His weight shifts finally, the pressure easing, but not the ache. He pulls out slow, cruel, dragging every inch until I feel empty in the worst way—hollowed, scraped raw, left open. My body clenches uselessly, pathetic, begging for what I swore I didn’t want.
I want to scream at myself for it.
But my throat is shredded.
All that comes out is a rasp.
The sheets are ruined, wet with sweat, blood, and something filthier. Pages cling to my skin, tacky with red, curling against my stomach, my thighs. I rip one free, crumple it in my fist, but it doesn’t matter. There are dozens more, scattered everywhere, sticking to me like proof.
I crawl weakly to the edge of the bed, glass crunching beneath my knees. My palms press into it, cutting fresh lines into skin already marked. I don’t care. The sting feels cleaner than what he left inside me.
The mirror is gone, reduced to shards, but I see myself reflected a thousand times across the floor. Eyes swollen. Lips split. Neck bruised where his hand held me down. Between my thighs, blood and slick glisten under firelight.
I look ruined.
I look used.
I look like his.
The worst part—my body doesn’t flinch from it. My thighs press together tight, searching for friction even as shame scalds me.
A sob rips out of me, raw, ugly, unstoppable. I slam my fist into the floor, glass biting deep, blood streaking across my knuckles.
I thought the breaking point would be when he touched me.
But it’s this.
The after.
The knowing that even when he’s gone, he’s still inside me.
My breath comes ragged, shallow, animal. The room spins with the scent of sweat and iron. I press my forehead to the floor and whisper, low, feral, like a prayer to no one:
“I hate you.”
The words echo back at me, hollow, meaningless. Because hate doesn’t cleanse me. It corrodes me deeper.
My fingers dig into the shards until my hands are dripping red. I curl them to my chest, clutching pain like it’s a secret, like it’s mine.
Maybe the only thing left that belongs to me is the ruin and maybe that’s enough.
Hook
The papers are everywhere.
Crumpled. Torn. Stained red where her fists bled through the margins. Scattered across the floor like confetti at a funeral.
She’s curled in the middle of it, trembling, her hands cut open from clutching glass, her breath shallow, chest rising in ragged bursts. The mirror is gone. The bed is ruined. The cage looks more like a battlefield than a room now—and she, the wreckage I’ve been building toward since the beginning.
And fuck, she’s beautiful.
Not in the way she used to be, not in the softness of the girl who still thought she had a choice. No. She’s beautiful now because she’s bleeding. Because every inch of her skin carries me—bruises, bites, welts, cuts, my fingerprints stamped over her like signatures.
Proof.
I step over the glass and kneel beside her. She doesn’t move. Not even when the hook brushes a strand of hair from her face. Her eyes stay shut, lashes wet, lips trembling around a whisper I can’t quite catch. I tilt my head closer, listening.
Hate. She’s whispering hate. Over and over, like it’s a prayer.
