Bound by Rapture (5 page)

“You’re not having any pain?” the doctor asked.

She shook her head back and forth slowly, indicating she didn’t. She hadn’t said much once she came around, which wasn’t long before Dr. Lewis showed up. She’d just been staring off into space, answering questions with simple answers, her eyes glazed over.

 “Do you think there are any internal problems?” I asked.

The nurse came around and started wiping the blood off Julia’s face with a wet cloth.

He shook his head. “I don’t think so. If there were any damage to the area, she would be in serious pain, and complaining of it. It’s going to bruise a little bit, but even then, I don’t think it will be too bad. It looks like you took care of the situation before it got out of hand.” He eyed my bloody clothes. 

“I did.”

Dr. Lewis had been Julia’s doctor when she was in the hospital after Jay attacked her. He was the best money could get when it came to extreme physical trauma. I’d had him flown in from California, and paid him enough to take up residency in the Dallas hospital—a job they were more than willing to give him considering his beaming track record and experience. 

“What do you think is wrong with her? Because she is acting listless.” I ran a hand through my hair. “Maybe the nurse should stay here and monitor her?” 

He glanced back at Julia, who was staring at the ceiling, laying perfectly still while the nurse cleaned the blood off her. “Step in the living room with me?”

I followed him, opening the bedroom door. Weasley darted into the room. Seeing him gave me hope. Maybe his presence would help Julia out of her funk. 

“I’m a medical doctor, Mr. Maddon. I’m not a psychologist, but I think I am correct when I say Julia has gone into shock. She’s suffered through multiple traumatic events, especially within the last twenty-four hours.”

“Fuck.” I fisted my hands at my sides, feeling like a complete and total failure. It was my fault she was attacked today. I was the reason she was there. 

“If she doesn’t come around and start acting like her normal self soon, you should consider having her talk to someone.” He handed me a card, the name Sarah Arnold printed on the front. “I’ve heard some good things about her since I’ve been in town.” 

I shoved the card in my pocket. 

“Let me know if anything changes or she starts complaining of pain.”

“Thanks for coming.” I headed back in the room, passing the nurse, to find Julia laying just the way she had been when I stepped out. The nurse was done and Julia’s face was mostly clean. Blood was still in her hair, though.

I waited for the front door to close before I helped her out of bed. She cooperated, but her gaze was lost, vacant. I fought the urge to yell at her. I wanted her to snap out of it. To come back to me, to smile, to slap me. Whatever, it didn’t matter, but the silence was already getting to me and barely a few minutes had passed. 

I couldn’t stand it. It reminded me of times, of things, places, people who were silent when they shouldn’t have been. When silence was an echo in an empty house that should have been filled with laughter, with happiness. 

I squeezed my eyes shut and sucked in a deep breath. The urge to lash out at something multiplied. 

Julia needs me. 

And I let it all go, the air in my lungs, the past. I pushed them both out and wrapped my arm around her waist. “C’mon, let’s get you cleaned up.” I started the shower, letting the water rush down on the white tile, and tested it making sure it was warm enough. 

I helped her out of her clothes. She stood there like a zombie, her eyes vacant, letting me maneuver her arms and feet at my will until she was completely naked, her long aqua hair falling in messy waves around her. 

My cock kicked hard in my pants and I was almost ashamed of myself. But I couldn’t help it. I could never help it when it came to Julia. She was everything. Even there in that basement, blood and brain matter coating her face, she was everything I wanted. I would have fucked her on that bloody concrete. I would have came as hard as I had that morning while she bounced on my dick in her bedroom. Maybe even harder. I couldn’t deny the rush of blood, adrenaline, Julia. I would have fucked her like it was our last time. I would take her anywhere in any way.

I’m so fucked up. 

I led her under the water. She didn’t even flinch when the spray hit her skin. Something like panic flared in my chest.

“Julia, I’m going to wash you.” My words sounded like a little boy’s, they were so weak and pathetic. She didn’t even nod, just stood there. I washed every inch of her, scrubbed the remnants of the last twenty-four hours from her skin. Scrubbed away the death, the horror. I wanted to wash it down the drain and make her forget these things had happened. That her friend had been beheaded, that the man who cut her throat had tried to kill her again, that I had to blow his head off only inches away from hers. 

