I turn my head with effort, Melissa’s concerned face swimming into focus.
“Breathe,” she mouths, demonstrating by taking an exaggerated breath.
I try to copy her, dragging air into my lungs. In through the nose, out through the mouth. The darkness recedes.
“You look like you’re going to pass out,” she whispers. “Do you need to leave?”
I shake my head slightly, still trying to regulate my breathing. “I’m fine,” I mouth back, though I’m anything but.
“—we see the same psychological mechanics in domestic abuse, cult indoctrination, even toxic workplaces,” Bastian continues, out of sight as I let Melissa bring me back to reality.
“The cruel figure becomes the center of the victim’s universe. They even begin to speak the language of their abuser, to see themselves through the abuser’s eyes. ‘Damaged goods,’ ‘asking for it,’ ‘deserved it’. These phrases become internalized.”
…you’re damaged goods now, sweet girl. Broken, branded, mine…
He’s not looking at me now, addressing the opposite side of the room. Without his eyes drilling into mine, it’s easy to dismiss the sinister thoughts in my head.
Am I imagining the knowing looks? The way he’s speaking to me as if no one else is in the room?
My breathing slows, the vise around my chest loosening. I uncurl my fingers from the edge of the desk, blood returning to my whitened knuckles with a prickle.
“What happened?” Melissa asks.
“I—” I clear my throat. “I’m okay. Just a little dizzy.”
“No, I mean Tuesday.”
My jaw clenches.
She knows? How can she?—
“They were convinced you had alcohol poisoning,” she hisses. “If I hadn’t convinced campus security that you were fine, they’d have taken you to the hospital.”
I blink at her, struggling to process her words through the lingering panic attack that felt like it almost claimed my fucking life. “What?”
“You don’t remember? They found you out by the woods, wet, in the freezing cold.”
Fragments float back—rain on my face, the taste of liquor burning my throat, shouting at shadows. But everything after that is blank.
“I just...” I trail off, not sure which fucking lie to tell.
When I glance away from her insistent stare, I catch sight of Kai. He’s glaring at me, toying with a sucker in his mouth, his other hand tucked under his elbow.
“Don’t tell me you’re fine again,” she says. “You slept the whole day yesterday. Wouldn’t speak to me this morning. Now you almost pass out in class?” Her eyes narrow, then widen, glimmering with concern. “When last did you eat?” She givesme a quick scan, laying a hand on my shoulder. “You are eating, right?”
I twist my body away from her touch. “Jesus, Melissa, I said I’mfine.”
My gaze drifts over to Kai. He’s rocked back on his chair, glare gone and a sucker in his mouth, but there’s nothing relaxed about him. He stares at Bastian with undisguised hatred—jaw clenched, shoulders rigid with tension.
Guess he has every reason to hate Bastian as much as he hates me after what happened on Saturday morning.
God, how did this all get sofucked?
“—and to quote van der Kolk, ‘the body keeps the score’.”
His eyes hunt mine out, no mistaking it.
“The idea being that trauma lives in our physical being even when the conscious mind tries to deny it. The body remembers pleasure even when the mind remembers pain.”
