“God, what the fuck is wrong with me?” I whisper, voice shaking. “It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t?—”
But the song dips into the chorus, and something in me shatters like glass under a boot.
I scream.
Right there in the kitchen, I scream into the empty air—raw, furious, terrified. The kind of scream that rips its way out of your body because holding it in would kill you faster.
My knees buckle.
I catch myself on the fridge handle, breathing ragged breaths that scrape my throat raw.
Tears blur my vision—but they don’t fall.
I won’t let them.
Instead, I grab the bottle again, take a huge swallow straight from it, and slam it onto the table.
“Fuck you,” I whisper into the room.
Into the silence.
Into the memory of his breath on my skin.
“And fuck you too, Noah.”
The house hums around me—quiet, heavy, tense.
Like something in the walls heard me.
Like something is listening.
The music thunders.
My pulse thunders harder.
I spin again, reckless, drunk, angry, vibrating like a fault line about to give.
But the locket keeps striking my chest with every movement—cold, hard, insistent.
A reminder.
A brand.
A claim.
By the time the song ends, I’m breathless.
Sweating.
Shaking.
And the bottle is almost empty.
I press my hands to the counter again, leaning forward, hair falling into my face, breath uneven.
I whisper it to the marble.
A truth I don’t want to own.
