Despite the heaviness I feel, my eyes snap open. My mouth parts as I’m about to tell him he’s so much better than this…
Only to realize I’m alone.
He isn’t here, but he was. The covers, I didn’t wrap myself in them.
My stomach dips with the knowledge that Duncan visited me while I was asleep. It had to have been him, not Mary or Herbert.
Because something tells me he didn’t come to my room just to pull the covers over me.
The wall. Look at the wall.
The wall I cleared last night. After I showered, I figured putting on the dress he brought me would carry his smell. That it’d ground me somehow.
I was wrong.
Rage bubbled in me the longer I replayed our night together.
I didn’t mind that he used me. With him, it was hot. What should’ve been demeaning felt like a homecoming. Like sliding a key into its perfect lock.
Then the damn citrus, the cotton.
My chest, how it ached.
Later, my body channeled that pain, that hurt, to the wall. I tore all the photos off without bothering to take down the pins. I shredded a few and stomped on the others too.
After that, I raked what I could with my hands, shoved it into the corner, determined to clean it in the morning.
Now, there’s a new picture pinned to the center of the wall. It’s me, that much I can tell, but unlike yesterday’s photos, something is written in red on my skin.
It’s too small for me to read from my bed, this message I should hate. This violation I should scream and revolt against.
Wish I could.
Duncan’s attention makes it impossible. If I truly meant nothing to him, he wouldn’t have tried to do this, whatever this is. I can feel him reaching for me even through the vilest acts.
Knowing he cares enough to keep circling around me is all the assurance I need to get out of bed and rush toward the wall.
My breath catches as I read the words Duncan painted on my stomach.
I OWN YOU
Emotions, warmer than before, swarm through me. A grin tears at my lips.
My hands fly to my stomach to feel the dry paint. To thumb Duncan’s commitment.
“What?” I ask, my tongue heavy.
There’s nothing there.
There are no bumps on my skin, no declaration of ownership.
My eyebrows pinch as I look down. A nearly invisible layer of red paint is smudged on my stomach.
Other than that, I’m… “Clean.”
What kind of cruel game is this?
“You don’t!” I scream, ripping the picture off the wall. “You don’t get to play with me.”
