"She's not going to stay here for the night," Killian said, "not unless I feckin' drug her to sleep or something."
Connor paced the length of the upstairs hallway in his brownstone, willing his mind to slow for even a second so he could calm down enough and have a rational discussion. "What, did you piss her off? I swear to God, I'll cut your feckin' throat, if you did."
"No. What is wrong with you?"
A lot of things.
A great many things.
Too many things.
"I just ... need a bit of time," Connor managed to say. "To get my thoughts together, maybe."
It was only half the truth. He was entirely out of control, and had been slowly moving toward the edge of jumping right off into the land of crazy. He thought he would be able to handle it—doing the job, delivering the women, and going on his way no worse for wear. He figured as long as he kept his mouth shut and his head down, it wouldn't be so bad.
He lied to himself.
With each stop—and each girl shuffled into a building with high, used, and dirty women—Connor felt a wee bit more hellish inside. He knew what he was doing, delivering them like he was, and it killed him.
His mask stayed firmly in place as he worked, his mind going a bit numb as dead eyes stared back at him, failing pleas falling from chapped lips, but inside ... inside he had died.
Connor could hear Killian demanding some sort of answer, or even something to tell Evelyn as to why she couldn't return just yet, but he didn't know what to say. He didn't want to explain, he just wanted to be alone in his hell for a while.
"Just give me some time," Connor said in a rush before ending the call.
It had been a long time since Connor was properly alone. He had moments throughout the day when the silence was so loud that he could hear his own heartbeat, but it wasn't quite the same. He'd had Evelyn for a while—months, now—and with her, she never really gave him the chance to be totally alone.
It wasn't that he minded, but this was different.
Connor shed his leather jacket as he headed for the bathroom. He thought a shower might help to clear his head, and once inside with the door closed, he did his best to avoid looking in the mirror.
He wasn't sure that he would like the reflection staring back at him.
Not tonight.
He turned on the shower head to the large walk-in shower, and turned the water on scalding hot, stepping back and leaning against the glass doors. The steam started to fill the room within minutes, but Connor didn't move to actually get inside the shower, too stuck in his own head to even try to clean the dirty feeling from his hands.
That feeling—that dirtiness—would never go away.
He knew that now.
He hated it.
Connor knew the very worst part had been when he did finally numb to the women and the job; when the girls' scared faces filled his vision, when their frightened eyes pleaded to him for help without ever saying a word, and he'd felt nothing. It wasn't that he hadn't wanted to feel nothing for their plight, but rather, he was trying to protect his own image and his own mind to what he was doing.
And in that moment, when he saw their fear, and he felt nothing, Connor realized how very much like his father he actually could be, when he needed to be. How dead inside, how cold and unfeeling of a human being—how lost of a soul.
It was the pain of that understanding that cut Connor the deepest. He'd done so well for so many years, hiding hurt and burying his problems with layers upon layers of ink on his body. He'd hidden scars and rows of cut marks with skulls surrounded by dying roses. He'd erased years of self-harm and self-deprecation with art he wouldn't ever dare to ruin. His efforts to bleed out every bit of pain he had felt in his life, the things that made him horrible and awful and undeserving, finally stopped the more skin and scars he covered up.
All that work—all his efforts to ignore the desire to force the hatred and pain out—was gone, just like that.
Connor tugged his shirt off, the lingering scent of cigarettes and stale liquor hanging heavily on the fabric, even after he'd tossed it to the floor. Moving had been a mistake, as it put him directly in front of the mirror, and when he looked up, he only saw a familiar demon staring back at him.
Not himself, with his own features and eyes, but someone all too familiar with the same dark eyes, the same grim sneer, and a profile that spoke of an unfeeling creature. He didn't see himself, he saw his father.
The urge—the long dormant habit he had kept at bay—to cut what he didn't like from his body banged around in his mind, like a monster in its cage. Roaring as loudly as it possibly could, and rattling the bars.
It would help ...
He would feel good ...
It'll all be gone, for a while ...
Connor knew none of those self-harming thoughts were actually true, considering it had been years since he'd put a blade to his own skin purposely, and he still dealt with his inner demons whether he cut or not. But that didn't mean they were easy to ignore, or even that he wanted to ignore them.
Those urges of his had been handled in other ways over the years—the pain of a tattoo machine, and the resulting work on his body; the men he was asked to punish for whatever their wrongs had been by using his skills to draw as much pain and blood from a living body as was possible. He'd satisfied that shite for a long time.
Too long, maybe.
Slowly, his reflection disappeared in the bathroom mirror, covered by the fog and steam hanging low in the air, and damn near making it hard to breathe. It didn't matter, it was already too late, and he only vaguely realized his action of pulling one of his many knives from his pocket.
The blade was heavy in his hand, the sharp edge biting against his scarred palm as he squeezed his fingers around the metal.
