circe.

You remember the screech of tires on frozen asphalt. A flash of headlights. Spinning, spinning, spinning. Your body ignited in pain. Then… darkness.

Darkness that seemed to spread before you for an eternity. Untethered and stuck in limbo, perhaps in another universe, you would call it the most peaceful slumber of your life. The misfortune comes when you wake. Lightning strikes shake you awake from the darkness of your subconsciousness. Electricity trembling in your chest as it shoots through your beaten frame. A light peers through your closed eyes. Brighter, and brighter… bigger and bigger. A ringing in your ears that almost deafens you.

The world shifts around you, and you wake paralyzed, staring at the ceiling in the warm sun that falls on your body lying there. Everything hurts. There is a humming in your head that you cannot seem to shake out of.

The solitude lasts for a beat. Then another. That’s when you see him.

A sleepless, roughened man looking at you with his warm eyes. Through the bleary vision of your own gaze, a shaky breath escapes him. His crinkled eyes looking over your features with a swift once over.

“Oh, Christ, you’re awake.”

And that’s how you met Joel.

–

In the week that followed your complicated recovery, Joel tells you he saw the crash. Tells you the asshole who ran you over was nowhere to be seen. He says most of it with his eyes averted. Yet you hold your gaze.

You will not be weakened by the shame of your misery.

It is two days later when you confess to him; your throat still rasping as the pain in your head boils and toils beneath your skull. You look at him when he arrives, paint-stained shirt providing evidence of a messy day of working. “I don’t want to think about what happened to me anymore, Joel.”

Your tongue grabs at words the way young children do with sticky fruit in the summer. As if language has become foreign to you.

Joel, keys in hand, meets your gaze with a furrowed brow. “Sure, sugar. Whatever you need.”

Maybe your eyes were tricking you, but you could’ve sworn you saw his shoulders relax from some kind of tension leaving his body.

–

Joel doesn’t know what he had gotten himself into. What he does know is that for some reason, he couldn’t bear the idea of staying away from you. You tell him fragments of what little you remember, your concussed consciousness blindly clawing at every last bit of beaten brain matter for some kind of answer. 

You sometimes cry from the effort it takes you to think, but he’s there. The first few times, he held your hand. As the hours bled into days, he held you as you wet his shirt with warm tears. Sometimes, when the nightmares reach him in his own bed a few miles out from the hospital, it feels like you’re bleeding into him.

From the moment he saw you, he had been marked. And no matter how many times he scratched at his own skin, he could never wash away the blood on his hands.

–

He’s the one to take you home to your quiet little apartment, having grown dust in your absence. You apologize, he waves you off. He watches you as you peer out of the window, comprehending a view that had once been so mundane, transformed into some shred of a miracle for you to still be there, witnessing it all. He’s behind you, ten feet away, tilting his head as your hair catches what little sunlight blessed you the day you left the hospital.

He says your name, and you look back at him with a curious smile. “My God,” he followed. “You look just like starlight.” He steps forward, and that’s when you know everything had fallen into place. Without another moment lapsing, he takes your face into his hands, pulling you into a searing kiss.

You apologize so many times. For the hospital smell on your skin. For your trembling knees. For the dizzying sensation of human contact without the involvement of medical processes. For feeling so unclean.

Meanwhile, he apologizes, too. For kissing you. For pulling you to him. For holding you. For carrying you to the forlorn couch grown cold from the absence of human warmth. So many times that there are times that you don’t know what is there to apologize for. You shake your head each and every time.

The tears roll down your cheek just as he pulls away and his eyes immediately soften. You shake your head, pulling him into another kiss as you whine.

There are many things you want to tell him. But you don’t dare tell him this: Sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you have been ruined.

“Tell me to stop, honey, and I will,” he murmurs, holding your cheek as you pause between touches. You shake your head immediately. You want many things. You are hungry and untamed. But you do not want him to stop.

You tell him as much. “Joel, don’t you dare stop.”

And he doesn’t. Not when you’re naked and he sees your bruised skin, purple and yellowed in places. He looks to you just as your body tenses. His demeanor softens, kissing along your jaw and your neck with a shaky breath.

“I won’t hurt ya, darlin’.”

He keeps to that promise. Even when your legs are around his waist and he’s caught in your warmth. He says it again and again as you whine into the cool, quiet solitude of your home.

I won’t hurt you, I won’t hurt you.

