I played my entire twenty-nine years back in my head.
I was ripped from my mother’s womb prematurely and snatched by my father’s enemy to a Russian work camp.
Spent the first fourteen years of my life starved, beaten, worked to the bone, and sexually abused.
When I finally escaped, I found a family I had little to nothing in common with. My father looked right past me. Myolder brother didn’t care about anything that wasn’t his liquor, women, or gambling. And Tiernan, although a good brother, didn’t have enough love in him to shield me from the awful truth—that I was all alone in this world.
Achilles had been the only source of light in my life, but even that got ruined. And the minute he thought I’d betrayed him, he’d made sure to hurt me in ways no other man could.
The rain poured down harder, and when I squinted ahead, I realized I couldn’t see a thing.
I turned back toward where I’d come from, but I was dizzy and lightheaded from weeks indoors and no physical activity. I sucked in a breath when I realized all I saw in front of me was white and gray fog filled with rain.
Standing still, I hugged myself. A few moments later, Achilles stepped through the fog.
He’d followed me here.
He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and his boots. Silently, he nodded in the house’s direction. I followed him.
The walk back felt like it lasted a lifetime. I was weighed down by my soaked pajamas and my own frailty. I’d have rather died than ask to lean on him—let alone be carried by him.
When we got back to the cabin, the first thing he did was grab my shirt and pants at the door and tug them off me. The logical part of my brain knew that it was because he didn’t want me to catch pneumonia. But the child who came back to life when I woke up from my coma felt the threat of his strong, capable hands and kicked into high gear.
“Don’t fucking touch me!” I kicked and thrashed, pushing at him.
His steadfast hands continued wrestling the fabric off my body. My breasts sprung free. I let out an animalistic howl, reaching to claw his eyes out. He didn’t step away. Let me scratch and claw at him as he continued his work.
“You have no right to touch me. I hate you!” I cried out desperately. Tears leaked out, hot and angry, and the ball in my throat felt impossibly bitter.
After he was done taking off my clothes, he turned around and walked to the bathroom. I heard him flicking the bathtub’s faucet to life.
I knew he didn’t take care of me out of the goodness of his heart. He took care of me because I was an integral part of him, a part he refused to lose and let go of.
Somewhere in the back of my head, I acknowledged that I poured some of my rage and misery into Achilles in a way that wasn’t warranted. He wasn’t one of those men who broke me when I was just a child. But hewasthe man who took away my agency for years and the man who fucked me just because he could, because I needed his help, and bartered the one thing I had promised never to sell again—my body.
I wanted revenge.
Grabbing the closest thing to me—a candlestick of all things—I hurled it at the wall. It dutifully exploded into two pieces before falling to the floor. To my astonishment, the act of breaking something else felt…liberating. It made the knot in my throat loosen a little bit. I could breathe better.
Next, I grabbed an ugly, old vase. Smashed it against the wall. Then came the plates in the kitchen. Then, the chairs. I was soaking wet and trashing the entire place.
And it felt good.
Achilles reappeared in the hallway when I was already in the midst of my frenzy. I managed to break a good amount of the cabin he’d rented, and I expected him to stop me.
He didn’t.
He just propped a shoulder against the wall, crossed his arms, and smirked to himself.
This, naturally, pissed me off.
“What’s so funny?” I seethed.
He shook his head enigmatically.
“No, really,” I huffed. “Tell me.”
“You’re healing.”
