I hate that I flinched.
I never flinch.
“Get out,” I snap, but my voice isn’t strong. It shakes. “Get the fuck away from me.”
He steps closer. I step back. My towel slips slightly, and suddenly I feel naked in more ways than one. I want to yell again, but it dies in my throat. My hands are shaking. I can’t stop them. I can’t stop any of this.
“Arlo—”
“Don’t youfuckingsay my name.”
I’m unraveling. I can feel it.
I want to hit him. I want to scream until my throat tears open. Instead, a tear slides down my cheek, and I swipe it away with my fist—angry that it escaped. Angry that he saw. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. Just watches.
My hand flies to my neck before I can stop it.
Grabbing for something that’s not there.
More tears slip down, and I fucking hate it. Hate that he’s standing here watching me fall apart.
I lunge forward, trying to shove past him. I feel like I’m suffocating just being near him. But he won’t move. Won’t let me through.
I twist again, panic surging up my spine. I need to run. I need out. If I stay here another second, I’ll crack open right in front of him. I’m already drowning. In his scent. His size. His fucking presence.
His eyes flick to where my hand went.
“Where’s your necklace?”
I don’t answer.
Can’t.
He steps in closer.
I spot the gap, slipping through it. Rushing down the hallway, my heart is jackhammering, but his footsteps follow?—
“Did they rape you?”
I stop so fast it rattles through my bones.
Did he really just?—?
My head snaps toward him, heat flooding my chest. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Is that seriously the shit coming out of your mouth right now?”
The sheer fucking audacity of him asking me that—after everything—makes my stomach turn.
I want to run. I want to disappear.
I want to go back to the version of me that didn’t know him. That wasn’t destroyed by him.
“Answer the goddamn question,” he bites out.
My hands shake. My vision blurs. But I hold his stare anyway.
Why? So he can smile and tell me I liked it? So he can throw it back in my face the way he always does—every filthy, degrading thing he’s ever done to me twisted into some sick proof that Iwantedit. So he can remind me how I sounded when I begged. How I looked when I came for him. How he made me swallow his spit and told me I was made for it.
“You want the fucking highlight reel? That fucker with the gold tooth—he burned me. Poured gasoline down my throat. Sliced open my back until I couldn’t scream anymore.”
