“Get out!” I shout, tears rolling down my cheeks. “I’m not letting you rape me, I’ll kill you!”
“Rape you?” Mike whispers. His eyebrows furrow, and he looks down, his lips pulling down into a frown. “Alex, I would never—”
I know that.
He doesn’t get it.
He’s not him right now.
“Just go.” I press my face into my knees, clinging to the blanket so tight my hand hurts. “Please. I need you to go, I need you to leave.”
“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s wrong,” I look up at this beautiful man that Ilove, naked, his arms crossed over his chest.
And right now, I never want to see him again.
“Please.” My voice cracks as a fresh wave of tears falls from my eyes. “I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll be good, I promise, please don’t hurt me.”
The silence between us stretches while he looks at me with the most devastated expression I’ve ever seen on another person. He doesn’t know what’s wrong. He thinkshedid something. And I can’t tell him that’s not true.
“Okay,” he says with a nod, sounding as hollowed out as I feel. He picks up his stuff and leaves the room quietly, while I hide my face in my knees until he’s gone.
I don’t know how long I stay curled against the headboard.
But eventually, the memories start to fade, and the room becomes my room again. The lamp starts to look normal, and the phantom pain from that night fades, replaced by the real pain of my hand that I’ve had squeezed tight for way too long. The only thing I have left from that night.
Other than the ticking time bomb that is my brain. That decided to go off today, during the most important moment of my life.
I slide down until I’m lying on my side, and stare at the empty space where Mike should be. Where he could be right now if I had held it together.
I wonder if he’ll come back after this.
I know what he heard. I know what it sounded like from where he was standing. He had no context, no way of knowing that I wasn’t talking about him. That the person I was begging to stop was almost two years ago, and he didn’t.
Mike doesn’t know.
He thinkshehurt me.
I let myself cry in a way I haven’t since the hospital. The kind that comes from my soul, stripped raw and bleeding for everyone to see. I let it happen because there’s nothing else to do.
I love Mike, and I think I lost him.
Chapter 21
There’s a crack on the ceiling that I never noticed before. A faint line in the left corner, probably cracked paint, where the sunlight comes in through the blinds, this time of day.
The light dims, and the dark comes, and the light comes back, and I watch it move across the ceiling, staring at the crack, wondering how it got there.
Mike knocked on my door an hour ago. The quiet knock he’s started to use.
Alex, can we talk?
I didn’t answer this time, the same as all his other attempts over the last few days. It’s better this way. I’ve decided that. It’s better for him. He doesn’t deserve this. Mike is the best person I know, so full of light even after everything he’s been through.
And I dimmed that light.
I took the gift he gave me,him, and I made him hide, and I told him I would never come out. I got angry athimwhen people found out about us. I never once asked him what he needed from me.
He deserves someone who can always put him first.
