Kelsey, Lucian’s therapist from the telehealth visits, stands in my doorway, and the world tilts again, this time from the force of not understanding how she could be here, wearing what I wore, and moving like she belongs in my place.
The dissonance lands like a punch; my stomach flips. She shouldn’t be here; she should be three hundred miles away in D.C., not leaning in my old rig like she owns the place.
Kelsey studies me with an expression that’s almost tender, too soft for the moment, as if she’s the one worried. The softness never reaches her eyes; they stay cool, precise, unreadable. “Hello, Celeste,” she says, voice low and almost sweet. “Are you having a rough night?”
The words are sugar-coated, but there’s a blade under the syllables.
A laugh claws out of me, threaded with something like hysteria. “You could say that.” I keep my voice loose, groggy on purpose. I need to play along and figure out why she’s here. Figure out what she wants.
She steps deeper into the room, and I try not to flinch. “You don’t remember much, do you?”
“Not really.” I let my eyes drift around the space like I’m still hazy. “Do you know why I’m here?”
“Because you’re in the way.” She says it flat, like a fact.
My pulse spikes. “I’m in the way of what?”
“Don’t play dumb, Celeste. You know exactly what I mean.” Her chin dips; her eyes go soft in a way that reads like hunger.
“Lucian?” I throw the name out like a test.
“Yes. Lucian. He’s meant to be mine, not yours. We have aconnection. Lucian would smile at me sometimes when I pushed him in PT. I know what that means.”
I force a small, brittle smile and let myself sound agreeable. “I didn’t realize you two were that close.”
Her eyes flare with triumph. “We were. We are. He trusted me when no one else could get near him, and I was the one who helped him walk again. His friend Orion said we had a rhythm. He told me Lucian needed someone who could keep up. I kept up. I got him back on his feet.”
I nod, careful to look thoughtful instead of scared. “You did a lot for him. So you… just want him to be strong again?”
“I want him to be mine.” The words snap out, then she softens, as if soothing a bruise: “He will be. Once you’re gone, he’ll see what’s been in front of him the whole time. Someone who gets him and fought for him when no one else did.”
My nails dig into my palms. I try to keep my face slack, my voice small and curious. “So breaking into my rig and having me attacked was to get him back?”
“In a way. He was leaving me behind. I am the one who built him back up. I was there when he couldn’t even balance on the damn prosthetic.Me. Not you. I told him he needed someone to walk with to keep him active and moving forward with his therapy. I was volunteering, you know? I thought maybe he’d finally get it, but instead he went to the fucking pound, and came back with that broken three-legged cat.” A bitter laugh scrapes out of her throat. “I’m allergic to cats, but that doesn’t matter. Once he sees what we could be, I’ll get rid of it, and he’ll be much better off. You know, when I learned his doctor cleared him to goto a concert, I knew something bad was going to happen. When he called me to see if he could train you, I warned him what could happen. But you—” her face twists, sharp and hateful, “—you made him reckless. I had already shown him how bad things on the road could get; he was supposed to come home to me. But he didn’t. He just… rebuilt with you. So I had to push harder.”
Cold slides down my spine. “Push harder… how?”
“Do you really think creeps on Craigslist just show up out of nowhere? Puh-lease. You are beautiful, and some men would crawl over glass for a piece of you. All I had to do was open the door.” She tilts her head, almost pleased with herself. “Give them what they wanted, and let them break you.”
The words hit like a gunshot. I taste metal, and my hands go numb. She watches me with a satisfied smile, like she’s already won.
Heat unspools through me, a molten wire tracing every vein. My breath snaps into thin, cold blades; the world narrows to the hiss of blood behind my ears. She was behind my attack, and the proof sits in her smile.
Kelsey’s voice is syrup over glass; her words slide out slowly. “I just wanted you broken. That’s all. If you’d been raped, you’d finally understand what you are—which isnothing.”
Sound dulls as my hands curl until my nails press crescents into my palms. Anger isn’t a thought so much as a heat that eats the edges of everything else until only a single, white-hot focus remains.
Her mouth moves, and the poison keeps coming. She paints shame like a map and expects me to follow it home.
Images flash as I think of the faces of women who came before me, and that will rise after me with blood on their knuckles, how they will learn to stand when the world tries to fold them flat. Survival isn’t a soft thing; it’s the scrape of bone against pavement and the stubborn, ridiculous act of getting upanyway. I can taste that history on my tongue: iron and grit and the slow, steady burn of refusal.
The world compresses to the scrape of her voice and the thud of my pulse. My jaw grinds until my teeth ache; the taste of metal floods my mouth. Every instinct wants to close the distance, to end the sound of her voice with my hands. Instead, I breathe slowly and count the seconds like a metronome, let the rage line itself up like a weapon. I let the adrenaline eat away at whatever she slipped in my drink.
Rage is a tool if you hold it steady. I keep my hands empty and my face calm, and let the heat sit under my skin like a coiled thing waiting for the right moment to strike.
“And do you know the best part?” She says, almost as an afterthought. “I don’t even have to work hard to replace you. I already have your old rig; I paid some crackhead off Craigslist to patch it up. He didn’t ask questions. Just handed me the keys. And your clothes? Perfect fit. We’re the same size, and even you think I look good in your clothes. So obviously it’s meant to be, right?”
She steps closer, shoes whispering over the floor. “Lucian won’t know the difference. I just want youdead,then I step in where I belong. I want to watch you die with the knowledge that I will easily replace you. I’ll be there when he finally realizes I’m the one. We’ll have the perfect life—me, him, our babies. Once we start our family, he’ll forget you ever existed.”
