“You’re nothing but a burden. A fucking anchor. You hold me down, and you smile while doing it.”
The pause is worse than the yelling. The calm before a punch that hasn’t landed.
“You think your little encouragements make me feel better? They make me small. Useless. FUCKING. TRAPPED.”
He slams his fist into the wall beside my head, hard enough that he punches clean through the drywall.
The force sends a puff of dust into my face. I scream, hands covering my head, waiting for the next hit.
But it never comes.
I stay there, shaking, the sob trapped in my throat. Maybe if I stay still enough, silent enough, I’ll disappear. Maybe if I don’t move, he’ll remember who I am and not who he thinks I’ve become.
He steps back, panting, chest heaving, and without another word, storms toward the bedroom. The door slams behind him so hard the frame rattles.
And I slide down the wall, legs folding beneath me as the tears come.
Big, heavy, silent sobs that feel like they’re tearing something loose inside me.
I don’t know how long I sit there. Long enough for the rage in the walls to settle. Long enough for the ache in my chest to dull into something more manageable.
Something like numbness.
The room is quiet again, except for the flicker of the TV and the sound of the heater clicking on. I focus on that noise—the heater—like it might ground me. I count the clicks. One, two, three. It hums. It breathes. It’s something solid.
I think about texting Skye. My phone is only a few feet away, abandoned on the coffee table. All I’d have to do is reach. But what would I say? He punched a wall tonight? I’m scared, but I still love him? Please come get me, even though I’m not sure I’ll go?
Instead, I crawl the few feet to the couch, resting my back against the side so I see the evidence of what just happened. And I stay there, tracing the outline of the hole in the drywall with my eyes. It’s jagged. Raw. Exposed.
Just like me.
THIRTEEN
TORI
My eyes are watering,and my vision is blurred. Of course my contact lens would decide to act up today of all days. I’m already late for the monthly departmental meeting, and now I’m stuck in the bathroom, blinking furiously, trying to get the damn thing to settle back in place.
Doesn’t matter if I’m on time if I can’t see to take minutes, though. They can wait.
Finally, after a solid two minutes of furious blinking and swearing under my breath, I manage to pry the lens off my eye. It perches on the tip of my finger, wobbling there like a soap bubble about to burst. Victory feels short-lived because the sound of a toilet flushing breaks the silence.
I freeze.
Heart slamming against my ribcage, I glance at the closed stall door behind me in the mirror. My brain short-circuits. I am literally the only woman on this floor today. Who the hell is in my bathroom?!
And then—Leo.
Leo?!
He steps out of the stall, looking maddeningly casual for someone who’s just shattered my sense of personal safety.
“Jesus, Leo!” I gasp, jerking my head back from my fragile little lens like he might make me drop it just by existing. “What the hell are you doing in here?”
For a split second, panic spikes. Did I wander into the wrong bathroom? Am I the idiot here? But no—the wicker basket of panty liners, the jasmine diffuser sticks, the row of sinks exactly where they’re supposed to be—this is definitely the women’s bathroom.
Leo, meanwhile, leans against the stall frame like he has every right to be here. Smirk firmly in place.
“Your soap smells better,” he says, rolling up his sleeves to wash his hands, as if that’s a perfectly logical explanation for male faculty trespassing into the land of jasmine and tampons.
