shift as he straddles me, pinning my hips down.

He unlocks my right wrist and tucks the cuffs behind the post before securing it back on my arm. I tug a few times—nothing. He looks down at me, his body still hovering over mine and waits.

I reach up and place a small and delicate kiss on his cheek. “Thank you.”

10

Rayvn

Iwake to the sound of water running.

I groan and try to roll to my side.

“Fuck!” I bark out as a sharp pain shoots down both of my shoulder blades. A thud comes from the bathroom before Hyde slides into the room with a towel cupping his family jewels.

He shoots his brows up to ask if I’m okay, but I can’t answer due to the tears welling in my eyes and the lump clawing its way up my throat. I shake my head instead, but that alone sends another wave of the pain down my arms.

He doesn’t skip a beat before crawling over the bed, reaching over me to grab the keys, and swiftly unlocking both hands. I whimper and curl into a ball, massaging my wrists and biting my tongue as I wait out the radiating pain.

“Fuck,” I hiss. My back and shoulders feel like they’re on fire, and it’s slowly creeping into my chest. “It hurts.” My body curls tighter on itself to try and inch away from the pain.

Large hands scoop me up, causing me to whimper again, and move me out of the room. He swiftly moves me into the warm shower despite my fully clothed body.

He places me on my feet and turns us so my back is getting peppered with the hot stream. He presses my head into his chest and strokes my hair that’s now damp with sweat as I sob.

It takes a while for the pain to subside into nothing more than a dull, burning ache. But once it does, I look up at Hyde, not pushing away from him. He smiles down at me and I’m hit like a freight train with the feeling slowly pooling in my belly.

“Hyde,” He tucks a loose strand behind my ear.