But worse—so much worse—I hated myself.
Because I hadn't screamed.
I'd knelt.
I'd stayed.
I'd taken it.
My hands shook as I pressed them against my face, trying to wipe away the evidence. The tears came hot and furious, mixing with everything else, making it worse. My fingers came away sticky, and I gagged, the sound raw and broken in the too-quiet room.
The childhood photo stared down at me from the shelf.
That scared little boy with hard eyes.
I understood now.
This was what his father had taught him. Control through pain. Silence through force.
And I was living proof the lesson had worked.
I curled forward, forehead pressed to the rug, trying to make myself smaller. Trying to disappear. My chest heaved with sobs I wouldn't let out, my throat closing around sounds I refused to make.
Because if I screamed now, he'd hear it. And he'd know he'd won.
My nails dug into my palms, sharp crescents of pain that grounded me just enough to breathe. In. Out. In. Out.
Six months.
I'd signed for six months. Five months and twenty-nine days left. The number felt impossible. Endless. Suffocating.
I sat up, wiping my face with shaking hands. My reflection caught in the glass of a trophy case—red-eyed, swollen-lipped, marked.
Ruined.
His voice echoed in my head.
Good girl.
I shuddered. And hated that my body remembered.
I forced myself to stand, legs shaking so hard I had to brace against the desk. The same desk he'd bent me over. The wood was still warm where my palms had gripped it.
My throat burned.
Raw.
Used.
I kept swallowing, trying to push down the sob clawing its way up. It lodged somewhere between my chest and my mouth, sharp and desperate, refusing to stay buried.
Is this what six months will be?
The question looped endlessly, each repetition worse than the last.
I wanted to run. Sprint for the door, the car, the lake—anywhere that wasn't here. Anywhere his voice couldn't reach. But my father's face flickered behind my eyes, pale in that hospital bed, and my feet stayed rooted.
I wanted to hit him. To storm to his room and drive my fists into his chest until he felt a fraction of what he'd done. Until he understood that I wasn't nothing. That I mattered. That he couldn't just?—