–

Falling in love with Joel was both so complicated and so simple at once. Whenever you wake beside him, you wake up writhing from the pain of your injuries; sometimes crying from the nightmares that followed every waking moment. You felt marred by shame for putting so much of your perceived burden on his shoulders. He never departs from your side, his strong arms placating you while his lips press against your temple.

It’s all so simple, the way he cares about you. And whether or not you admitted it, you like the feeling of being cared for. Of having someone that cares.

Regardless, you cannot escape the fact that someone did this to you. And whenever the pain shocks your body, everything but rabid rage escapes your body. You curse the stranger, whoever they may be, for that cursed night.

Joel sees glimpses of this. He saw it most that one afternoon when the hospital called, saying you had been taken care of. By who, they didn’t say. Only that the stranger apologized for what happened.

You were on the floor, hands trembling in the fists you held them in. The hospital bill crumpled a few inches away. You do not see him. What you see is all red.

A wail escapes your trembling mouth just as your hands claw at anything they can touch. It is an uncontrollable surge of blinding, mouth-foaming, unbridled rage. He’s there, trying to hold you down before you hurt yourself. Each wail pierces another hole into his aching heart. Each struggle followed by his gentle shushing, trying to assuage you in the crest of your emotion.

“Whoever it was,” you told him then as you sobbed. “They ruined my life.”

“Darlin, darlin’...” He breathes in, cupping your face. “Maybe he’s around and he regrets-”

“No!” You claw at him, just as he holds you tighter against his chest. “If he could find me, then he could say it to my face. He wouldn’t be some coward who left me alone like this after he ruined my life!”

It destroys him. And you can see it in his face. All he can do is hold you as you cry against his chest. All he can do is shut his eyes, letting the waves of grief crest over and over your frame. Letting your sobs tear him open and burn him out.

He tells you nothing lasts forever. That he’ll be there for as close to forever as possible. You shake your head because you know better. He says nothing lasts forever. He doesn’t know he’s just afraid your pain can last longer than he is capable of loving you.

–

Perhaps, to the end of his days, Joel will regret that drunken night. He’ll regret following his bleary gaze through the quiet, sleet-slick roads. He’ll regret the fact that he couldn’t have stopped his truck sooner.

When he steps out into the cold just as he smells the acrid scent of burning tires, he sees your bloodied face in your car. So small. So undeserving. He muttered a string of cusses. The sudden shock of adrenaline washing away the last of his drunkenness. He looks back at his truck, horrifically beaten, his gaze doubling from his last bout of drunkenness.

He bargains that night. Calls up someone high up amongst the police rank to bail him out. He negotiated for ten minutes. Then he hides the truck somewhere off the side of the road for him to come back to and dispose of. And then, only then, did he call for help.

Only then did he reach you in the driver’s seat, blood now caked to your skin as he lay you out amongst the concrete.

You make some sound, and he cusses to himself.

His rough palms cup your cheek, trying to get you to look at him then. But you were too far gone.

He spoke, anyway. Just in case you’ll hear it.

“It’s alright, doll. I won’t hurt you.”

Even now, weeks after he stole your life from you, he holds you and tells you the same thing anyway. The same set of words that manage to calm you down.

He does love you. And it breaks him every day to know he was the one to endanger you.

You remember the screech of tires on frozen asphalt. A flash of headlights. Spinning, spinning, spinning. Your body ignited in pain. Then… darkness.

Darkness that seemed to spread before you for an eternity. Untethered and stuck in limbo, perhaps in another universe, you would call it the most peaceful slumber of your life. The misfortune comes when you wake. Lightning strikes shake you awake from the darkness of your subconsciousness. Electricity trembling in your chest as it shoots through your beaten frame. A light peers through your closed eyes. Brighter, and brighter… bigger and bigger. A ringing in your ears that almost deafens you.

The world shifts around you, and you wake paralyzed, staring at the ceiling in the warm sun that falls on your body lying there. Everything hurts. There is a humming in your head that you cannot seem to shake out of.

The solitude lasts for a beat. Then another. That’s when you see him.

A sleepless, roughened man looking at you with his warm eyes. Through the bleary vision of your own gaze, a shaky breath escapes him. His crinkled eyes looking over your features with a swift once over.

“Oh, Christ, you’re awake.”

And that’s how you met Joel.

