Colour Series Box Set (78 page)

Callum has made me care for him, the weight of the diamond on my finger and the whispering of love in my heart will torture me forever because I know I am killing the one thing I love. I just cannot stop, even if I do the chances are it is too late now, the Phenacetin will have destroyed his kidneys and tumours will have already started grow. He won’t die now, not for a long time, but he will die because of what I have done.
“Shannon you are going to be a death sentence to anyone who gets near you, just stay away from them all.”
My father’s words when he found out what I was doing for fun. He was furious with me for making my silent pact with Neil, because he had to share me now.

Callum will get to see the torture of me watching him die. Somehow deep down, he knows. He always knew I would.

There was an exact moment when I felt love for the first time in my life. I was free of my family and my past and my heart could beat free and I felt it strangling me from the inside out.
Love
, I did not hate Callum I loved him with all the fire of hell, but it was love none the less. In realising what I felt and truly being able to feel, I could feel his love for me and see how it blinded him to how dangerous I was. Because I am now blind too. I feel the two parts of me pulling apart, two separate pieces of the same soul. The killer, because I know I will still kill, and the woman. I am free of what was expected and I can just be. As I watch him fight to get well, battling his therapists and Doctors every step of the way. I see him becoming himself, but also someone new. It settles deep into my black heart. I will never get rid of it now. I love him and it hurts. The worst pain I have ever felt makes my hands shake and my heart flutters. I let a tear sneak free as I watch him push himself to get well and it makes me happy. I am not so sure I like the way happy feels. Angry, bitter and resentful are all I have known for so very long.

I watch him struggle back to life as he fights the limitations of his weak body and fragile state of mind. He has put the monster to bed, but the monster is only sleeping. I know that there will be a time when I see the monster again. He speaks to me as if he never laid his hands on me as if the scars on my skin are not from his torture. He either doesn’t remember or chooses to ignore the physical abuse he so easily inflicted on my body. I elect to ignore it, to bury it with my mother and all the other shit that my past had heaped on me over the years. I want to take the fact that he has woken up as a new beginning for the both of us. I choose to love him because I have a choice at last.
This has to be love, what else could it be?

Callum is frustrated at his frailty and the need to stay in the hospital. The bite of anger starts to build slowly over the weeks as they pass by at a snail’s pace for us both. We fall into a rhythm of me taking care of him and him needing me to. I feel quiet inside, there is no grey, no black there is nothing but him consuming every corner of my mind. Art’s stories of his childhood etched in my head, the birth of the monster was just as brutal as my own.
I flashback to the first time we had sex, he told me he wasn’t normal and that he would take what he needed from me whether I wanted to give it him or not. As he bound, beat and raped me my mind shrieked and I fought against him as hard as I could only making him want to hurt me more. As hard as I fought it my body was attracted to it, responded to it. I was so ashamed of it. Now I would give anything to have that night over again.

I may be in love with Callum, but my lady bits are still very much in lust with the idea of him beating the shit out of me. But he won’t touch me, he barely looks at me. Not even a peck on the cheek. His cold rejection now that I can admit the feelings I have to myself, hurts me even more. I miss him so much. I dream of his touch, the ones that hurt and those that didn’t I want him to take me body and soul. I want to be his again.

Four weeks of this dance, of not
saying
anything when we talk before we finally broke down and it was all out there in the open. Shattered, splintered and smashed into a million shards of what we were. Callum didn’t speak at first he didn’t need to, he simply reached for me and took my hand as we walked to his room, his grip not strong like before it was softer. We walked from the rehab centre in silence and the sound of my heels clicking on the floor surrounding us. His steps are determined and for the first time since he woke up he is standing tall and even though it is just a shadow I see the Callum from before. He pulls me gently into his room and closes the door and the curtain that stops anyone from looking in. His breaths are short and heavy, and I can feel the electric tug that pulled us together in the beginning as he snakes his arms around me. His touch burns like fire, every movement another lick of the flames. He pulls me close and holds me to his chest the smell of him is making my senses tingle, and I am alive with a burst of feelings I have not felt before. A want like no other, I want him, and it is an honest want. I no longer need Callum to keep me safe from monsters, him included, I want him to keep me safe from myself.

He looks into my soul with his green eyes, the evil is gone and lust and love are all I can see when he moves even closer. I feel his breaths warm on my skin and his heaving chest pressed firmly against mine, my nipples react shamelessly to the friction. I can’t look knowing what I have done, I rest my head against his chest turning from his gaze and he whispers softly into my hair. My guilt smothers the tenderness of this moment. When he speaks to me the venom from before is gone and he bleeds words so full of feeling, I want to run away from him. My heart beats too fast because he touches me, my mind won’t focus clearly and I understand why love makes us stupid.

“I am sorry for the things I have done to you, I am sorry for hurting you. I love you to the point of madness Shannon, I love you enough to let you walk out of the door right now if that is what you need to be happy.” His words become static after that and my mind says run.
Run for your life Shannon, but my heart breaks and I have to tell him the truth.
Shattered shards of all the years that came before him break off and I know for the first time ever
who
I am. I am toxic, I am a murderer, but under it all I am a person and he loves me. I see him waiting for my reply, for my rejection.

“Callum I am not going to walk out the door, not unless you ask me to after I tell you some hard truths. Then if you want I will walk away and never look back, but if you can see past what I have to say and still truly love me I will stay. I will stay because Callum, for the first time ever I know I
love
something, I love you.” I push away from him breaking his hold on me. I don’t want him to touch me while I tell him what I have done.

