My chest tightens, uncomfortably close to something like guilt. I think of Zack, of the way his shoulders loosened when I joked, the way his eyes softened when he thought I wasn’t looking. I push the image away hard enough it almost hurts.
“If this is some kind of twisted compliment,” I say, “you’re really bad at the delivery.”
A faint sound, one that almost sounds like amusement, cuts through the dark. “You make people reckless,” the voice continues. “You make them believe they can survive things they shouldn’t.”
My pulse kicks harder. “That sounds like athemproblem.”
“Does it?” the voice asks gently. “Because Zack crossed state lines with you, knowing exactly who was watching him.”
The name hits like a blow.
I suck in a sharp breath before I can stop myself, and the silence that follows stretches thick and heavy, as if they’re savoring the reaction. My hands curl into fists despite the restraints, nails biting into my palms to ground me through the spike of fear and anger and something dangerously close to shame.
“You’re wrong,” I say finally, my voice tighter now. “I didn’t make him do anything.”
“No,” the voice agrees, easily. “You didn’t have to.”
The implication lingers, poisonous and deliberate, and I fight the urge to curl inward, to let the darkness swallow me. I won’t give them that. I lift my chin even though they can’t see it, straightening my spine against the cold floor.
“You think hurting me teaches him a lesson,” I say. “You think I’m leverage? Zack doesn’t care about me. He couldn’t care less about me.”
Another pause. Longer this time.
“I think,” the voice says carefully, “you arethevariable he will never sacrifice.”
The room feels smaller suddenly, the air heavier, and my heart hammers hard enough I worry they can hear it beating beneath my very skin. I force my voice back into something lighter—sharper—because if I let myself dwell on that sentence too long, it might break me. “That’s a lot of confidence for someone hiding behind a mask.”
The silence overtakes me—it’s so fucking quiet—but I won’t let myself break. I’ve lived through too much to let something like this consume me.
“We’ll talk again,” the voice says from the darkness. “Once you’re ready to stop pretending you’re not afraid.”
The door closes softly, somewhere beyond my range of sight, and the hum returns, steady and indifferent.
I lie there long after, staring into nothing, replaying every word, every inflection, and every choice I made on that road to Detroit. And for the first time since I woke up, the thought creeps in, uninvited and unwelcome:Where is my line, and have I already bent to those who will hurt me more?
The crying doesn’t start all at once, and maybe that’s the worst part. Because at first it feels manageable, like something I can still control if I just breathe through it and keep my face turned toward the cold concrete floor. My chest tightens, loosens, then tightens again. Each breath comes out wrong—uneven and shallow. And I tell myself not to do this—not now, not here—because I’ve survived worse than this, and I know how to keep it together. But my body doesn’t listen, and the moment a sound slips out of me—small, broken, and unfamiliar—everything else follows, like a dam giving way in slow motion.
I press my forehead against the floor, eyes squeezed shut, and let the tears come, even though every instinct in me screams that this is dangerous—that crying means I’m wasting energy, losing time, and giving in. The tears soak into the fabric of my sleeve, hot and humiliating, and my shoulders start to shake despite my best effort to keep them still. I hate how weak this makes me feel, how quickly all the jokes and smiles I rely on disappear when there’s no one left to perform for—no one watching who needs me to be okay.
I’ve always been better at pretending than feeling, because pretending keeps people close and feeling makes them uncomfortable. Somewhere along the way, I learned that if I was loud enough, bright enough, happy enough, people would notice me. And if they noticed me, they might stay. That lesson burrowed deep, settled into my bones, and I carried it with me into every room—every conversation, every relationship—smiling before anyone could ask how I was really doing,laughing before silence had the chance to turn into something sharp.
The sobs get worse, tearing out of my chest in uneven bursts, and I clamp my teeth together to keep them quiet. Because even alone, I don’t want to take up too much space. My wrists ache where the restraints bite into my skin, but the physical pain is nothing compared to the hollow, collapsing feeling inside me. The one that tells me I’ve never been enough—not in the right way. I’m either too much—too loud, too fucking emotional, too needy—or I fade into the background completely, invisible unless I make myself entertaining for others.
I think about all the times I’ve been told I’m exhausting, and all the times I’ve been told I’m fun, and how neither of those words ever meantsafe. Fun is temporary. Fun is easy to leave behind.Fundoesn’t get chosen when things get hard. And no matter how much I try—no matter how carefully I curate myself—I always end up wondering when the other shoe is going to drop. When people are going to realize I’m not worth the effort once I stop smiling.
My breathing turns ragged, my chest aching like it’s bruised from the inside out, and the thought slips in uninvited and cruel:If I were quieter, calmer, easier, maybe none of this would be happening.Maybe I wouldn’t be here. Maybe I wouldn’t always feel like I have to earn my place by being pleasant, agreeable, and continuously okay.
The tears blur everything even though there’s nothing to see, and I shake harder, my whole body betraying me as I curl inward as much as the restraints allow. I’ve spent so long convincing myself that I’m strong because I keep going, because I don’t fall apart in front of people. But alone in the dark, it feels like that strength has always been borrowed, held together by duct tape and good timing. I don’t know how to exist withoutthe performance, without the brightness, without the version of myself that people find easy to love.
“I’m so tired,” I whisper to no one, the words barely making it past my lips before they dissolve into another quiet sob. Tired of trying. Tired of being okay. Tired of pretending I don’t feel everything all the time—that it doesn’t wear me down in ways I don’t know how to fix.
Eventually the crying slows—not because I feel better, but because my body runs out of energy—leaving me hollow, aching, and painfully aware of every breath. The silence rushes back in around me, thick and suffocating, and I lie there staring into the dark, eyes burning and chest tight, feeling stripped down to something small, fragile, and very real.
And for the first time in a long time, with no one watching and no act left to put on, I let myself admit the truth I’ve been running from:
I don’t know how to be loved without pretending to be happy.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