But I knew she wouldn’t forget. With the way she was I doubted she would even remember this shower.

“Julia, baby. Look at me. I need to know you’re okay.” But her gaze didn’t meet mine. She just stared at my t-shirt. I glanced down at it, realizing there was blood on the white material. It was bloated and a little faded from the water, but still there nonetheless. I jerked it over my head and tossed it aside, along with my jeans. “You’re okay, baby. You know that right? You’re safe. I’m here with you.” I pulled her into my chest; she stood limply against me. Some bitter emotion rose inside me and I wanted to laugh. How many times had I spoken those same words to her? How many times had I been wrong? How many times had someone hurt her when I had the power at my fingertips to stop them? It was surreal, really. Unbelievable.

I sank down on the floor, bringing her limp body with me. She curled against me, her head resting on my chest while the warm water showered against us. I glanced down to see her eyes still open, staring at the shower door blankly.

“You probably think I’m the biggest joke.” The words rushed out of my mouth. I almost laughed at how ridiculous they were.
No doubt
she thought I was a joke. “That’s probably why you’ve mentally checked out.” I shook my head. “I don’t blame you. I’m a fucking failure.” I leaned my head back against the shower wall, letting the cool tiles press against my wounded head. “I was right, you know, when I told you I ripped women apart.” The accuracy of my stupid stage name wasn’t lost on me. At the time it seemed appropriate, considering that’s what I wanted to do to Julia, rip her apart and leave her with nothing left that I didn’t own. “It wasn’t until after I met you that I realized I
did
rip women apart. Destroy them until they were just shells of who they used to be.

“My mom is a great example.” I let my mother’s Botox-made face pop into my head. Her blond hair bleached to the max. “She was the only woman who was supposed to love me unconditionally. The only person who was supposed to care for me. But she didn’t.” I let memories of the past swirl around me. Memories of hunger. Of holding my screaming baby sister in my arms while she wailed because she was starving, yet there was nothing in the house to feed her and my mom hadn’t been home for days. It was a miracle any of us lived as long as we had. “And now she’s done this.” There were a lot of things I expected from her. I expected her hate. It seemed crazy that the woman who nearly starved me had the nerve to hate me, the only son she had left. But that was the reason in itself. I took everyone else away. It was my fault they were gone. Both of them. Sandy and Garrett. She would never forgive me for that. All the money in world couldn’t buy her love. Her forgiveness. And now she was trying to hurt me in any way she knew how.

I stared down at the top of Julia’s head. The evidence pointed at Julia’s ex, but something didn’t sit right about it. The words on the wall, they made me think of her. My mother.

You did this. Cole is next.

Stay away from him. 

It brought back her words. 

“You did this! You did. You!” Her hands shook as she looked at me. The horror on her face was something that would be imprinted into my brain forever. She looked at me, at my blood covered clothing at the horror scene before us. “How could you? How could YOU?” Her words boomed around us, seeming to melt into the expensive stone walls. The home I had built for her. Her eyes were frantic, wide, looking everywhere and at me all at once. “Where is Garrett, Cole?” 

Why is she home?
She should have been gone until tomorrow, until I had the chance to clean everything up and get Sandy on a plane to some place that could help her emotionally.

“Where is he, Cole?” I wasn’t going to answer, because she knew. I know she did. Why she asked, I don’t know. I don’t know why she bothered to pretend we weren’t both standing here in this house of horror.

“You didn’t. You wouldn’t have.” 

She’d always loved him more. Even when she left us all to starve. It was him she held when she came home. It was him she said she was sorry to. It was always him. For both her and Sandy. What it was about Garrett that made them love him more than me, I never figured out. Even after I made my money and gave them all a better life, I was still last on the totem pole. 

But the blood on my hands changed that. More of it was splattered across the floor. Some of it was my own blood. But most of it wasn’t. 

“Where’s Sandy?” 

I shook my head and pushed the memory away, not wanting to relive it, especially the moments after that. Those moments broke me. That made me into this
thing
I was today. This man who destroyed the women he loved until they were just lifeless shells or dead. 

