Intimately Enchanted → pjm ✓

Chapter 40

Once upon a time, Lorraine Acker was a victim.

With glinting eyes so big and always wide open to take in her world. Curious. Curious about everything, eyebrows always raised.

About a decade ago or so.

Once upon a time, Lorraine was helpless and naïve. Oh so naïve. She latched onto any bit of comfort she could get. Trusted so easily. Easily enough to get hurt.

"You're with new bruises."

Lorraine lifted her head from her knees, looking at the man in front of her. She rolled her eyes, pressing her cheek to her knee instead and drawing her legs closer towards her chest as a stray tear rolled down the bridge of her nose, looking away from the man. 

"That's not news now, is it?" She retorted, voice scraped like shards of glass which somehow made the man in front of her wince.

She shouldn't be sitting here, it was fucking pathetic to sit in the middle of the corridor of her house. The maids don't judge but it made her feel weak. She was weak, though. That wasn't news either.

The man in front of her was way older. Clad in an expensive black suit that was probably customised for him. He looked quite composed, considering that someone in front of him was having an emotional breakdown. Almost like he didn't care.

Lorraine wished she knew that he truly didn't care at that time. But the thing was– his actions and words had never matched his true intentions. People do that, apparently. Manipulate you.

Zak knelt down on the floor with a sigh, kept something down that he was holding in his hand to reach out and grab her chin between his forefinger and thumb.

Lorraine was weak. But stubborn.

For she refused to lift her face up from where it was buried even after much force.

"Raine, for fuck's sake." Zak scolded, but it was in a hushed tone. But when she was still reluctant on not showing her face to him, he sighed and loosened his grip on her. "Come on, Raine, with me? You're gonna hide from me?"

He was always so good at blackmailing, wasn't he?

Lorraine deliberately lifted her face up and faced him. She wasn't ashamed of what he saw, but it still hurt. It hurt to see someone pitying you.

He didn't comment anything though. Lorraine noticed that there was a first aid kit beside him as he started opening it and pulled out a disinfectant solution, pouring it into a cotton pad and dabbing it on where there was a gash on her cheek.

The tears ran freely from Lorraine's eyes when he started cleaning her wounds in the lonely corridor. She didn't meet his eyes, staring somewhere at the wall behind him.

"Tell me what they did." Zak whispered.

And Lorraine could have told. She really could have. There were thoughts storming in her head all at once about all of the things she wanted to say.

I don't know what I did to deserve this.

I don't want it.

She wanted to scream.

And beg for help.

Her parents were at work and Tom was in school and she was probably gonna get another layer of bruises for skipping school but she felt sick in the head.

"I don't want Tom to see it."

That's what she settled for in the end. 

Zak stopped his work from where he was applying some antiseptic on her skin. He stared and stared before he gulped and continued to do his work in hand.

Which pissed Lorraine off.

Why did he ask if he didn't want to say anything?

She grabbed his wrist in one swift motion, stopping him on his tracks and startling him. She looked at him dead in the eyes, hers red rimmed and raw and she glared at him intensely.

"Do something, Zak." She said, desperate, eyebrows furrowed hard as she refused to let the tears drop that had welled in her eyes. "Please, do something. I can't live like this forever! Instead of cleaning these fucking wounds, make them stop."

Zak stared at her. He was much older than her. Probably nine or ten years. Her parents loved him. But he wasn't like her parents. He was...good. He took care.

Lorraine sobbed.

Then his hand came to caress her cheek instead. The skin of his palm was rough and firm and Lorraine, once again, stubbornly didn't lean into it.

"What do you want me to do, Raine?" Zak huffed.

"Anything! Fuck– do anything! Expose them to the media. I know you can do that, can't you? The business they do behind charity."

"It's not as easy as you imagine."

"Well, it will sure be easier than to live like this, Zak! I'll do anything, please! Please, just get me and Tom out of this mess!"

There was a grimace on Zak's lips at her desperation.

"You'll do anything?"

"Anything."

*

There was a night not so long ago, when Lorraine lived all the years of her lives at once.

She jolted awake from her slumber when heard the screams, and she was five again.

The rush of fear that clawed at her chest, the feeling that she didn't know the name of took over her being and she was seven again.

One of these treacherous nights hadn't happened in a while so Lorraine did what she always had– pretending to be asleep, praying to God that she'd fall asleep again.

Her body felt paralysed from where she lay on the bed when she heard the hit. Her brain screamed at her to stand up and do something, but the truth was... Lorraine was a coward.

Lorraine was a coward who never stood up for the abuse that her mother went through. There was guilt along with the terror. Terror that knows no understanding, terror that knows no control, terror that no one can understand.

Maybe she tried to rationalise her guilt with her terror. But the truth remained the same. Lorraine was never strong.

All that Lorraine was...was stubborn.

Stubborn to be strong. Stubborn to get out.

And selfish too.

Lorraine was one of those girls who genuinely needed a miracle to save her from her nightmare. Maybe a charming prince too, but she'd never accept it. No matter what it costs her.

So when Lorraine got stabbed in her back by a shattered glass through her own father, she did feel wronged. But truly, it was just repentance.

*

Lorraine had always been on of the worst sufferers of anxiety. So much so that she could easily imagine death approaching her like am old friend. Feelings of extreme terror didn't feel distant to her, she could imagine all the emotions she'd feel if she ever were to get kidnapped or slaughtered.

Maybe that led her to be a great actor.

Maybe that was repentance too.

The point was, when Zak tried to blackmail fifteen year Lorraine into sleeping with him, she did feel scared, she felt betrayed and wronged by the only person she trusted back then. But she was so used to feeling that way...

Sex wasn't something usual to Lorraine. She just didn't feel like engaging into it until she entered Hollywood. The industry reeked of sex, for reputation, for sensuality, for making a name. Everything.

But when she was fifteen, sex didn't make sense.

So she refused before all hell broke over.

Lorraine was never strong but stubborn and selfish but she was damn right in it.