Page 27 of Z For Butterfly Man
A sob catches in my throat. “You’re not taking care of me. You’re torturing me.”
“I’m teaching you. Surrender isn’t weakness. You can let go of control, of shame, of the performance you’ve been running yourwhole life, and I’ll still be here. I’ll still want you. I’ll still worship you.”
My body robs me of any control I have left. The pressure releases in a hot rush of humiliation. I feel it, hear it, know exactly what’s happening and can’t stop it. A broken sound escapes my lips—half-sob, half-moan of relief.
He doesn’t move away. Doesn’t flinch. He just sits there while my piss hits his mouth, and he doesn’t care.
“There,” he murmurs when it’s over, when I’m empty and shaking and mortified. “Was that so hard?”
I can’t speak or look at him. My eyes glue to the darkness before me.
His footsteps echo away. Water runs in the background. He must have a bottle or container nearby. Or is there a faucet or a sink in here? Footsteps come back. Then he’s standing in front of me, the mask back in place; the butterfly is whole once more.
He has a washcloth in his hand. “You don’t understand yet, but you will.” He starts cleaning me up, and I shiver at the contact. “There is nothing—nothing—you could do, no boundary you could violate, that would push me away.” His touch clenches my insides. “That’s what real devotion looks like, Reagan. Not the shit they gave you, Blake and Shane. This is the real thing.Weare what real love is, my sweet butterfly.”
He drops the washcloth on the floor and holds my hips. I flinch from the searing pain of the pins and the feeling of his gloved hands on my skin. Then the mask presses against my mound, as if he’s…kissing it.
I open my mouth to tell him to fuck off, but he already leaves. Another click echoes. The table begins to tilt backward, lowering me back to a horizontal position. The gap closes. My legs draw together. The pins shift with the movement, and I bite back a scream.
As I’m flat again, he’s standing over me, looking down. His hand reaches out and caresses my forehead. “Now, are you ready to tell me about Shane Fletcher?”
I meet his gaze—or where I think his eyes are behind that mask. My jaw tightens. “Are we back to that?”
“Of course. Aren’t you freezing?”
“I’m not playing your game. It’s nothing but a trick.”
“I’m not trying to trick you. I’m giving you a chance to tell the truth to earn your much-needed warmth.”
“Stop lying. My answer won’t buy me an hour of warmth because it’s not a secret you don’t know. You already know who Shane was, so why are you asking me to tell you something you already know?”
“Because you haven’t been telling the truth, Reagan!”
My heart hammers against my ribs. Why does he think I’m lying? What does he know about the truth?
“One last chance. Who is Shane Fletcher, Reagan?”
There are so many words I can use to identify Shane. Love. Family. Safety. Beauty. Hate. Mistake. Betrayal. Danger. Loss. Scar. But I prefer the word first. He was my first.
My first everything, especially, my first sin.
“Well, if you’d rather freeze than open up to me, that’s your choice.” He turns toward the stairs. “Enjoy the cold, my sweet butterfly.”
No. No, no, no. Not again. Not more endless hours of shivering in the dark, alone with the butterflies and the pins and the growing certainty that my body will give out before my mind does. “Wait.”
He doesn’t turn around. “You’ve had your chance, and you made your choice.”
“Wait. Please.” My breath shakes out of me. “You want the truth, a secret no one else knows? I’ll tell you one I’ve never dared spill, not even in a book.”
He halts mid-step.
I try to speak through the shuddering. “There was this girl who went to my school. We hung out sometimes. I wouldn’t call her a friend—I didn’t have any back then—but she was probably the only person who was nice to me, who talked to me without ulterior motives. One summer…she just disappeared. Her parents said she was away for the summer with her second cousin in Europe. I knew immediately it was a lie. She didn’t have any relatives abroad.
“I was devastated and worried about her, but there was nothing I could do. Luckily, when the new school year started, she came back. However, she seemed like a totally different person, on the inside and out. She gained some weight. Her hair was thinner. Her skin was paler. She had acne, which she didn’t have before. And she had that haunted look in her eyes I’d never forget.
“People asked what happened to her, and she stuck to her parents’ story about Europe. Her friends believed her or pretended to, but I couldn’t. I mean, I was a nerd with no social life who did nothing but study, read and write. The stories she spun about the European cities shevisitedwere good, but the geography and the details just didn’t add up. When she realized I’d caught her in too many lies, she finally confided in me and told me the truth.”
He comes down and faces me. “What truth?”
