Impurity

Chapter Sixteen - Grains

"What if I don’t wanna hear it after all?", I ask. My voice sounds a thousand miles away. My hair’s dry, it smells like salt and the taste of the ocean’s still on my lips. My skin is warm and soft. I’m tired, dizzy. Drunk on the waves that seem to surround me still. I never knew floating in the water would make walking so hard.

I do wanna hear it. I want to know. I’m dying to find out the truth. Whatever it may be. But it scares me. I’ve been trying to get the bag, been going through the papers. I haven’t given up on wanting to know what’s happening and why, haven’t put my worries aside just because my irrational love for Niall outweighed them or because I did drugs with a beautiful woman in front of greedy men. I need to know why I’m here. I need to know what it all means.

I never asked for the meaning of anything. I never questioned any reasons. Before Niall.

Just now I realise that I seem to have lived two lives. Before Niall. And with Niall. And the life I led a long time ago. But thinking about that hurts my head. I feel both physically and mentally unable to think back to the time where Niall was a poster boy and I wore razorblades around my neck.

I hit myself in the face to chase these thoughts.

"Morgan, stop!", Niall yells at me, stumbling forward and wrapping his fingers tightly around my wrist to keep me from slapping myself again. "What the fuck are you doing?"

Yes, what am I doing?

I’m calm. I’m so calm, actually. Or was.

The beach left me so tired, so peaceful. But now, my fear seems to take over. I’m shaking. Niall went upstairs to the gallery like second floor, where he had hidden the black bag before. Came back downstairs to me. I’ve been waiting on the sofa, naked. We didn’t take towels to the beach and as we walked back to the house, on bare feet, with grains of sand between our toes and our fingers intertwined, our clothes got sticky and started to itch. I don’t mind being naked around Niall. I don’t mind being that vulnerable around him anymore. I don’t mind showing him all of me because I want all of him as well. He put on new boxers though, joking it was “for his own safety”, then walked up to get the bag. And as soon as he put it on the table in front of me, I started shaking.

"You deserve to know it.", he said, putting his hand on my knee. "I have to tell you. So you’ll stop asking and stop spying on me. Because I can’t live like this."

That’s when I said that maybe, I didn’t even want to hear it.

"Morgan, are you okay?", he now asks, still standing there with my wrists in his grip.

"Yeah, I’m good.", I lie.

"Why were you hitting yourself?", he wants to know.

"I was just… Sometimes I…", I try to explain something that can’t be explained because I don’t get the reason why, too. I wanted to scare the monster away. "I wanted to scare a monster away." I smile, hoping he’ll relax and let me go, but he frowns and asks:"The monster? Morgan, are you okay?" His eyes flicker to the bag on the table.

"Yeah, sure, it’s just… I guess it’s the drugs Harry gave me last night.", I play it down. Finally, Niall lets me go.

He stretches and looks at me, shaking his head. “I’m worried about you, babygirl.”, he says. “I’m very worried about you. But you’re safe with me. I just need you to know that you’re safe, okay? Tell me you know that you’re safe.”

"I know that I’m safe?", I say, not sure why he needed me to tell him that. Why he keeps reminding me of it. What is he keeping me safe from?

He inhales deeply, picks up the bag and sits down on a chair he positioned in front of the sofa, taking the bag on his lap. “Do you promise me not to run away?”