I clutched Julia to my chest. She would never be like my mother, or like Elaine, or even like Sandy. She was stronger than them. But it was quickly becoming apparent that it didn’t matter how strong the woman was, I found some way to break them, some way to make them hate me. 

My mother’s words that night were a perfect echo of the words written in blood on that mottled wall. 

“You did this.”

And maybe I did. 

Maybe I deserved all of it. Maybe I deserved to be punished for things I had done and things I would never do. Like be sorry. Even after I followed my mother up the stairs and found yet more tragedy, I hadn’t been sorry about what I’d done. I didn’t wish I could take any of it back. Even for today, for the big hole I put in that piece of shit’s head. I wasn’t sorry. Some twisted part of me wished I could do it again. Even after I squeezed the trigger I wanted to pull it again. To pump his brain full of lead and ruin him, make him non-existent. Splatter him until he was nothing more than a smear on a cracked floor. I would have, if he hadn’t been hurting her. If she didn’t need me in that moment, I would have done it and maybe more. 

And maybe that was why all this was happening. There were too many sins, too many sinister thoughts, hopes, plans. It was all there and more. I wanted to lash out again. The sudden need to punch something expanded under my flesh. I would feel better once I did that. There was a punching bag in one of the rooms at Rapture. I could just go back there and let off some of the anger. I could punch myself back into sanity, instead of this pathetic heap I was right now. But I couldn’t bring myself to leave her, or even move. 

The warm water still poured down on us. 

I glanced at Julia and noticed her eyes were closed, her breathing deeper. A sense of calm washed over me. 

We’re going to be okay. 

It might not have been true, but I embraced the words as if they were a prophecy promising my own good fortune. 

I ran my fingers through Julia’s hair. “I didn’t fuck her,” I said quietly. Elaine’s face popped into my head. “I tried to.” A hollow laugh escaped my lips. “I actually wanted to. I wanted to forget about you.” I took a deep breath. “It was on the night I let you go. When I had you up against the back of that after-hours club. I’d gone home with a raging hard on, ready to sink my dick into something, anything.” I could remember the feeling, that horrible sensation of loss. The bitter anger of it being over. After all that time, I had let her go and it was a sentiment I couldn’t describe. So bitter and disgusting. “Elaine was there, waiting for me at home. I hadn’t fucked her yet since we’d gotten back together. She’d just flown in that day, the first time I’d seen her in months, with that big rock on her finger, the one I told her to go buy.” The words clogged up in my throat.
Why am I telling her this? She’s in shock and asleep. She’s not even hearing it.
But I didn’t stop. 

“She was on the bed, naked. She wanted it.” I chewed the inside of my cheek at the memory. “She begged me.” I shook my head. “Fucking
begged
me. But I couldn’t do it. And something inside me died. Something that was already broken and hurt, something I thought couldn’t get worse. It doesn’t make sense, right?” I shifted around a little. “It shouldn’t have hurt me that I couldn’t fuck her. But it did. My cock was hard. And I pretended it was for her. I told myself Elaine made me hard. But it was all a lie, Julia. It was you who made me hard. It was you. All along. I wanted it to be her.
So badly.
Because you were wet when I pushed you back against that wall. You were wet for that fucking tool bag bartender. Not for
me
.” I clenched my fists. “But after all that, I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t hard for her. I didn’t want her. I wanted
you
. And that was worst feeling ever. Knowing I let you go, that I would spend the rest of my life wanting you, even though I could have anyone else.”

Emotions swirled around inside me. I didn’t know where this confession came from, but I had this need to share with Julia even when she probably wasn’t listening. But she’d always had that effect on me, making me want to pour my heart out to her. I wanted to tell her everything. To confess it all. It was a weird feeling, one I’d never experienced with anyone else.

“I love you,” I whispered into the foggy shower. Words she wouldn’t remember. But I would. I would remember every second, every moment, because she was my Julia. And I wouldn’t let her be broken and ripped apart like the rest of the women in my life. I wouldn’t let my sins shatter her and turn her into something unrecognizable. I would fix this. I would help her heal and I would stop whoever was doing this.