The sobs took over again, ugly and primal. I ended up on the bathroom floor, cool tile against fevered skin, trying to remember how to exist without him. But every coping mechanism led back to his training. Every self-soothing technique bore his fingerprints.
He'd built me to need him, then left me to function alone with that need.
The cruelest gift imaginable.
Hours passed. Or minutes. Time meant nothing without his structure. Eventually, exhaustion won, pulling me under into fractured dreams where he explained it all. Where this was just another exercise in distance. Where I'd wake up back in his bed, safe and owned and home.
But when consciousness returned, I was still alone. Still abandoned. Still Lilah in a world where only Bunny made sense.
The money sat on the counter, untouched and untouchable. The clothes hung in the closet like artifacts from a life I couldn't return to. The empty phone and blank computer waited for me to build a new existence.
But I didn't want new. I wanted the familiar weight of his collar. The simple pink room where I'd learned to submit. The mountain house we'd never see. The future we'd planned in whispers and promises.
I wanted him.
My owner. My doctor. My Daddy who'd sworn I was ready for whatever came next.
But he'd lied.
I wasn't ready for abandonment. Wasn't ready to be Lilah again. Wasn't ready for a world without his structure, his touch, his constant presence reminding me I existed.
Without him, I was nothing but conditioning without purpose. Training without application. A perfectly programmed pet with no master to serve.
The thought should have made me angry. The old Lilah would have raged, destroyed things, used fury to fill the void. But Bunny only knew how to hurt. How to ache. How to wait for an owner who wasn't coming back.
So I waited.
Curled on a bathroom floor in an apartment I didn't want, wearing silk that wasn't mine, crying for a man who'd loved me completely and left me anyway.
Waiting for forever to begin.
Even though my heart knew—with horrible, breaking certainty—that forever had already ended.
And I'd slept through the goodbye.
Unraveling
The bathroom floor became the couch at some point. I didn't remember moving, but my body must have crawled there on autopilot, seeking softer ground for dissolution. The expensive leather stuck to my skin where tears had dried, pulling painfully when I shifted, but I couldn't find reason to care.
What was discomfort compared to the howling void where he used to live?
Time stopped meaning anything. The sun rose and set beyond those floor-to-ceiling windows, painting shadows across walls I didn't recognize, but the passage of days felt theoretical. Abstract. Without his voice telling me when to wake, when to eat, when to exist, the hours blurred into one endless moment of loss.
My throat burned. When had I last had water? The kitchen was so far away—ten feet that might as well have been miles. And who would tell me I was allowed to drink? Whowould praise me for staying hydrated? Who would punish me if I didn't?
"Daddy?" The word came out as a croak, directed at empty air that never answered. "Am I allowed water? Please, I'll be good. Just need to know if—"
Silence.
Always silence.
The old Lilah would have just gotten water. Would have eaten when hungry, slept when tired, made decisions based on basic human needs. But the old Lilah was dead, and Bunny needed permission that never came.
My stomach cramped, empty beyond hunger. When had I last eaten? Before waking here. Before the world ended. Back when his hands guided food to my mouth and made consumption feel like worship.
"Please," I whispered to no one. "Please tell me what to do. When to eat. How to be."
But the apartment offered no structure, no rules, no consequences. Just terrible freedom that felt like drowning in open air.
