Lock the door. Clean this up. Think.
Instead my eyes slide shut.
Just for a second, I tell myself.
Just until the room stops spinning.
Darkness takes me whole.
When I open my eyes again, sunlight is cutting across the floor.
For a second I don’t know where I am.
Then pain finds me all at once.
My cheek. My jaw. My wrists. My hip.
The kitchen comes back in pieces—the overturned chair, the rope on the floor, the metallic smell still hanging in the air like something rotten left behind.
I swallow against the dryness in my throat and push myself upright too fast.
Bad idea.
The room tilts. Black creeps in at the edges of my vision, and I brace one hand against the cabinet until it passes.
I don’t know what time it is.
Don’t know how long I’ve been on the floor.
Don’t know if Gabriel meant to leave me alive or just assumed I’d stay exactly where he put me.
I stand there breathing through it, one hand pressed to the counter, and the only thing I can think is that I need to get clean.
I make myself go to the bedroom first.
Every step pulls at my side.
The room looks untouched, which somehow makes everything worse. The bed still half-unmade. My things where I left them. The kind of normal that feels offensive after a night like that.
I grab the first soft clothes I find—an old shirt, sleep shorts, underwear—and carry them to the bathroom in numb hands.
I do not look in the mirror.
I know what I’ll see.
The tub groans when I turn the handle. Water rushes out in a hard, echoing stream, steam starting to gather against the mirror. I strip slowly, peeling fabric off sore skin, wincing when denim drags wrong over my hip.
Everything hurts.
My face.
My ribs.
The raw bands around my wrists.
I step into the bath before it’s even fully filled and lower myself down inch by inch.
Heat wraps around me.