Connor distinctly remembered every cut he had ever made to anything and everything, over the years of his life, including ones to his own body. He remembered how thinner blades, or even razors, could make the worst slices because of how deep they could go, yet still managed to appear insignificant on the surface until they started to bleed. Sharp blades and dull knives, anything could get it done with the right amount of pressure.
It was cause and effect.
Create pain to destroy pain.
Create scars to hide scars.
Cut in, bleed out.
Breathe in, breathe out.
Perhaps his many years of not harming his own person should have been enough to teach him that the high was only temporary, and the feeling would eventually dim before the anxiety and pain came rushing back again.
He should have known.
Connor only felt relief when he pulled on the handle of the knife, drawing it out of his clenched fist, slicing open skin without barely trying at all.
He only wished that relief would have helped.
It didn't.
Not the first, second, or even the third time.
• • •
"Connor?"
Under the spray of the large shower head, and behind the glass doors, Connor vaguely heard the muffled call of his name. He thought it was just his imagination playing tricks on him, giving him what he wanted, not what he actually had.
Evelyn, that was.
The sting of the scalding water kept him coherent enough to stay on his feet, while the constant throbbing in his hand, wrapped in crimson-stained gauze, kept him focused enough not to care.
"Connor?"
Her voice was louder the second time—closer, too.
Connor looked up from his spot under the constant spray of water, and through his foggy vision, he saw the form move in closer. Evelyn's pretty, yet concerned, features took better shape the closer she came. She didn't seem bothered at all by the hot water, barely reacting when she was hit with the spray, and unconcerned that her dress was getting soaked.
Breathe in, breathe out.
The mechanics of life seemed so entirely foreign to Connor in those moments. A haze had settled over his mind well over an hour ago, as he watched interesting rivulets of red slide from his clenched palm, down his wrists, and then disappear into a drain. He'd yet to get it to lift fully, but at least his mind wasn't so crazy now.
Foggy.
Unclear.
High.
Not crazy.
"Connor," Evelyn said softly, her hands coming up to touch his face with the sweetest touch. "Hey."
"You shouldn't be here."
She should be away.
He'd sent her away.
That was what he needed, or rather, he had thought he needed it.
"I wanted to come home," she told him. "Killian brought me back—said I screech too much."
That was amusing, considering Evelyn didn't screech at all. She was too quiet for that nonsense, too stuck in her own world to care about others.
He liked that about her.
"Your hand is bleeding," Evelyn said, carefully lifting his roughly bandaged hand in her own. She turned his palm up, looking over the blood-soaked bandage with a furrowed brow. "Why are you bleeding?"
"Home, you said."
Evelyn glanced up at him. "What?"
"You said home. You wanted to come home."
"Of course I did."
Of course.
Like it was so simple.
As though he should already know.
Connor wasn't sure that he did.
"It's a pretty sad state of a home, isn't it?" Connor asked. "I'm not sure it even feels like that to me."
"You're the closest thing I've ever had to it," she replied.
He didn't miss her choice of words.
Him, not the place.
"How long has this been bleeding?" Evelyn asked.
"An hour or so," he answered. "It's fine, it'll staunch. It's not the first time it has happened."
Evelyn frowned, glancing back over her shoulder, back the way she had come. Connor didn't have to follow her gaze to know what she was looking for, or rather, what she was seeing. His knife, still bloodied, sitting on the edge of the sink. An unrolled mess of gauze on the floor. Blood drops needing cleaned.
Chaos.
A desperate truth.
It was a beautiful lie, too.
He still didn't feel any better.
Silently, Evelyn lifted his other hand, and flipped his palm up. Her thumb traced over the carved shamrock there with slow strokes, again and again.
"How often?" she asked.
That one was easy. "Not often at all."
Still, her thumb moved over the shamrock again. "But often enough."
She was calling him on his lie, the same one he told himself over and over again. That he focused the urge elsewhere, that he had it under control. If that were the case, the scarred ridges of the shamrocks in his palms would not be so large, with so many distinct lines.
"Not often at all," Connor repeated.
"Still enough," she whispered.
"It was an easy way to deal with everything when I was young." He avoided her searching gaze, if only because he might not like the pity staring back at him. He was cowardly in that way. Desperate for relief, even if that meant hurting himself, yet ashamed of the reaction it might draw in others because of it. "I thought it was interesting, how different tools could make such different lines, how thin blades could make the deepest cuts. It only got more involved—worse—the older I got. It's a hard thing to hide, though nobody really pointed it out on purpose."
"But you knew that they knew," she pressed.
Connor shrugged. "I didn't want to feel so crazy all the time. I thought if I hid them in a more permanent way, then it would go away altogether. If I couldn't see it, then it didn't exist."
