I look at the plate again.
I know I should care.
I know I should think about whether there’s something in it, something he’s put there, something that will make it worse, but that thought doesn’t land properly anymore. It drifts in and out without catching on anything solid.
“I’m not hungry,” I say.
My voice sounds wrong.
Too quiet.
Too slow.
He doesn’t react to it the way he used to when I resisted him, when I pushed back, when I fought him in the beginning.
He just smiles.
“That’s alright,” he says, like I’ve agreed with him instead of refused him. “You don’t have to be. You just need to eat a little.”
He sits down beside me, close enough that I can feel the heat of him before he even touches me, his hand coming up to my jaw, turning my face toward him gently, like he’s guiding me into something I’ve already chosen.
“Open your mouth.”
I don’t.
Not at first.
Not because I think it will change anything, but because there’s still something in me that remembers that I don’t want this, that this isn’t right, that I shouldn’t be sitting here letting him do this to me like it’s normal.
His thumb presses lightly against my lower lip.
“Liana.”
There’s something underneath his voice now.
Not anger.
Just...expectation.
My body reacts before my thoughts catch up.
My mouth opens.
He feeds me slowly, carefully, like this is something intimate, something soft, something that belongs to us instead of something being taken from me piece by piece.
I chew because I have to.
Because my body does it even when I don’t want it to.
Because it’s easier than fighting him over something that doesn’t feel like it matters anymore.
“See,” he says quietly. “That’s better.”
I swallow.
It feels like effort.
Everything feels like effort.
