I laugh. It comes out thin and cracked, bordering on hysterical.
Of course.
Even the island wants me compliant. Fed. Relaxed. Smiling.
I stand and move to the bathroom, locking the door behind me even though I know it’s pointless. I run cold water over my wrist, hissing as the sting flares. The marks don’t fade. They just look angrier under the light.
“How did you not see this coming?” I whisper to my reflection.
The girl in the mirror doesn’t answer.
She looks like someone who learned too late that control doesn’t always come with chains at first. Sometimes it comes with champagne and silk and promises whispered like vows.
Sometimes it comes with a man who smiles in public and grips your bones in private.
I turn off the light and slide down against the bathroom wall, knees drawn to my chest, arms wrapped around myself in a useless imitation of safety.
Tomorrow, he said.
We’ll talk in the morning.
My stomach twists, dread pooling low and heavy.
Because I know what that means now.
It means calm explanations delivered like verdicts. It means rewriting the night until I doubt my own memory. It means consequences dressed up as concern.
And worst of all—It means there is no one here who will hear me if I scream.
I press my forehead to my knees and close my eyes, the sound of the ocean seeping faintly through the glass, indifferent and endless.
For the first time since arriving on this island, the truth settles fully into my bones:
I am not a guest here.
I am not a bride.
I am contained.
And whatever happened to Noah’s first wife didn’t end with her.
It ended with him.
Kai
Idon’t rush things.
That’s the mistake people make when they think obsession is loud.
Obsession is patient.
It’s standing still while the world spins itself into knots and knowing exactly where it will land.
I lean against the railing above the beach, cigarette burning down between my fingers, watching the lights of the resort pulse like a living thing. Music drifts up from the party — laughter, glasses clinking, something tropical and obscene pretending this island isn’t rotten at the core.
She’s in there.
I don’t need to see her to know.