–

In the week that followed your complicated recovery, Joel tells you he saw the crash. Tells you the asshole who ran you over was nowhere to be seen. He says most of it with his eyes averted. Yet you hold your gaze.

You will not be weakened by the shame of your misery.

It is two days later when you confess to him; your throat still rasping as the pain in your head boils and toils beneath your skull. You look at him when he arrives, paint-stained shirt providing evidence of a messy day of working. “I don’t want to think about what happened to me anymore, Joel.”

Your tongue grabs at words the way young children do with sticky fruit in the summer. As if language has become foreign to you.

Joel, keys in hand, meets your gaze with a furrowed brow. “Sure, sugar. Whatever you need.”

Maybe your eyes were tricking you, but you could’ve sworn you saw his shoulders relax from some kind of tension leaving his body.

–

Joel doesn’t know what he had gotten himself into. What he does know is that for some reason, he couldn’t bear the idea of staying away from you. You tell him fragments of what little you remember, your concussed consciousness blindly clawing at every last bit of beaten brain matter for some kind of answer. 

You sometimes cry from the effort it takes you to think, but he’s there. The first few times, he held your hand. As the hours bled into days, he held you as you wet his shirt with warm tears. Sometimes, when the nightmares reach him in his own bed a few miles out from the hospital, it feels like you’re bleeding into him.

From the moment he saw you, he had been marked. And no matter how many times he scratched at his own skin, he could never wash away the blood on his hands.

–

He’s the one to take you home to your quiet little apartment, having grown dust in your absence. You apologize, he waves you off. He watches you as you peer out of the window, comprehending a view that had once been so mundane, transformed into some shred of a miracle for you to still be there, witnessing it all. He’s behind you, ten feet away, tilting his head as your hair catches what little sunlight blessed you the day you left the hospital.

He says your name, and you look back at him with a curious smile. “My God,” he followed. “You look just like starlight.” He steps forward, and that’s when you know everything had fallen into place. Without another moment lapsing, he takes your face into his hands, pulling you into a searing kiss.

You apologize so many times. For the hospital smell on your skin. For your trembling knees. For the dizzying sensation of human contact without the involvement of medical processes. For feeling so unclean.

Meanwhile, he apologizes, too. For kissing you. For pulling you to him. For holding you. For carrying you to the forlorn couch grown cold from the absence of human warmth. So many times that there are times that you don’t know what is there to apologize for. You shake your head each and every time.

The tears roll down your cheek just as he pulls away and his eyes immediately soften. You shake your head, pulling him into another kiss as you whine.

There are many things you want to tell him. But you don’t dare tell him this: Sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you have been ruined.

“Tell me to stop, honey, and I will,” he murmurs, holding your cheek as you pause between touches. You shake your head immediately. You want many things. You are hungry and untamed. But you do not want him to stop.

You tell him as much. “Joel, don’t you dare stop.”

And he doesn’t. Not when you’re naked and he sees your bruised skin, purple and yellowed in places. He looks to you just as your body tenses. His demeanor softens, kissing along your jaw and your neck with a shaky breath.

“I won’t hurt ya, darlin’.”

He keeps to that promise. Even when your legs are around his waist and he’s caught in your warmth. He says it again and again as you whine into the cool, quiet solitude of your home.

I won’t hurt you, I won’t hurt you.

–

Falling in love with Joel was both so complicated and so simple at once. Whenever you wake beside him, you wake up writhing from the pain of your injuries; sometimes crying from the nightmares that followed every waking moment. You felt marred by shame for putting so much of your perceived burden on his shoulders. He never departs from your side, his strong arms placating you while his lips press against your temple.

It’s all so simple, the way he cares about you. And whether or not you admitted it, you like the feeling of being cared for. Of having someone that cares.

Regardless, you cannot escape the fact that someone did this to you. And whenever the pain shocks your body, everything but rabid rage escapes your body. You curse the stranger, whoever they may be, for that cursed night.

Joel sees glimpses of this. He saw it most that one afternoon when the hospital called, saying you had been taken care of. By who, they didn’t say. Only that the stranger apologized for what happened.

You were on the floor, hands trembling in the fists you held them in. The hospital bill crumpled a few inches away. You do not see him. What you see is all red.

