I drop the phone onto the table like it’s radioactive and back away. Three steps. Four. Then I sit on the edge of the kitchen counter and pick at the raw skin beside my thumbnail until it bleeds.
What do you want from me?
I can still see the words glowing against the black screen like a curse I carved into myself. Not whispered. Not screamed. Just… offered.
I didn’t ask who he is.
Didn’t ask how he knows me.
Didn’t ask why.
I asked what.
Because some sick, coiled part of me wants to know.
Wants a list. A plan. A countdown.
Wants him to say:
I want you bound.
I want your mouth open and your legs wider and your mind undone.
I want to ruin you in such specific, unforgivable ways that you’ll never be able to look at yourself in a mirror again without thinking of me.
I exhale.
It’s too warm in here.
I shrug off the hoodie. The air kisses my bare skin, but it doesn’t cool me. I’m still flushed. Still throbbing in places I shouldn’t be after being psychologically violated in a velvet room by a man I’d never seen before last night.
Except I have.
Not in person. Not up close.
But I’ve heard his name.
In whispers. In rumours. In the kind of half-jokes girls tell each other when they want to believe it’s just an urban legend. The man with the hook. The one who doesn’t fuck, just keeps. The one who collects women like secrets and buries them somewhere no one ever finds them again.
And yet the stories were always vague.
No photos. No videos. Just a name you say when you want a girl to stop smiling so wide.
Hook.
I’d never seen his face until last night.
And I hate that now I can’t stop seeing it.
The cut of his jaw. The curve of his mouth. The way his eyes didn’t blink when I slapped him, like he liked it. Like he could’ve snapped me in half with one hand but decided to let me pretend I had power for five more seconds.
I want to say it was fear.
I want to believe it was fear.
But my thighs are still damp and my heart is still doing that tight little dance it only does when I’m about to ruin my own life on purpose.
My phone vibrates once.
