Broken Doll {ManxMan}

CHAPTER 28

I found myself alone when I woke up the next morning. My eyes stung and I felt heavy, but I struggled to push myself up so I could glance around the room, searching for Tobias. He wasn't on the bed with me, wasn't in the room from what I could see, and when I stood up to check the bathroom, I found that empty as well.

For a painful moment I just stood in the middle of the bedroom, staring at where the violin was in the armchair beside the window, remembering how I'd rejected Tobias, remembering how I'd been so afraid of him, hating myself for it. I knew I had problems, problems that had just gotten worse because of Bay, but was I really that broken in the end?

Would I get better?

Or was I going to be this way forever?

It had been a few weeks since I last blacked out from panic, I hadn't had a bad anxiety attack since running into Bay a few days prior, just last night my breakdown hadn't really been too bad, probably because Tobias stopped when I asked and instead tried to calm me down.

He didn't touch me, didn't force me into something I clearly wasn't ready for, and because of that fact, and the fact he still stayed beside me, I managed to calm down before my breakdown got worse. I was so grateful to him, but I felt guilty.

We were married, it was supposed to be okay to sleep together. I was supposed to enjoy intimacy with him, like I always used to. Was it normal? Part of me figured it was completely normal, but a much larger part of me was just sneering. Telling me I wasn't normal for not liking the idea of sex, even sex with my own husband.

Adalwolf always said that if I was contradicting myself, if I was feeling this low, then it would be healthy to talk to someone, preferably someone who understood my position, but where the hell was I going to find someone like that? I would prefer talking to Adalwolf, but he wasn't there right now.

I suppose I could always ask Tobias to let me radio the doctor alone in the study, but the very idea of that made me feel even worse.

Tobias was probably mad at me. He was probably pissed off and annoyed that I wouldn't let him sleep with me. I... I didn't want him to be mad at me, I wanted to make him happy, but I also didn't want to force myself to submit to him when it would clearly make my mental stability a hundred times worse.

"It's not an obligation," I whispered to myself, "You have a right to say no. He's my husband, he won't leave me because of this. He didn't marry me for sex."

I continued to repeat that to myself as I took a quick shower in an attempt to wash away the dried tears on my cheeks and the crust in my eyes, dressing in clean clothes and drying my hair as much as I could so I didn't make myself sick, after just recovering from a fever. My fingers worked through my hair to free it of tangles as I left the room, and my other hand curled into the front of my shirt so I wouldn't end up scratching at my hands from my anxiety.

It took a while to find Tobias, seemingly finishing a conversation with Josie, Isagani, and Arthur's older brother, Ian. I remembered him pretty well, considering he'd been Rupert's captive and Vinet's plaything for a few days in the past. The torture had taken away his sight, but I was pleasantly surprised to see him standing on his own, holding what looked to be a walking stick made of some form of metal in one hand.

It was rather tall, reaching his chin, thick enough to avoid breakage but thin enough around for him to hold in his hand. My first assumption was that he used it just to get around, but it also occurred to me he might actually fight with it, which would have been enormously impressive.

There was color to his cheeks, though the area around his eyes was still a little red, the blue of his eyes faded to a milky white that looked like storm clouds or pearls. Tobias had a tight expression on his face, it must have been a serious conversation, and I didn't want to interrupt, but I still inched towards him and stopped just behind him to wait.