This is not that kind of day.
Now it is me above him, looking down, my shadow cutting across his face. The fluorescent lights bleach everything sickly white. Sweat gathers instantly at his temples, his jaw clenching so hard I can see the tendons stand out.
“Get the fuck off,” he snaps, as I lean a little more of my weight into the bar.
It lowers.
Not much. Just enough for the steel to kiss his shirt and dimple the fabric over his sternum as his breath leaves him in a tight grunt.
Fear moves through his face so fast it almost counts as honesty.
“You hear that?” I ask, because the plates are rattling now, a nervous little metallic chatter. “That’s what panic sounds like when it’s trying not to embarrass itself.”
Gritting his teeth, he pushes upward, the bar rising half an inch. I press it back down effortlessly.
The look he gives me now is different. Not indignant. Not smug. Not even angry, really.
Alert.
Good.
“This is insane,” he says, but there is hesitance in it now.
“Yes,” I tell him. “It is.”
That lands harder than a denial would have.
I watch him understand why this is happening in real time. There is no appeal in this room. No moral high ground to scramble toward. No performance to rescue him. I am not here to prove I am better than him. I am here to make him feel the shape of consequence.
Lowering my mouth toward his ear, my eyes never leave his face.
“You put your hands where they didn’t belong,” I whisper. “You said her name like you had a right to it. You talked aroundher, over her, through her, like she was a prize somebody forgot to lock up.”
His arms shake as he tries to buck the weight.
Letting the bar drift lower, very slowly, it presses into his chest enough to force his next breath short. His face changes at once, the muscles in his neck standing up, his legs planting wide on the floor. Trying not to look frightened, he is failing miserably.
“She is not yours,” he bites out.
The laugh that leaves me is quiet.
“No,” I hiss. “She isn’t.” Pressing one finger harder into the steel, it's enough to make his triceps tremble. “That’s what makes this so humiliating for you, doesn’t it?”
He swallows. I see it. I see every involuntary thing.
“She chose me anyway.”
His expression flashes hot with hate. There it is. The tender center.
“I know what you saw when you looked at her,” I go on. “You saw damage and mistook it for availability. You saw pain and thought it made her easier to corner. You heard pieces of her history and started circling because boys like you hear about blood in the water and call it romance.”
He curses at me, shoving upward.
I answer by taking one hand off the bar, reaching for the collar of his shirt, using the other to force the weight down hard enough to make him gasp. Not crush. Not break. Just enough to hurt. His breath tears out of him in a panicked sound before he can stop it. He hates that sound. I can tell.
“Careful,” I murmur. “You push at the wrong time and you’ll crack your own ribs trying to prove a point.”
His eyes dart to the empty doorway. The mirrors. The windows. There is no one coming. The room knows it. I know it. Now he knows it too.