A wail escapes your trembling mouth just as your hands claw at anything they can touch. It is an uncontrollable surge of blinding, mouth-foaming, unbridled rage. He’s there, trying to hold you down before you hurt yourself. Each wail pierces another hole into his aching heart. Each struggle followed by his gentle shushing, trying to assuage you in the crest of your emotion.

“Whoever it was,” you told him then as you sobbed. “They ruined my life.”

“Darlin, darlin’...” He breathes in, cupping your face. “Maybe he’s around and he regrets-”

“No!” You claw at him, just as he holds you tighter against his chest. “If he could find me, then he could say it to my face. He wouldn’t be some coward who left me alone like this after he ruined my life!”

It destroys him. And you can see it in his face. All he can do is hold you as you cry against his chest. All he can do is shut his eyes, letting the waves of grief crest over and over your frame. Letting your sobs tear him open and burn him out.

He tells you nothing lasts forever. That he’ll be there for as close to forever as possible. You shake your head because you know better. He says nothing lasts forever. He doesn’t know he’s just afraid your pain can last longer than he is capable of loving you.

–

Perhaps, to the end of his days, Joel will regret that drunken night. He’ll regret following his bleary gaze through the quiet, sleet-slick roads. He’ll regret the fact that he couldn’t have stopped his truck sooner.

When he steps out into the cold just as he smells the acrid scent of burning tires, he sees your bloodied face in your car. So small. So undeserving. He muttered a string of cusses. The sudden shock of adrenaline washing away the last of his drunkenness. He looks back at his truck, horrifically beaten, his gaze doubling from his last bout of drunkenness.

He bargains that night. Calls up someone high up amongst the police rank to bail him out. He negotiated for ten minutes. Then he hides the truck somewhere off the side of the road for him to come back to and dispose of. And then, only then, did he call for help.

Only then did he reach you in the driver’s seat, blood now caked to your skin as he lay you out amongst the concrete.

You make some sound, and he cusses to himself.

His rough palms cup your cheek, trying to get you to look at him then. But you were too far gone.

He spoke, anyway. Just in case you’ll hear it.

“It’s alright, doll. I won’t hurt you.”

Even now, weeks after he stole your life from you, he holds you and tells you the same thing anyway. The same set of words that manage to calm you down.

He does love you. And it breaks him every day to know he was the one to endanger you.

You remember the screech of tires on frozen asphalt. A flash of headlights. Spinning, spinning, spinning. Your body ignited in pain. Then… darkness.

Darkness that seemed to spread before you for an eternity. Untethered and stuck in limbo, perhaps in another universe, you would call it the most peaceful slumber of your life. The misfortune comes when you wake. Lightning strikes shake you awake from the darkness of your subconsciousness. Electricity trembling in your chest as it shoots through your beaten frame. A light peers through your closed eyes. Brighter, and brighter… bigger and bigger. A ringing in your ears that almost deafens you.

The world shifts around you, and you wake paralyzed, staring at the ceiling in the warm sun that falls on your body lying there. Everything hurts. There is a humming in your head that you cannot seem to shake out of.

The solitude lasts for a beat. Then another. That’s when you see him.

A sleepless, roughened man looking at you with his warm eyes. Through the bleary vision of your own gaze, a shaky breath escapes him. His crinkled eyes looking over your features with a swift once over.

“Oh, Christ, you’re awake.”

And that’s how you met Joel.

–

In the week that followed your complicated recovery, Joel tells you he saw the crash. Tells you the asshole who ran you over was nowhere to be seen. He says most of it with his eyes averted. Yet you hold your gaze.

You will not be weakened by the shame of your misery.

It is two days later when you confess to him; your throat still rasping as the pain in your head boils and toils beneath your skull. You look at him when he arrives, paint-stained shirt providing evidence of a messy day of working. “I don’t want to think about what happened to me anymore, Joel.”

Your tongue grabs at words the way young children do with sticky fruit in the summer. As if language has become foreign to you.

Joel, keys in hand, meets your gaze with a furrowed brow. “Sure, sugar. Whatever you need.”

Maybe your eyes were tricking you, but you could’ve sworn you saw his shoulders relax from some kind of tension leaving his body.

–

Joel doesn’t know what he had gotten himself into. What he does know is that for some reason, he couldn’t bear the idea of staying away from you. You tell him fragments of what little you remember, your concussed consciousness blindly clawing at every last bit of beaten brain matter for some kind of answer. 

