Get out, get out, get out.
I ran to our bedroom, grabbed a backpack, and filled it with whatever clothes I could fit in it.
Get out. Get out. Get out.
A moan from the living room had my neck snapping towards that direction, seeing his body twitch. I licked my cracked lips and used shaking hands to swipeLooking For Alaskaon my nightstand.
Nausea rolled through my stomach as I ran from our bedroom to our living room where he started to stir, murmuring incoherent things. “Sunny,” he groaned.
I hadn’t removed my eyes from him as I frantically packed. When he reached a shaking arm out for me, doubt filled my mind even as I jumped over his body towards the door. The blood spilling across the floor from a wound on his head told me that in his fall, he hit the corner of our TV stand.
I wished I could say I didn’t think twice before opening the door and leaving, but that’d be a lie. Seeing his vulnerable body on the ground as he called my name was something that had me thinking twice.
Ididthink twice and maybe even three times.
It was at that moment a hatred for myself grew fast and deep. I hated myself for thinking twice, three times. I hated myself for pausing on such precious seconds to my safety. Even if for only three seconds at the door. It was the whispers that snapped me out of it.
Get out. Get out. Get out.
Freedom had a short window of opportunity, and here I was, questioning it.
“If you leave, I’m going to fucking find you Sunny. I promise I’ll fucking find you,” he groaned, rolling on the floor.
Finally, my sanity took over and I opened the door, slamming it shut behind me. Sobs escape my mouth. Sobs that didn’t belong to me, yet somehow still came from me.
I don’t recognize myself.
My shaking hands dialed 9-1-1 and I got in my truck, driving straight to my parents, whom I called immediately after.
I didn’t even remember how I got to their place. All I remember is pulling into their driveway to see both waiting for me on the porch along with the police.
I remember running to them, still bloodied from Ryan and my father running to me, meeting me halfway in the long driveway before I became a crumpling, sobbing mess that collapsed in his arms. I left too much of myself in that apartment, that I barely had anything left in me to hold myself up.
The nausea that’d made a prior appearance came back violently, forcing me to throw up what little food I had in my system. As if I was trying to purge the tarnished and ruined feeling that became my very marrow.
The look on their faces told me everything I needed to know about the damage he had done to me.
All in one night, my soul, my body, my very being was desecrated by the one person who was supposed to love it.
The girl I used to be died that day. I buried her so deeply in the ground, praying no one would ever find out who she was and how she let a man ruin her from the inside out.
As the memory fades, I bring my fingers to the scar on my neck. The brand of his abuse forever embedded into my skin. He was my best friend, and that was the worst part.
“Sunny?” The voice says again.
Hisvoice.
“I’m sorry but you have the wrong number. Please stop calling.” I hang up immediately.
The same sobs from that night try to escape me again, clawing up my throat in a desperate attempt to express the pain I thought had started to dull.
I shoot a text to Tyler, but then my rage takes over. Ragged breaths do no justice to cool and calm the fire that floods my veins.
How could I let this happen?
My shaking hands use all force possible as I slam my phone on the ground. I watch the screen go black as it dies, much like how a part of my soul does, too.
He’s going to find me.
