“I’m just getting air,” I answer, and I keep my voice even because I refuse to give her the satisfaction of hearing it shake. Although her words feel like a threat.
Her mouth curves. It ain’t a smile. “You think he’s chosen you?”
The question lands like a slap, sharp enough to sting. My throat tightens, but I hold my tongue, because if I speak I’ll say something silly. Something honest. That it’s obvious he hasn’t. Not really.
She steps closer, eyes ice cold. “He fucks. He doesn’t choose.”
My stomach twists. I try to breathe through it, try to remember I don’t owe her anything. She’s the one who came looking for me.
“You’re not special,” she continues. “You’re disposable.”
Each word is delivered like she’s discussing the weather, like she’s bored. Like she’s been practicing this speech in her mirror.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, but it comes out thinner than I want.
Bethany laughs softly, sweet and wrong. “Oh, sweetheart. I know exactly what I’m talking about. I’ve been married to that man longer than you’ve been legal.”
That sentence burns. Not because it’s true, but because she wants it to burn, because she wants me to feel small and stupid and out of my depth.
“You think you’re the first girl he’s gotten curious about?” she asks, like she’s genuinely amused. “The first one who thought she meant something to him? The first one who he told he was claiming her.”
Something inside me starts to splinter, not because she’s convincing me, but because she’s poking at the part of me that already hurts.
“Then why do you care?” I shoot back.
Her expression changes. Just a flicker, quick enough she probably thinks I won’t catch it. But I do. Because she does care.She hates that she does. She hates that it ain’t as easy as it used to be.
“I don’t,” she says coolly. “But I don’t like being embarrassed.”
She steps into my space and shoves me.
It ain’t hard enough to knock me down. It’s hard enough to send a message. The dock creaks under my heels and the lake looks up at us like it’s waiting.
“Back off,” I say.
She shoves me again.
It’s clear she’s fixing to shove me into the water. To my death. Green water engulfs me in my mind, pulling me under.
My patience snaps. My pride snaps. Something in me that’s been swallowing insults since the diner, since the pawn shop, since the first time Hell decided I was the kind of girl you can talk about like an object, that thing finally breaks.
I shove her back.
It ain’t graceful. It ain’t planned. It’s pure instinct.
Bethany’s face hardens. She grabs my hair.
Pain explodes across my scalp as she yanks me forward, and my eyes water so fast it makes me dizzy. Her nails bite into my skin.
“You think you can just stroll in here and take my biker?” she hisses. “Trailer park trash. Backwoods whore.”
Then her hand cracks across my cheek.
The sound echoes over the water, loud and ugly, and for a second all I can hear is the slap and my own breath. My face burns. My vision narrows.
“Gold digger,” she spits.
Something in me goes quiet.
