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I finished not only my eggs and English muffin, but Judah’s as well.
I was picking at his apple slices as Aurelio came back into the room, pulling his chair in front of mine, setting the kit on the table, then reaching down for my leg, but looking up at me for permission before he touched me.
He’d filled a small basin, and slipped on gloves before lowering my foot into the lukewarm water, allowing the dirt and dried blood to wash away.
Again, I felt the tears prick, but fought them back as he carefully lifted my leg, then lowered it onto the towel on his lap, carefully drying it, and making me grit my teeth to keep from crying out.
“Is it bad?” I asked as he inspected my sole.
“The cuts aren’t too bad,” he told me. “But these blisters are going to feel awful for a few days. Even just the brush of his gloved finger over the pad beneath my toes where the blisters were located made me hiss out a breath.
He carefully went about spritzing on some numbing spray, wiping gently, then slathering on ointment before placing some large bandages over the cuts.
The second foot was a bit better.
When he was done, though, I didn’t immediately pull my foot back, and his hand rested on my ankle where it was perched on his thigh.
On the floor, Judah was clapping plastic cups together, happy with his new toys, and completely ignoring us.
“Do you have family you want to reach out to?” he asked as he removed the gloves, and started to clean up.
“I don’t… we don’t have anyone,” I admitted.
I’d never had a father. I mean, yeah, there was a man out there somewhere carrying my DNA, but I’d never met him. I didn’t even know if he knew I existed.
My mom had been my only family growing up.
But she’d passed in a car crash the year before I met Warren.
I wondered, had she lived, if she would have saved me from my fate with him. If she would have seen the evil in him. If she would have been a safe place for me to run the first time he put his hands on me.
I knew she would have.
My mother had a knack for seeing beneath the surface charm in people. She used to try to explain it to me, a gullible little girl, so easily swayed by a kind word or empty promises.
“Oh, my sweet girl,” she’d told me one night as I sobbed on the couch because some boy at school told me he’d take me to the school dance, but then took someone else. It never occurred to me that it could be a prank, that people could be so deliberately cruel.
Looking back, with much more cynical eyes Warren had forced me to look through, I could see why it had been so painfully obvious to her that it had been something his cruel buddies put him up to.
At that point, he was the hottest guy in school. You know the type. The ones who seemed to grow up faster than the other boys, get taller, stronger, more chiseled in the face. With the easy cockiness that came with knowing all the girls’ gazes lingered when he passed.
And me?
God. I was going through that painfully awkward phase most girls have somewhere in their teens. When their skin is a mess, their hair is greasy an hour after washing it, all gangly and flat-chested, flat-assed.
Of course, it didn’t help that I also had the most atrocious sense of style.
There was no way a boy like that took a girl like I’d been to prom.
At the time, though, I’d believed him. I trusted him to be honest and kind.
Much like I’d done with Warren.
In all honesty, I could blame less of that to naiveté and a lot more to loneliness. I’d gone a whole year all by myself. No one there for Christmas or Thanksgiving. No one to bring me a cake and sing me Happy Birthday.
Then there was suddenly a man, gorgeous, interested, wanting to give me all of his time.
Now, sure, I could see it for what it was.
