The Pacifist [COMPLETED]

Like a Monster

Rachel

Her slumber was deep and as she woke up, Rachel felt the blooms of pain across her body as she became aware of them. She stretched and they sang. Little kisses of evidence that she was alive and she could feel. She turned over and found she was laying on a cot pressed up against a wall in what appeared to be an office. Rachel rubbed the sleep from her eyes that were still puffy from crying.

"How do you feel?" came Mr. Maxwell's gruff voice.

Rachel sat up, recognizing the tone of regret. "I'm fine. How do you feel?" she asked tentatively.

"Like a monster." He sat on a stool, his elbows on his knees and with his head hanging low.

Rachel moved to get up but was caught off guard by the soreness in her most intimate place. She winced. This only seemed to make Mr. Maxwell's mood exponentially more sour. "But why? That was, incredible..."

"It doesn't make it okay."

Just like when she had gone to his place, the warmth Rachel had felt dissipated as insecurity took over. "I'm guessing I won't hear from you for a while again. Until when? When you can't stay away and then I'll receive a presumptuous text?" Rachel's bottom lip quivered. She didn't want to have to wait to feel what he had made her feel again. She also didn't want to be his doormat.

Mr. Maxwell's eyes were pleading, betraying his usual hardness. "I don't know how to be around you without giving in to this." He moved his hand, gesturing between the two of them.

"So what's your solution then?"

His helplessness hit her in the chest. The panic of desperation felt uncomfortable, especially because it wasn't her own and it came from a man who seemed so in control all the time. Rachel couldn't understand why he was so against what they had just shared. Maybe it was because she was damaged beyond hope, but it had felt so fucking right. "Okay... well, I don't want to go through what I went through the last week so..."

"Stay." The order was choked and Mr. Maxwell hadn't moved when he said it.

Rachel leaned back against the wall the cot was up against but said nothing.

"I'm sorry I hurt you."

Rachel shook her head. "But I told you that..."

"I'm talking about disappearing. That wasn't right, especially after you opened yourself up to me."

"Oh... um...thank you." She wasn't sure what else to say because if she was honest, saying that it was okay would be a lie. The sudden drop after a record high had been debilitating and had put her parents on red alert again. That was the last thing she wanted or needed and she worried about her plans to move back out again being threatened before they could even be formed into something concrete. Her parents weren't above strong-arming her, with the aid of the law, to make her stay.

He grunted a nondescript response.