Nothing more.
But the way he said it—
Low, rough, reverent.
It made something inside me unravel thread by thread.
The air thickened.
The waves slowed.
The world tightened into a single point between us.
We hovered there on the edge of something too big, too deep, too inevitable both of us pretending we weren’t about to fall into it headfirst.
And neither of us knowing that the fall was coming faster than either of us could stop.
The moment everything fractures
I only meant to slip away for a second. To breathe. To smooth my hair. To pretend I wasn’t unraveling at the seams.
The bathroom light buzzed above me, too bright against the tight ache in my chest.
Then my phone lit up.
Once.
Twice.
Again.
I told myself not to look.
I told myself I wasn’t that girl anymore; the girl Blake rewired into obedience and apology.
But my thumb moved anyway.
The dating app opened like a wound.
Pandora.
Blake.
Thread after thread.
Message after message I didn’t remember responding to.
Some Ineverresponded to at all.
Then the newest one at the top:
“You’re mine. Even if you run, you’ll always end up back where you belong.”
My breath curdled in my throat. My stomach buckled. My fingers went numb around the phone.
“You won’t believe this, Pandora,”each word dripping with malice.“Saw her with that pathetic loser from school. The one I used to beat the crap out of. And now—he’s acting like some kind of hero. I humiliated him for years, and now he’s playing house with my woman? It’s a joke.”
“He was raised by his Nana on and off, for God’s sake… his mum—night-time whore of the town, drunk and high half the time. His dad? A worthless drunk who ran off. And now this… freak thinks he’s something special? We made his life hell, Pandora, and now he waltzes into mine like he owns it. He’s nothing. He’ll always be nothing.”
