The whole world spun around us. I waited for her to blink, to fall apart, to run. She just stared, eyes burning.
I left her there, watching me walk away.
I kept moving, ghost-shadows trailing behind. My head full of her, always. I didn’t know how to stop.
The bag swung back, heavy, stupid. I hit it again, harder. Fist—thud—recoil—thud. My body stung with sweat and old bruises. My skin reeked of rage.
This was the only place that made sense.
The gym at dawn, nobody around except some retired lifer in the corner, watching cable news with the sound off. I didn’t care. Every time my knuckles slammed into the bag, it was like the worldshrank. Like all the shit inside me could explode outward, leave nothing but emptiness behind.
Didn’t work. Never did. But I kept trying. Maybe if I hit hard enough, the ghosts would finally scatter.
Amelia.
Always fucking Amelia.
I told myself I hated her. I did. But the memory of her stuck inside me like a fishhook. Then, I’d think about how her and Dante were intimate together, and my anger would augment.
Fist. Bag. Fist. Bag.
My father always said nothing soft survives. He drilled it into me the same way he drilled his fists into my ribs: Hate is strength. Love is weakness. If you have to pick, pick anger. Don’t let them see you hurt.
Funny. If he could see me now, he’d probably laugh. He’d spit in my face. Tell me I was a fucking embarrassment, letting some pathetic girl bend me out of shape. Letting her crawl under my skin, fuck with my head, ruin my appetite for destruction.
But maybe he’d be proud, too. Proud of how I made her look at me with terror and hate all mixed up. Proud that I learned how to break her, even if I never meant to.
Maybe that was the whole point.
I hit the bag again. Hard enough that my knuckles split. Blood smeared across the leather. I liked the sting. I focused on it, let it drown the rest out.
Why her? Why did it have to be her?
She was nothing. Just another soft, trembling kid, all shadows and panic attacks, barely holding herself together. I should’ve forgotten her years ago. But now every time I closed my eyes, I saw her.
Sometimes wanting me, just as wrecked.
It made me sick. It made me hard.
I ground my teeth. Slammed my fist until sensation blurred into numbness.
I told myself I was just wired wrong. That it was biology. My father’s voice in my skull:They’re all snakes, every last one. They’ll sink their teeth in you if you let them.
But that wasn’t it.I knew it wasn’t.
I needed her to hate me. More than I needed air. Needed her to look at me and see a monster. Needed her to understand that I’d never let her win.
But I wanted her, too. Wanted her like a sickness.
I looked down at my hands. Blood, sweat, raw skin. Nothing pretty about it. I hit the bag again.
I was a walking cliché. Abused kid, brainwashed to hate, can’t stop wrecking everything good. Maybe the only thing real about me was violence. Maybe that was all I’d ever be.
Amelia was a symptom. Not a cause. If she wasn’t around, I’d have found someone else to fuck up. Ruin. Destroy.
I wondered if she knew that.
I wondered if Dante did.
