The door closes with a soft, final click.
The island outside the window sparkles with paradise sun.
But I’m frozen.
Shaking.
Staring at the spot where he stood.
Because the worst part isn’t that he said those things.
The worst part—is that he meant every single one.
And the second worst—is that someone did put that blindfold on me.
Someone who wasn’t Noah.
And he knows it.
Even if he’ll never, ever say it out loud.
The moment the bathroom door closes, I break.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
Not the kind of break that makes sound.
It’s the silent kind.
The one that happens in the bones first — a deep, internal fracture that radiates outward until everything inside you feels hairline-cracked.
I sit there on the bed, knees pulled up, fingers tangled in the sheets like they’re the only thing keeping me tethered to the room, and the soft rush of the shower running on the other side of the door feels like it’s worlds away. Too normal. Too peaceful. Too wrong.
My pulse pounds hard enough that I feel it in my gums.
He didn’t put the blindfold on me.
He didn’t come into the room last night.
He didn’t touch me.
That means?—
God.
That means someone else did.
And the only thing more terrifying than that truth is the way Noah reacted to it.
He knew.
He didn’t believe me.
But he knew.
He knew something happened.
