I’m gripping the desk so hard my fingers are stinging, but it’s that or puke.
I’m not dreaming.
This is real.
I’ve blacked out again, like the day I found myself at Bastian’s door, drenched, barefoot, with no memory of how I got there.
“Anyone remember the three primary attachment styles we discussed on Tuesday?” he asks, scanning the classroom.
Tuesday? I wasn’t in class on Tuesday, and I have no idea what he’s talking about, so that tracks. That makes today…Thursday?
Hands go up around me. He points to a girl in the front row.
“Secure, anxious, and avoidant?” she answers.
“That’s it,” Bastian nods, flashing her a smile that makes my stomach turn. “And what happens when someone with an anxious attachment style, someone who craves connection, validation, constant reassurance, encounters a partner who deliberately withholds those things?”
Silence.
How can they not hear my drumming heart?
Bastian claps his hands together once, the sharp sound making me flinch. “Come on. You should all know this.”
Another student raises their hand. “Don’t they, like, want approval even more? Like, they’d do anything to get it.”
“Yes! Which means…” He turns and scrawls a word on the board, tapping his chalk beside it. “They become the perfect victim.”
VICTIM
The word glows, shivers, and shakes as I stare.
Icy tingles start up in my fingers.
My face goes cold.
“Now here’s where it gets interesting,” Bastian says, sliding his thigh onto the edge of his desk, hand holding the chalk dangling over his knee. “The cruel partner understands this dynamic instinctively. They create a cycle of intermittent reinforcement, alternating between affection and rejection, kindness and cruelty.”
He takes his phone out of his pocket, tosses it onto the desk beside him. The clatter makes my stomach tighten, my eyes blink, my head twitch.
“A relationship as toxic as yours and that free pay-to-win game you swear you’re going to delete…tomorrow.”
Scattered laughter ripples through the class, and the side of his mouth quirks as he scans his class with dark, glittering eyes.
He’s so handsome.
So charismatic.
So fuckingnormal.
This can’t be the same man who?—
…you were meant to be eaten alive…
“This power dynamic,” Bastian continues, rocking forward, “creates what psychologists call traumatic bonding. The victim becomes emotionally dependent on the very person causing them harm.”
Beside me, Melissa snorts quietly. “That’s us, Haven.”
It feels like an impossible task to tear my eyes from Bastian. When I finally manage it, she’s sending a tiny frown my way.