You sometimes cry from the effort it takes you to think, but he’s there. The first few times, he held your hand. As the hours bled into days, he held you as you wet his shirt with warm tears. Sometimes, when the nightmares reach him in his own bed a few miles out from the hospital, it feels like you’re bleeding into him.

From the moment he saw you, he had been marked. And no matter how many times he scratched at his own skin, he could never wash away the blood on his hands.

–

He’s the one to take you home to your quiet little apartment, having grown dust in your absence. You apologize, he waves you off. He watches you as you peer out of the window, comprehending a view that had once been so mundane, transformed into some shred of a miracle for you to still be there, witnessing it all. He’s behind you, ten feet away, tilting his head as your hair catches what little sunlight blessed you the day you left the hospital.

He says your name, and you look back at him with a curious smile. “My God,” he followed. “You look just like starlight.” He steps forward, and that’s when you know everything had fallen into place. Without another moment lapsing, he takes your face into his hands, pulling you into a searing kiss.

You apologize so many times. For the hospital smell on your skin. For your trembling knees. For the dizzying sensation of human contact without the involvement of medical processes. For feeling so unclean.

Meanwhile, he apologizes, too. For kissing you. For pulling you to him. For holding you. For carrying you to the forlorn couch grown cold from the absence of human warmth. So many times that there are times that you don’t know what is there to apologize for. You shake your head each and every time.

The tears roll down your cheek just as he pulls away and his eyes immediately soften. You shake your head, pulling him into another kiss as you whine.

There are many things you want to tell him. But you don’t dare tell him this: Sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you have been ruined.

“Tell me to stop, honey, and I will,” he murmurs, holding your cheek as you pause between touches. You shake your head immediately. You want many things. You are hungry and untamed. But you do not want him to stop.

You tell him as much. “Joel, don’t you dare stop.”

And he doesn’t. Not when you’re naked and he sees your bruised skin, purple and yellowed in places. He looks to you just as your body tenses. His demeanor softens, kissing along your jaw and your neck with a shaky breath.

“I won’t hurt ya, darlin’.”

He keeps to that promise. Even when your legs are around his waist and he’s caught in your warmth. He says it again and again as you whine into the cool, quiet solitude of your home.

I won’t hurt you, I won’t hurt you.

–

Falling in love with Joel was both so complicated and so simple at once. Whenever you wake beside him, you wake up writhing from the pain of your injuries; sometimes crying from the nightmares that followed every waking moment. You felt marred by shame for putting so much of your perceived burden on his shoulders. He never departs from your side, his strong arms placating you while his lips press against your temple.

It’s all so simple, the way he cares about you. And whether or not you admitted it, you like the feeling of being cared for. Of having someone that cares.

Regardless, you cannot escape the fact that someone did this to you. And whenever the pain shocks your body, everything but rabid rage escapes your body. You curse the stranger, whoever they may be, for that cursed night.

Joel sees glimpses of this. He saw it most that one afternoon when the hospital called, saying you had been taken care of. By who, they didn’t say. Only that the stranger apologized for what happened.

You were on the floor, hands trembling in the fists you held them in. The hospital bill crumpled a few inches away. You do not see him. What you see is all red.

A wail escapes your trembling mouth just as your hands claw at anything they can touch. It is an uncontrollable surge of blinding, mouth-foaming, unbridled rage. He’s there, trying to hold you down before you hurt yourself. Each wail pierces another hole into his aching heart. Each struggle followed by his gentle shushing, trying to assuage you in the crest of your emotion.

“Whoever it was,” you told him then as you sobbed. “They ruined my life.”

“Darlin, darlin’...” He breathes in, cupping your face. “Maybe he’s around and he regrets-”

“No!” You claw at him, just as he holds you tighter against his chest. “If he could find me, then he could say it to my face. He wouldn’t be some coward who left me alone like this after he ruined my life!”

It destroys him. And you can see it in his face. All he can do is hold you as you cry against his chest. All he can do is shut his eyes, letting the waves of grief crest over and over your frame. Letting your sobs tear him open and burn him out.

He tells you nothing lasts forever. That he’ll be there for as close to forever as possible. You shake your head because you know better. He says nothing lasts forever. He doesn’t know he’s just afraid your pain can last longer than he is capable of loving you.

–

Perhaps, to the end of his days, Joel will regret that drunken night. He’ll regret following his bleary gaze through the quiet, sleet-slick roads. He’ll regret the fact that he couldn’t have stopped his truck sooner.

