After a long minute, I sit down on my own terms and cross my arms. I feel the ignition in my chest climb into something that needs to come out, or it's going to consume me from the inside.
All three of them stand in front of me.
Nobody speaks.
"Are you guys serious?"
Nothing.
"You're still not going to say anything?" I look between all three of them. "Why did you even bring me here if it’s not to talk?”
Nothing.
The silence is the most infuriating thing.
I grab the blanket off the bed, and I throw it at them. It hits Beckett in the chest and falls to the floor. None of them moves. I grab the pillow. I throw that too. It hits Cody's shoulder. He doesn't move.
"Say something!" My voice bounces off the walls and comes back to me.
I stand up.
I get right in front of Theo because Theo is the one I'm most furious at. I'm done pretending otherwise. I get close enough that I have to look up at him, and I feel the heat coming off him.
"You stood over me while I slept," I say right into his masked face. "You took my necklace! You sat across from me in a library for months, and you knew — you knew the whole time — and you let me think what we had was mine, and it was never mine, it was yours, you built it, and you held it and you—"
My voice breaks.
I hate that my voice breaks.
I hate that I'm standing in front of him with a broken voice and hot eyes because I told myself six weeks ago that I was done feeling things about these men, and here I am.
"I trusted you!" I say.
He says nothing.
I turn to Cody. “And Cody? I have no idea why you’re taking part in any of this! I expected it from these two, but you? Are you fucking kidding me? Why am I even here, Cody? You haven’t called me. You didn’t visit. Fuck every single one of you, but especially you, Cody!”
I pick up the blanket and pillow and sit on the bed. They stand, unmoving, for five minutes. And then ten.
I can’t take the fucking silence any longer.
"Do you have any idea what it feels like to find out that your entire life is a lie?" My voice is shaking. "Everything I did — every decision I made, every feeling I acted on — I did it with self-respect. And the whole time, every single person around me was lying and manipulating. And building a version of me in their heads that I never agreed to and never got a say in." I look at all three of them. "You deconstructed my entire life. All three of you. Piece by piece until there was nothing left." My voice drops. "And the only thing I have left is my dignity. So do whatever you're going to do to me." I look between them. "Because I don't fucking care anymore."
The room is silent.
Three masked men standing at the foot of the bed, and not one of them moves, not one of them speaks, and the silence is worse than anything they could say because at least words would give me something to fight against.
The silence absorbs everything.
I sink back onto the edge of the bed.
I'm exhausted.
Six weeks of healing my body and carrying everything, going to class, and going to work. I did everything I was supposed to do to feel normal again.
None of it worked.
I don't say anything else.