Her fingers traveled up his palm, to the inside of his wrist, over the ink there, and then further up his arm, over the tail of a falling phoenix. She had admired his tattoos before—many times—but he knew, just the way her fingers slowed on certain pieces, how they stroked back and forth to check again, that she was finding things she hadn't before.
Hidden secrets.
Covered scars.
"It always pissed me off whenever someone would toss my drawings and scribbles into the rubbish bin, like they weren't important," he admitted. "I couldn't do that, no matter how awful or terrible they were."
"You won't ruin art," she said, filling in the blank he left open.
"Not if I can help it. And it did help, for a while."
Evelyn's fingers came back down to his palm, pressing into the shamrock. "Except it didn't."
"I like to tell myself differently."
"That's called lying, Connor."
"It has helped, to a degree."
Evelyn sighed, still keeping a hold on both his hands as she stared at him, forcing him to meet her gaze. "Why, though?"
He didn't have a good answer for that.
Not entirely.
"I'm not sure."
"That's a lie, too."
Connor tugged his hands from her grasp, and scrubbed his uninjured one down his face. "Because it all gets to be too much, and I don't like who I see staring back at me. I wanted it to go away. It's easier than dealing with it."
Evelyn tipped her head to the side. "Is it, though?"
No.
But the lie was easy to tell. Maybe he was just made to be crazy. So why was it that Evelyn looked at him like he was completely normal?
"You know I'm here, right?" she asked.
Connor blinked, confused at what she meant. "Of course you're here, lass."
She shook her head, a sad smile playing at the edges of her lips. "You're not listening."
"The water is pretty loud."
"Cute."
Connor managed a smirk. "I try."
"I'm here." Evelyn lifted her hands, pointing her index fingers at his temples. "When this gets too much ..." She pointed down to his chest, right over the spot where his heart beat, adding, "And when it hurts in here, too." She grabbed his hands, flipping them over, forcing him to look at his chaos and his lies all over again. "You don't need to do this when I'm here, Connor."
"You don't—"
"Understand? I know that it gets dark in your head, because I see it when you don't think I'm watching. I know it gets tight in your chest and hard to breathe. When you just want to think about anything other than what's up there, but all you can do is feel. So, you have to feel something else, right? Is that me not understanding to you?"
"It's not the same as being inside my head," Connor said, sounding rather lame.
"Then maybe you should let me see inside sometime."
"It's not a very nice place."
Evelyn smiled. "I think I can handle it, Connor."
He didn't think so at all.
Unwilling to argue about it, and not wanting her to worry, Connor grabbed Evelyn's cheeks with his hands, ignoring the pain in his injured palm, and kissed her hard. His move took her by surprise, making her gasp into his mouth, which only aided him on in deepening the kiss, his tongue seeking out the familiar sweet warmth of hers. He didn't pull away until his lungs started to burn, struggling for a proper breath, because all things were lost when it was just Connor and Evelyn.
Him and her.
Evelyn pulled him closer, tugging him out of the spray of water, and nearer to the glass doors. He hit the valve to shut the water off just before he kissed her again, the force sending them both out of the shower altogether. He didn't feel the coldness of the room wrapping his body, and she didn't seem to mind all that much when he started pulling off her sopping wet clothes, either.
Connor wanted out of the bathroom, away from his issues.
He could shove them away for a while.
He could pretend they didn't exist.
The further they got out of the bathroom, the better he started to feel. The trail of wet clothes he left behind—all pulled off of his lover—hit the floor with smacks, leaving puddles with each piece.
Evelyn helped a lot with making him focus on something else for a while, what with her demanding mouth taking a slow inventory of his throat, then down his chest, and lower. Connor found himself standing in the middle of the dark hallway, his head tipped back and his eyes rolled high to the sky as her hot mouth came in contact with his hard cock.
She took him deep into her throat without hesitation, the texture of her tongue sent sparks from the base of his cock straight to his balls. Her nails dug into his thighs as her teeth dragged down his length, and holy shite, all he could see were stars bursting beyond his eyes.
The groan he let loose was feckin' primal.
It even hurt making its way out of his throat—raw and blinding.
It was easy, maybe too easy, to get lost in the way she sucked him off, all hard and fast, uncaring if his cock went a wee bit too deep, or if he yanked on her hair and pulled her in faster. The slick heat of her mouth, the tightness of her lips wrapping around his cock, was enough to make him stupid in the feckin' head.
And he didn't even care.
"Feckin' there." His words came out in a growl. "Suck that cock, love."
All too soon, he was coming, hard enough to make his knees weak and his hands shake with the fistfuls of Evelyn's hair. She never even slowed at the feeling of his cum hitting her tongue, and instead, sucked him harder.
She sucked him dry.
It still wasn't enough.
His cock was still hard, his head was still too loud, and his body still felt too much. He didn't want to feel those things at all.
"Come on, then," Evelyn said in a whisper, standing when he pulled her up. "Can't I handle it, Connor?"
