The pain hits instantly, sharp and burning, ripping through me hard enough that my body jerks violently against him.
I gasp, the sound tearing out of me as my grip breaks.
“Stop! stop!”
I try again, pushing at him, trying to twist away, but he holds me there, stronger, faster, completely unmoved by anything I do.
The knife drags again.
Across the tattoo.
Not clean.
Not careful.
Just tearing through it.
I cry out this time, my voice breaking fully as the pain builds, my body thrashing under him in uneven, desperate movements that don’t get me anywhere.
My hand slips on his arm, blood already making everything slick, my strength failing me faster than I can fight it.
“You don’t get to carry them on you,” he says, his voice uneven, breath heavier now. “You don’t belong to them.”
“I do!” I choke out, even as my voice shakes. “I do!”
The blade presses deeper.
I scream.
It rips out of me before I can stop it, my body finally giving up the fight as the pain overwhelms everything else, my hands falling away, my strength collapsing under me.
And then he stops.
The silence after is suffocating.
My chest heaves, my whole body shaking, my skin burning where he cut me, blood running down from my collarbone, warm and wet and impossible to ignore.
He looks at it.
At what he’s done.
At me.
And then he shifts again.
Like it never happened.
Like nothing just broke.
“You see,” he says quietly, his voice soft again. “This is why you didn’t want to be mine.”
I can’t answer.
I can barely breathe.
He sets the knife aside carefully, like it was never anything dangerous, and reaches for a cloth, pressing it against the wound with sudden gentleness.
I flinch anyway.
