Page 67 of Shifted Desire

The pain in her voice shreds any remaining defensive anger and brings her own distress into sharp relief. All these years I wasted pushing her away, hurting both of us because I resented her for something she can’t control, when all she ever wanted was to take care of me as best she could. My mom might be a confident succubus, but she’s also a person with her own insecurities and struggles, and I hate that it took me until I’m almost forty to recognize that.

“Please don’t be sorry.” I stand, tucking the blanket around me like a towel, then move to her and pull her into a hug. She’s tense for a few seconds before squeezing me back like she wants to pour all of her love into me to let me know how much she cares. “I love you, Mom. You did everything you could. And I’m fine. Everything is okay now.”

“But it wasn’t before,” she says between sniffles.

No, it wasn’t. The cacophony of what I endured because of my succubus nature that I was too ashamed of and confused by to ask for help, or to even recognize that what was happening to me wasn’t my fault, still echoes in my head in my darker moments.

“I’m okay.” I rub a hand against my mother’s back as I attempt to soothe a wound that we both have deep in our hearts. “I’m okay.”

Maybe if I say it enough times, it’ll become the truth.

Mom pulls back gently, searching my face with her keen violet eyes. “Are you sure? Because I’m here for you. If there’s anything you want to talk about—anything at all—I’m here, and I promise I won’t judge.”

For a split-second, I consider confessing about Nathan. But he didn’t agree to that, and I’m not sure “anything” includes me sleeping with Dad’s best friend, so I bite my tongue and shake my head. “I’m sure. I’m fine. Or I will be.” I put on my best goofy smile. “Once I take a shower. I stink.”

Mom lets out a watery chuckle. “You do smell a bit…”

I push her away and pretend to scowl, and she smiles wider. I shoo her out of the room, eager to not have her keep looking at me with that hint of heartbreak in her eyes. When she heads back downstairs after one more hug, I head to the bathroom and drop the blanket to assess the damage.

Angry red letters stand out against my pale skin, and I trace them with a finger, trying to cling to how good it felt in the moment to be marked. Instead, bile rises in my throat, the words a reminder of how many times I was called a slut by people who meant it as an insult.

Hot tears well in my eyes as I turn on the shower and step in, my skin crawling with the need to erase the bad memories. I scrub and scrub at the ink, cursing as it doesn’t want to budge. Tears spill down my cheeks, washed away by the stream of water from the showerhead as I scrub at my skin until it’s angry and raw, but the words still remain.

No matter how hard I try to run from it, this is always what I’ll be. A slut. A whore meant to be used and tossed away. A body that others take and take from, even when I don’t want it, because something in me stirs up their desire.

Their eyes and their hands on me, and their laughter as I tried to push them away. Their insistence that I was wet, that I didn’t fight hard enough, that I came, so I must’ve wanted it.

“See, slut, this is what you wanted.”

I didn’t. I didn’t want it. I never wanted it.

I sink into a crouch, my chest heaving as I struggle to breathe against the weight of shame and rage. I weep for my past self, for all the shit still weighing me down, for what could’ve been if I hadn’t been so scared to trust my mother, until the water grows cold and all I feel is numb.

Clinging to the walls of the shower, I haul myself up on wobbly legs and turn the water off, then step out, glad for the steamed-up mirror obscuring the mess I’ve made of myself scrubbing my skin raw.

If I’d stopped for a second to think instead of panicking, I could’ve done a quick internet search to see what gets permanent marker off of skin. Now it’s too late, the skin far too irritated to put anything on it.

It’s fairly early, but I get into bed when I go back to my room, praying that my emotional outburst in the shower will leave me drained enough to fall asleep quickly. But right when I’m drifting off, my phone buzzes with a message notification.

I should ignore it. Put my phone on do not disturb and get some rest and leave this day behind me. Whoever is texting me can wait until morning.

But what if it’s Nathan?

Groaning at my brain’s very unhelpful thought, I roll over, turning away from the phone.

I don’t care if it’s Nathan. If he’s texting, it’s probably to send me a picture of his dick or tell me what we’re doing is wrong, or some confusing combination of the two that will disappoint me in a way I don’t want to deal with right now.

There’s another buzz, followed by another.

Godsdammit.

I reach out blindly behind me, knocking my e-reader off the bedside table before my fingers find the phone, and then bring it to my face with a scowl.

It’s not Nathan.

The immediate disappointment hits me straight in the gut, frustration with myself following on its heels. Of course it’s not Nathan.

Max: Are you going to brunch this weekend?