When he steps out into the cold just as he smells the acrid scent of burning tires, he sees your bloodied face in your car. So small. So undeserving. He muttered a string of cusses. The sudden shock of adrenaline washing away the last of his drunkenness. He looks back at his truck, horrifically beaten, his gaze doubling from his last bout of drunkenness.

He bargains that night. Calls up someone high up amongst the police rank to bail him out. He negotiated for ten minutes. Then he hides the truck somewhere off the side of the road for him to come back to and dispose of. And then, only then, did he call for help.

Only then did he reach you in the driver’s seat, blood now caked to your skin as he lay you out amongst the concrete.

You make some sound, and he cusses to himself.

His rough palms cup your cheek, trying to get you to look at him then. But you were too far gone.

He spoke, anyway. Just in case you’ll hear it.

“It’s alright, doll. I won’t hurt you.”

Even now, weeks after he stole your life from you, he holds you and tells you the same thing anyway. The same set of words that manage to calm you down.

He does love you. And it breaks him every day to know he was the one to endanger you.

You remember the screech of tires on frozen asphalt. A flash of headlights. Spinning, spinning, spinning. Your body ignited in pain. Then… darkness.

Darkness that seemed to spread before you for an eternity. Untethered and stuck in limbo, perhaps in another universe, you would call it the most peaceful slumber of your life. The misfortune comes when you wake. Lightning strikes shake you awake from the darkness of your subconsciousness. Electricity trembling in your chest as it shoots through your beaten frame. A light peers through your closed eyes. Brighter, and brighter… bigger and bigger. A ringing in your ears that almost deafens you.

The world shifts around you, and you wake paralyzed, staring at the ceiling in the warm sun that falls on your body lying there. Everything hurts. There is a humming in your head that you cannot seem to shake out of.

The solitude lasts for a beat. Then another. That’s when you see him.

A sleepless, roughened man looking at you with his warm eyes. Through the bleary vision of your own gaze, a shaky breath escapes him. His crinkled eyes looking over your features with a swift once over.

“Oh, Christ, you’re awake.”

And that’s how you met Joel.

–

In the week that followed your complicated recovery, Joel tells you he saw the crash. Tells you the asshole who ran you over was nowhere to be seen. He says most of it with his eyes averted. Yet you hold your gaze.

You will not be weakened by the shame of your misery.

It is two days later when you confess to him; your throat still rasping as the pain in your head boils and toils beneath your skull. You look at him when he arrives, paint-stained shirt providing evidence of a messy day of working. “I don’t want to think about what happened to me anymore, Joel.”

Your tongue grabs at words the way young children do with sticky fruit in the summer. As if language has become foreign to you.

Joel, keys in hand, meets your gaze with a furrowed brow. “Sure, sugar. Whatever you need.”

Maybe your eyes were tricking you, but you could’ve sworn you saw his shoulders relax from some kind of tension leaving his body.

–

Joel doesn’t know what he had gotten himself into. What he does know is that for some reason, he couldn’t bear the idea of staying away from you. You tell him fragments of what little you remember, your concussed consciousness blindly clawing at every last bit of beaten brain matter for some kind of answer. 

You sometimes cry from the effort it takes you to think, but he’s there. The first few times, he held your hand. As the hours bled into days, he held you as you wet his shirt with warm tears. Sometimes, when the nightmares reach him in his own bed a few miles out from the hospital, it feels like you’re bleeding into him.

From the moment he saw you, he had been marked. And no matter how many times he scratched at his own skin, he could never wash away the blood on his hands.

–

He’s the one to take you home to your quiet little apartment, having grown dust in your absence. You apologize, he waves you off. He watches you as you peer out of the window, comprehending a view that had once been so mundane, transformed into some shred of a miracle for you to still be there, witnessing it all. He’s behind you, ten feet away, tilting his head as your hair catches what little sunlight blessed you the day you left the hospital.

He says your name, and you look back at him with a curious smile. “My God,” he followed. “You look just like starlight.” He steps forward, and that’s when you know everything had fallen into place. Without another moment lapsing, he takes your face into his hands, pulling you into a searing kiss.

You apologize so many times. For the hospital smell on your skin. For your trembling knees. For the dizzying sensation of human contact without the involvement of medical processes. For feeling so unclean.

