She dreams in colorTen minutes after eleven I make it back inside, slip off my shoes by the door and tiptoe upstairs. Cole is sitting in the hall on the top step in the dark.
She dreams in red.
We'll have to add some hot water, he says as he gets up and walks back into our room.
I follow him right into the bathroom where he has a million candles lit and a deep steaming bubblebath ready.
He turns to kiss me but stops just as I close my eyes.
What in the hell is all over you?
He walks back to the door and flicks on the light while I face the mirror.
Well, fucking SHIT.
Handprints. Carbon, charcoal-black sooty full handprints on both sides of my face, my neck and my hands. Cole starts to pull my clothes off and there are more. Everywhere, just everywhere.
The look on his face would have killed a lesser human but I have something to live for now. To get back at Cole for giving me to Caleb I upped the ante and started to see Lochlan behind Cole's back. Loch will never say a thing, he will look Cole in the eye and lie so convincingly it's easy to see how he can charm a crowd.
It's also easy to see how careless we can be when rushed, when desperate.
I look back at my own expression. Wild-eyed surprise. I look..happy. I look crazed and exhilarated and satisfied. I look amazing, like a living work of art, almost like when I become covered with paint when Cole paints a study of me or wants to use me for figure painting except this is in black and white so it's as if I have been molded and shaded by Lochlan's hand.
That's exactly how I became who I am. I was created by him and finished by Cole. Cole took a work in progress and tore me back a few layers to make changes and broke some unique features and I was never the same.
I am hoping to circumvent him now with Lochlan to finish myself. To complete Bridget and not have any more teardowns or revisions. I am defying him with every step I take, burning the memories in the flames, extinguishing my loyalty to him in a bucket of water that I ran and fetched at the tap behind the barn, crying the whole way, big hitching blubbering sobs because I thought Lochlan was going to burn.
It takes exactly five days for the marks to wear off my pale skin and another three for Cole to speak directly to me. I don't notice. I keep seeing my face in the mirror that night. Full of life. Loved. Wanted. Taken.
Vaguely singed.