He wanted this.
My suffering.
I ain’t supposed to matter.I know I ain’t.I know I’m nothing.I’m the enemy.The traitor.The girl in chains.But hearing him… hearing her… It guts me in a way nothing ever has.
The sounds keep going.The bed where I lay, creaking under them as he pounds her.He says her name once.Joey.Not my name.Never mine.
I cry silently.Violently.
The kind of tears that come from the soul, not the eyes.And through the slats, blurred with tears, I see Royal’s shadow move.
His shoulders tense.His hand pauses where it shouldn’t.And for a moment, one tiny, shattered moment, he looks toward the closet.
Toward me.
Then he forces himself back into motion.Breaking the both of us with the thrust of his hips.
Chapter 15
Royal
Joey leaves without a word.
She knows better than to linger.She sensed what the room really was, something colder than lust and sharper than punishment.She kept glancing toward the closet like she could feel the wrongness radiating off me.
Once the door clicks shut, silence crushes me.
The bed is a mess.Sheets tangled.Wet from my cum.Bloody.My hoodie on the floor.Her perfume still in the air.Not Becki’s.Someone else’s.Someone I thought meant something.Until Becki ruined it.
And I feel sick.
Not because of what I did.
Because of why I did it.
I sit on the edge of the bed, elbows on my knees, head bowed.My breathing is slow, shallow, controlled.But my hands shake.
I can hear her.Not her voice.She can’t speak with the tape over her mouth.
Her breath.
Harsh.Broken.The kind a person makes when they’re crying so hard they forget how to breathe.
A sound I caused.
I drag my hands over my face until it burns.I should not open the closet.I should leave her there until the storm inside me dies.But the longer I sit here, the heavier the air becomes.
She’s crying because of me.
And part of me wanted that.My stomach twists.I stand.The hallway outside is quiet.The party still rages in the distance, muffled bass beating through concrete.Life goes on while I spiral.
I cross the room.
My boots stop in front of the closet door.
Becki’s breath quickens on the other side.She heard me.She felt me.
I lift the latch.
