Chapter 30: The Shower

After breakfast, Tyler suggested a shower. I agreed, mostly because I wanted hot water and partly because I did not want to be alone.

In the bathroom, he turned me gently and looked at my ass the way a person looks at a thing they are responsible for. He then looked at me and asked how it felt.

“Tight,” I said. “Sore.”

He knelt down and for once I was looking down at him, and then he gently turned me away from him and began to kiss each bruise. When he was done, he stood and held me while the water heated, my back to his chest, his mouth near my hair.

“I do not want to have to punish you ever again,” he said. “I needed you to tell me the truth. I needed you to see it. Last night was that.”

I nodded.

Inside, with a little distance and the tears dried, the rational part of me had started to return, and she shifted in her chair. This was not normal. I had never heard of it in a relationship that got invited to Thanksgiving. He had hurt me; he had beaten my ass with his belt and caused the bruises I had thus far refused to examine myself. But I was the one who had asked for more. I was the one whose previous actions had deserved it. I was the one who had told him to use my face and my throat as hard as he wanted. The face-fucking had been brutal, but I had asked him to be brutal. Was that his fault? It did not feel like his fault, standing there with his arms around me and the water running. It felt like mine. The word from the parking lot rose up. Broken. I pushed it down. Not now. Not while he held me as if I mattered.