Like I’m something misaligned. Something that has to be fixed.
He towers over me, like a god. Dark and threatening, and I stand there, trembling, trying to breathe around the hand around my neck, and the tightness in my chest.
The room felt tilted, like the floor wasn’t entirely steady beneath the balls of my feet.
Then I’m let go, and I land flat back on my feet again. Adrian steps back, adjusting the cuff of his shirt with meticulous care.
“Go to bed,” he said finally. “We’ll talk in the morning.”
My stomach dropped. Morning was worse. Morning meant consequences delivered with clarity and calm.
But I nodded anyway. Because that’s what I did. That’s what I’d learned to do.
I moved past him, careful not to brush against his arm, careful not to make a sound that might shift the balance of the room. My legs felt unsteady, my breath thin, my heartbeat too loud in my ears.
In the wardrobe, I closed the door quietly and leaned against it, letting the tears fall silently down my face. My hands shook. My chest ached, and my throat felt raw from holding back everything I wasn’t allowed to say.
I didn’t sob. I didn’t break loudly. I just… folded.
Small. Quiet. Invisible.
The kind of collapse that leaves no evidence except the way your body feels afterward, hollow, aching, and too aware of its own fragility.
I wiped my face, forced my breathing to slow, and changed into the softest clothes I could find. Clothes that didn’t feel like expectations. Clothes that didn’t feel like him.
When I finally crawled into bed, Adrian was still standing at the window, staring out at the dark ocean as though it belonged to him.
Maybe it did. Maybe everything did.
I curled onto my side, facing away from him, pulling the blanket up to my chin. My body felt too heavy to move. Too tired to think. Too scared to hope.
But somewhere beneath all that fear, buried deep, almost forgotten, something small flickered.
Not strength. Not defiance. Not yet.
Just the faintest whisper that maybe this wasn’t all my life would ever be.
I didn’t know it then. I couldn’t have known.
But someone was about to walk into my world who would rewrite every rule Adrian had taught me. Someone who would change everything. Someone who would see me, really see me, in a way I’d forgotten was possible.
I just didn’t know his name yet.
3
Eli
I woke the next morning to a cold bed.
For a moment, I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe properly. I just lay there, waiting for my body to remember how to exist without fear or pain.
It came back slowly, in layers. My cheek hurts, and my throat feels raw and tight.
This time, he had felt different. The change was not like something that had simply happened in a moment of rage. More like something he’d allowed himself to do. Something he’d let build. There was a coldness in it that hadn’t been there before, a certainty that made my stomach tighten.
I pushed myself upright carefully, moving slowly so I didn’t undo whatever fragile balance was left in me. The bathroom mirror waited, and I knew I shouldn’t look, but I always do.
For a second, I didn’t recognize the person staring back. Little cuts from the whiskey glass pepper, the skin whichis already pulled tight across my face by my older bruising. Beneath my eye sits a bruise, dark and layered, purple sinking into yellow edges. Fresh finger-shaped marks circled my jaw, imprinted too clearly to mistake for anything else.
