ᴀᴘʜʀᴏᴅɪᴛᴇ // $ᴜɪᴄɪᴅᴇʙᴏʏ$

Chapter Twenty Three

SCOTT

A while had passed, and I thought it was time to go check on Aphrodite.

As I neared the hallway my shoes thumped along the hard concrete floor. I wondered if Aphrodite's nervous breakdown had passed, or if I would have to leave her again to get some kind of control over herself. I had never seen her that way before, didn't know she was capable of losing it the way she did. It was somewhat... strange to see the mostly cool and composed woman break. And when I thought about how the whole ordeal happened because of me...

I ignored my thoughts and unlocked the door, pushed it open, and I was greeted with the sweet metallic scent of blood.

Aphrodite was lying on her back, her hair in a jumbled heap above her head and one hand resting there as well while the other was draped across her stomach. Her face was turned away from me, and her legs stretched out in front of her. I recognized my knife lying next to her leg covered in blood.

And when I saw the blood that was coating her legs and the deathly pale color of her skin, I wondered if she was dead.

I inched closer, moving as quiet as a shadow as I took the sight of her in. I crouched down next to her body and noted that her chest was moving as she took slow and steady breaths. Her eyes were closed and her lips were red from her lipstick.

The image was very much macabre. She looked as grim as the dead.

I watched as that very red mouth opened slightly, and her head slowly moved to look at me. She stared at me blankly, her eyes dark, glazed, and searching. The coolness, the composure she wore so naturally was gone.

She pushed her words through her throat. "I feel better..."

I blinked slowly and dropped my gaze to the blood coating her leg down to the knee. Gently, I took some of the skirt of her dress into my hand and lifted it, pushing it up to reveal a long and nasty gash along her upper thigh. The blood had dried in some areas yet remained moist, the cut beginning more towards the inside of her thigh and ending almost at the edge of her dark blue panties.

She watched me as I inspected her newest cut, saying nothing and watching as more tiny drops of blood flowed down her thigh.

"I want Aristos." She murmured to me.

I lifted the skirt of her dress a little higher so it wouldn't touch her gash. Modesty no longer seemed to be an issue now that she was lying there bleeding. "I know you do."

Her body gave a slight jolt. I watched as more blood oozed from her cut. I heard her moan very softly and watched as those red lips lifted ever so slightly at the corners.

"I want Aristos." She repeated. "I love him."

She weakly drew her brows together as my hands probed at her exposed thighs. My hand moved along her skin softly, touching the dry blood.

She swallowed. "Stop touching me." She whispered.

I lifted my gaze to meet hers again. Her face looked a little delirious, a lot worn out, and somewhat spooky from the smeared makeup that had run down her cheeks. She tried to sound determined, but I heard something else in her voice. My hand held her thigh just under the bleeding cut. I lifted a brow and almost smirked. After everything that had happened to her, she was failing miserably to hide what she was feeling right at that moment. She said she wanted me to stop, but her body remained motionless.

"You want me to stop touching you?" I asked, raising my eyebrows at her as if in challenge. I moved my hand down behind her knee. "I'm not sure if you really want me to."

I slowly moved my hand down her calf as I watched her face and continued to wait for her to bat me away. She remained still. My own eyes darkened slightly as images of her at night came to my mind and how she looked as she tried to cuddle me, images of her that first night in the hotel when she took her clothes off right in front of me before she got in bed. Forgetting just a little, I began bringing my hand back up her leg, feeling her skin underneath my fingers as they travelled all the way back up to her bloody thigh. I wanted to keep going, wanted to touch her even higher.

I blinked when I saw her chin quiver just a little and instantly removed my hands.

Glancing back at her cut and seeing that it was still bleeding, I stood to go in search for a first aid kit. Aphrodite was still in the same position on her back when I returned. I sat on my knees, lifted her injured leg and rested it on my thigh so I could see more closely. The hand that had been draped across her stomach now held the skirt of her dress, squeezing it as I cleaned her cut and the blood from her skin with antiseptic.

She gave a shaky breath. "Why are you doing this?"

"I can't have you dying on me. It would be too much an inconvenience. And I kinda enjoy your crazy way of sleeping."

Surprisingly, she gave a breathless laugh. "I've always wanted to be normal." She muttered with her eyes heavy as she watched me clean her. "This isn't normal. This is..." She searched for a word.

"This is life." I answered, and dabbed some iodine directly onto her cut, causing her to wince. "And life is relentless and unbalanced."

"Unbalanced." She repeated softly as I began to apply dressing and bandage to her wound. "I am unbalanced... I'm crazy."

"Don't say that. What happened to you isn't because you're crazy. It's just life and how cruel it can be. And unfortunately, the only cure for life is death." I ran my fingers along the bandages to make sure they were secure.

"I don't really have any friends. I only have one friend, Brynn. I'm sure that's my fault. I don't relate well to people, knowing everyone is so... horrible. My family..." She looked down at the scars along her forearms and at the bandages on her thigh. "My mom was not a nice woman. But I tried my best to take care of her. And I hated myself for that, hated that I let myself become brainwashed and used by her, and that I knew it was happening to me the whole time."

I leaned forward and took the back of her neck into my hand and lifted. "Don't allow her to use you anymore." I said coolly. "You're a fighter. I can see it. But you tolerate the dysfunctions of your life to the point of this." My other hand grazed over her dressings. "Your pills can only numb you for a little while. Life can't be forgotten by something so trivial. Trust me, I know from experience."

She breathed softly as her hand gently touched my shirt, grasping weakly at the end and holding on. My gaze dropped to the red of her lips against pale skin. Fearing that I would forget myself again, I picked her up from the floor and set her onto the bed. Just as I was about to turn and leave her, her grip on my shirt tightened. I gazed down at her with questioning eyes.

"Please. I want to go back to Ari."

I slowly shook my head and lowered myself onto the side of the bed next to her. "And I want Sienna back."