He didn't respond, simply turned her around, swatted her arse firmly, and sent her moving toward the bedroom. Evelyn's legs hit the bed at the same time he was climbing over her, spreading her thighs wide and fitting himself between them.
Her back arched high off the bed the moment he filled her with his first thrust, and she only grinned when his hand found her throat, forcing her head back and taking away just enough of her air. His other hand grabbed tight to her side, her skin pinking under his digging fingertips as he pulled her body into his for the second thrust.
The harder he took her, the more she smiled.
She wasn't even mad, he knew, but she took it somewhere else in his head, somewhere far away, where his aggression and anxiety was focused in on feeling her, not feeding a monster.
The firmer he squeezed her throat, the more she goaded him.
Is that all you got and fuck you, fuck you.
She knew exactly what she was doing, demanding more, taunting him to give her more than he already was.
He let her.
It was only after she had come, then again on her knees with his arm wrapped around her throat, did he hear her ask him again. The words came out soft and breathless, her voice raw from crying out and losing air over and over again.
"Can't I handle it, Connor?"
He kind of loved it ... or maybe that was her.
• • •
"Evelyn?" Connor came to stand in the doorway of his studio, finding the lass in question standing in the very middle of the room, looking as though she had been waiting for him. Surrounding her were sheets upon sheets of drawings, all turned up for him to see. "What are you doing?"
He'd spent his morning with his head stuck in a coffee cup that was more whiskey than it was coffee, not that he made it a regular thing to do. He needed something to perk him up, considering he hadn't slept at all, and Evelyn could only stay awake for so long to feed into his crazy nonsense.
Evelyn looked around at the drawings. "I wanted to show you something."
Connor stepped further into the room, taking in what drawings he could see without going in even more. Some were simple drawings, things she had seen around the brownstone, or flowers outside along the walkway. Others were of faces he didn't recognize, and some of them were his own reflection, though always happier than he thought himself to be.
"Did you rip all of these out of your books?"
Evelyn nodded. "All of them."
She had several sketchbooks. She filled them like nothing, her mind constantly spilling out images onto paper, as though she might forget them otherwise. He swore she could draw for hours—days, even—without her fingers cramping up or tiring of her work.
The one thing she had never done?
Shared her sketches with him.
There had been the one—of him—but other than that, Evelyn kept her art locked up tight, hidden in her books, and pushed out of sight. She never offered, and Connor understood how personal of a thing it could be, so he didn't ask.
But now, all he had to do was walk around the room, and be careful not to step on her pictures. So, he did just that, though some of the images bothered him.
A man standing over her. Tattoos he didn't recognize. A wedding band on the hand that was pushing open a woman's thighs. Bruises on skin. Fresh welts on a delicate back. A bloody smile.
Connor swallowed hard, his gaze taking in even more images, ones he knew had to be older memories for her, even though she had only drawn them recently. Ones he recognized, of her father, Declan, sitting behind a desk, smiling at someone looking up at him. Others of her father were darker in tone, as though the weight of the world rested on his shoulders, and he hadn't realized someone wee was watching him break down.
"It's dark in here, too," Evelyn said softly.
Connor looked over at her, his attention gone from the images but not for too long. "Pardon?"
She pointed at her head. "In here, it's dark. It never stops, and some of these, I've drawn time and time again, just to get the image out of my head for a little while. There's more in here, things I know and have seen or remember, but haven't put down yet. But it helps to get them out sometimes, to make them go away, even if they come again."
It's dark in here, too.
Art was not like this for Connor. His idea of creating beautiful images had been born from a desire to escape, to appreciate the craft. He had been drawn to it because of his memories of Evelyn as a wee girl, but he'd continued because of how much time and effort and skill it took to complete something.
For her, it seemed like it just bled right out of her mind.
Connor moved again, walking further, taking in a new row of images. One of a woman—not Evelyn, as he could see her face—entirely naked, bound in a hogtie on a dirty mattress, her skin a gray tone, and her eyes closed. Dead, likely.
He blinked, freezing.
That image seemed familiar, though he couldn't quite reach why.
"Why this one?" Connor asked, pointing to the image.
"I was just a girl—I found some pictures in my father's desk. That was one I couldn't forget."
There it was.
Connor remembered the memory easily, of a much younger Evelyn showing him her drawing, though it had been rough and not as detailed as her newer version.
"I can't get it out my head, so I draw it a lot," Evelyn admitted.
"Your father, you said?"
Evelyn nodded. "He caught me with the one, and got really angry. He burned them all, after that. I don't think they were his, but I don't know why he had them."
Connor wondered if he did know, or if he had known for a long time. He thought he recognized that woman, naked and dead on a mattress, tied like an animal with ropes that looked to have choked her to death.
She looked like his mother.
e of":n4O