His eyes glint with tears threatening to betray his outer strength and I know my actions will crush him. In a moment of hesitation and conscience, I change my mind and I resign myself to live with this secret on my soul forever. I will love him, care for him, nurse and bury him for what I have done, but I don’t think I can ever tell him all of it. “I tried to kill you while you were asleep,” I say the words, I speak the lie looking him in the eye hoping he sees it and calls me out. Hoping he sends me away because I don’t have the strength to walk away when I know I should. He doesn’t say a word, he looks wounded. My lip trembles with the tears that I desperately try to hold back.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I love you, and I am so sorry.
The words fill my head but don’t come out of my mouth.

“I am sorry Callum, I was drowning in all of this, I have lost myself and I didn’t know how to cope so I did what I always did before. It didn’t work, I couldn’t kill you because my heart only beats with yours and I love you. If you die, I die.” I feel my tears burning and stinging as they fall down my cheeks and the weight of my actions falls heavier on my heart. “You changed me, you changed how I work and I cannot make it go back. I cannot get the high or the satisfaction without you. I need you so deeply that I am afraid of what I would become without you. My compulsions were always grey, there is no grey without you, and you are the white that I need to make my black heart grey. I thought I hated you, it burned in me
you
are one of
them
. You are just like the ones who made me this way. The thing is the line between love and hate is so thin that I was dancing on the wrong side of it. You are not them; you came to save me from them. Because love burns, love scorches through me when I am with you and I am alive. Hate is as cold as the ice that was in my veins as I spat on your brother's coffin when it sank into the damp earth. Hate is all I ever knew until you. ” I let my own tears leak down my cheeks and the little part of my heart that isn’t completely broken beats just for him. I don’t know how to do this, how to feel these things. I think I should walk away and save him from me. If he ever finds out the truth he will kill me and I know it. This love will only ever hurt us, but I want it so badly I cannot leave. All, I ever wanted, was real love I can’t let it go now.

Callum steps into my personal space again stealing the air from my lungs and the thoughts from my mind, he stills my chaos. His touch ignites me, he is going to burn me to ashes and I want him to. I don’t deserve love, not his love, but I want it so badly it hurts me. I only have such a little love to give back.

His hands don’t carry the threat of pain they brought before as he touches his palm over my shoulders and down my arms, causing me to shiver.  Broken things can never be whole, but broken people can find another who completes them. In those moments, as he pulls me to his body and I feel his heart beat to the rhythm of mine I know I have at last found mine. His hands explore me, softly with intent but not the intent to hurt me like before. He breathes me in and slowly the princess, the ghost and all the sins of our fathers leave the room, it is only us, all of us the real us are in this moment. I want it to last forever. The little bit of forever that Callum has left.
You don’t get forever Shannon, you stole your own happy ever after.

“Shannon, I love you enough to forgive you, I may never forget but I forgive you. I did terrible things to you. I need to admit that I hurt you, I am almost certain at times I raped you and I need you to know I am sorry. I wanted to die. I think that’s why I couldn’t wake up. I didn’t have a reason to, other than you I have nothing to live for. Just please don’t try kill me again, I want to be alive to enjoy every part of you. To feel your love.” He pushes my tears away with his strong thumbs. “I want to take you home with me away from this place and the ghosts.” His lips claim mine and with them my heart, without a doubt in my mind I never hated him, I loved him. I fought so hard against it that I missed it. We are meant to be the monster we have become together; I will never be able to live alone again. “Don’t walk away Shannon, please,” a desperate plea between kisses and hands and touch and fire.

“Never.” Is all I manage to coax from my mouth as Callum moves me to his too small hospital bed. I feel as though I am watching from outside my body as he doesn’t hurt me but worships me. My clothes fall to the floor with his sweat pants and his hands touch every inch of me and mine him. His body isn’t the machine it was before but he is still a big man and his body envelops mine as he hovers above me. There are a million reasons I should stop him and walk away, but I cannot go. I have a new high and it is him. We cannot deny or ignore the absolute raw sexual attraction that was there right from the start, but
this
is more. As Callum slowly makes love to me in that small bed. I watch the killer in me walk away with his monster and I feel it all I feel every stroke of him inside me. I feel his emotion as he tries to stop himself from being rough and hurting me. I feel my tears welling over my eyelids, I see his green eyes staring into mine as he claims me and my heart. I dig my heels into his thighs trying to pull him closer to make this feeling a part of me forever. I want this. I want
this
, I want him to consume me.
A small part of me warns that no one could ever love me. I am poison. I am unlovable I kill everything that gets close.

I have killed him already so I am free to love him.

Before, all I felt, was the agony and the pain, I only saw this softer Callum once and I missed it in my anger and confusion. I feel every inch of him as he takes me slowly and the torture is so different than before. I don’t black out and miss it all, I feel the way his hands are twisting in my hair his muscles tensing as he thrusts slowly with restraint. I feel his breaths on my neck where he kisses my sensitive skin and I just want more. Something takes us over and we move as one frantic body that cannot give or take enough and just when I feel that I cannot go any longer my body shatters into the orgasm that has been building for so long. I go over the cliff and a million pieces of me are left as Callum goes with me.

He shifts us so that we are spooning, naked on the small bed and I allow myself to drift away back into the moment we just shared, to the possibilities of what may come next. I want to relive it over and over. I want this, I want it forever.

His arms pull close to him, I have never had a place that was truly home, but his arms around me make feel like I have found one at last. “I love you Callum, I am sorry, so so sorry,” I whisper as he holds me close.