Meanwhile, he apologizes, too. For kissing you. For pulling you to him. For holding you. For carrying you to the forlorn couch grown cold from the absence of human warmth. So many times that there are times that you don’t know what is there to apologize for. You shake your head each and every time.

The tears roll down your cheek just as he pulls away and his eyes immediately soften. You shake your head, pulling him into another kiss as you whine.

There are many things you want to tell him. But you don’t dare tell him this: Sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you have been ruined.

“Tell me to stop, honey, and I will,” he murmurs, holding your cheek as you pause between touches. You shake your head immediately. You want many things. You are hungry and untamed. But you do not want him to stop.

You tell him as much. “Joel, don’t you dare stop.”

And he doesn’t. Not when you’re naked and he sees your bruised skin, purple and yellowed in places. He looks to you just as your body tenses. His demeanor softens, kissing along your jaw and your neck with a shaky breath.

“I won’t hurt ya, darlin’.”

He keeps to that promise. Even when your legs are around his waist and he’s caught in your warmth. He says it again and again as you whine into the cool, quiet solitude of your home.

I won’t hurt you, I won’t hurt you.

–

Falling in love with Joel was both so complicated and so simple at once. Whenever you wake beside him, you wake up writhing from the pain of your injuries; sometimes crying from the nightmares that followed every waking moment. You felt marred by shame for putting so much of your perceived burden on his shoulders. He never departs from your side, his strong arms placating you while his lips press against your temple.

It’s all so simple, the way he cares about you. And whether or not you admitted it, you like the feeling of being cared for. Of having someone that cares.

Regardless, you cannot escape the fact that someone did this to you. And whenever the pain shocks your body, everything but rabid rage escapes your body. You curse the stranger, whoever they may be, for that cursed night.

Joel sees glimpses of this. He saw it most that one afternoon when the hospital called, saying you had been taken care of. By who, they didn’t say. Only that the stranger apologized for what happened.

You were on the floor, hands trembling in the fists you held them in. The hospital bill crumpled a few inches away. You do not see him. What you see is all red.

A wail escapes your trembling mouth just as your hands claw at anything they can touch. It is an uncontrollable surge of blinding, mouth-foaming, unbridled rage. He’s there, trying to hold you down before you hurt yourself. Each wail pierces another hole into his aching heart. Each struggle followed by his gentle shushing, trying to assuage you in the crest of your emotion.

“Whoever it was,” you told him then as you sobbed. “They ruined my life.”

“Darlin, darlin’...” He breathes in, cupping your face. “Maybe he’s around and he regrets-”

“No!” You claw at him, just as he holds you tighter against his chest. “If he could find me, then he could say it to my face. He wouldn’t be some coward who left me alone like this after he ruined my life!”

It destroys him. And you can see it in his face. All he can do is hold you as you cry against his chest. All he can do is shut his eyes, letting the waves of grief crest over and over your frame. Letting your sobs tear him open and burn him out.

He tells you nothing lasts forever. That he’ll be there for as close to forever as possible. You shake your head because you know better. He says nothing lasts forever. He doesn’t know he’s just afraid your pain can last longer than he is capable of loving you.

–

Perhaps, to the end of his days, Joel will regret that drunken night. He’ll regret following his bleary gaze through the quiet, sleet-slick roads. He’ll regret the fact that he couldn’t have stopped his truck sooner.

When he steps out into the cold just as he smells the acrid scent of burning tires, he sees your bloodied face in your car. So small. So undeserving. He muttered a string of cusses. The sudden shock of adrenaline washing away the last of his drunkenness. He looks back at his truck, horrifically beaten, his gaze doubling from his last bout of drunkenness.

He bargains that night. Calls up someone high up amongst the police rank to bail him out. He negotiated for ten minutes. Then he hides the truck somewhere off the side of the road for him to come back to and dispose of. And then, only then, did he call for help.

Only then did he reach you in the driver’s seat, blood now caked to your skin as he lay you out amongst the concrete.

You make some sound, and he cusses to himself.

His rough palms cup your cheek, trying to get you to look at him then. But you were too far gone.

He spoke, anyway. Just in case you’ll hear it.

“It’s alright, doll. I won’t hurt you.”

Even now, weeks after he stole your life from you, he holds you and tells you the same thing anyway. The same set of words that manage to calm you down.

He does love you. And it breaks him every day to know he was the one to endanger you.