I stop a few feet away, my heart pounding so hard I can feel it in my fingertips. “That’s not fair. You left before I could answer.”
“Because every time I get close to hearing the truth, you build another wall,” he says, his jaw working as though he’s biting down on something sharp. “Higher.Thicker. Stronger. And I’m tired of talking to your walls.”
The words land like a blow because they’re not wrong. They’re not gentle either, but they’re not meant to be because they’re the truth.
“You don’t know what it took for me to build these walls in the first place.”
He steps closer, the distance between us shrinking until I can see the tightness at the corners of his mouth that wasn’t there weeks ago. “Then tell me why you’re so afraid of letting anything be real.”
I feel the words I’ve kept shut away so long they feel like contraband gathering like pressure against my ribs, but they don’t dissolve this time.
“You don’t understand.”
“You’re right,” he says, and there’s no sarcasm in it, only weary surrender. “I don’t because you won’t let me. You keep acting like I’m supposed to accept half-truths and polite lies and call it enough.”
My fingers curl into my palms so tightly the skin across my knuckles stretches white. The garage seems to narrow around us. I could deflect and change the subject like I always do, or better yet, just walk away. Instead, I feel something break open.
“He destroyed me.”
The words land flat, stripped bare, as if they have been waiting years to finally break free. Kyle’s expression tightens, confusion sliding into something heavier when he takes in the way I steady a hand against the wall. “What? Who?”
“My old boss at my first internship.” I swallow, and it feels like sandpaper all the way down. The memories roll over me so hard my vision flashes at the edges. “He… tried things and made it clear that my ambition came with strings I never agreed to.”
Kyle’s whole body goes taut. His hands curl into fists so sharply I can hear his knuckles protest. It’s not angeratme butforme, and somehow, that makes it both easier and infinitely harder to keep talking.
“He cornered me after hours one night,” I say, forcing myself to stay with the memory even as my stomach twists. “Told me I had ‘potential,’ that he could ‘make sure the right people saw it,’ and then put his hands on me like that was the price of being taken seriously.”
The hurt on Kyle’s face is immediate and visceral, like every word is a blow he can’t block, but he doesn’t interrupt.
“I told him no.” My throat closes around the word. “I said it clearly and in every way I could think of. But the next morning, he called me ‘overly sensitive’ in a meeting, and he stopped copying me on emails.”
Heat pricks behind my eyes, not the kind that burns with anger, but that blooms when a wound you’ve kept hidden suddenly sees light.
“And then, he asked me to give him the final campaign deck for a big project I was working on because he wanted to help polish it. I gave it to him because I was young and stupid and still believed professionalism could fixthings.”
My head drops with a sharp shake, like I can physically dislodge the humiliation.
“He pitched it without me. He stood in that room and presented my work as if it were his. And when I confronted him afterward, he told me I was overreacting and that no one would believe me if I made a fuss because he was respected, and I was replaceable.”
Kyle mutters something under his breath. It’s not a word so much as a sound torn from someone who can’t stand that he wasn’t there to stop any of it.
“When I went to HR, he told them I’d misunderstood his mentorship. That I was naïve, ungrateful… unstable.” My lips tremble around the word. “And they believed him.”
Kyle’s eyes close like the image physically hurts him, as if he’s trying to absorb the impact for me now, even though it’s years too late.
“And then the rumors started.” I force a breath past the tightness in my chest. “That I’d only gotten my seat at the table because I’d slept with him. That I was dramatic. Difficult. Trouble.”
The hot, choking shame rolls through me even though I know I did nothing wrong. Shame doesn’t care about wrong or right; it only remembers.
“I lost everything—not just that project, but my entire field. Every application I sent after that disappeared into a void. Every interview evaporated the moment they called my references. Whatever he said, whatever lie he told, it followed me everywhere.”
A tear slips free, blurring my vision. I swipe at it, but my hand shakes too hard to hide it.
“So, I changed industries. Completely. I stopped chasing the future I spent my whole life preparing for because one man decided I didn’t deserve it unless I let him take pieces of me with it.”
Kyle looks like he’s been punched and the metallic taste of blood is filling his mouth.
“I took the Timberwolves internship because it was the only door left open. Not because it was my dream, but because it was a lifeline. I needed a paycheck and had nowhere else left to go.”
