I looked at Daniel. I remembered his crushing weight. The way he had pinned me down to the floorworks, trapping me. The way I had ground against his arm like a bitch in heat, begging for a knot that wasn't there.
I looked at Anders. The one who cleaned me. The one who wiped the shame from my thighs with a cool cloth, maintaining that detached, professional air even while his hands were on my skin.
"No," I whispered, the word scraping my raw throat like broken glass. "No, no, no."
This wasn't a rescue. This was a spectacle.
Panic, cold and sharp, flooded my veins, washing away the lingering lethargy of the fever and replacing it with pure, high-octane adrenaline.
They knew who I was. They had to know. They had seen "Graduation Girl" up close and personal. They had seen the scar on my soul.
Why were they here? Why did they stay after the crisis passed?
To document it,my paranoia whispered, sounding like the hissing trolls on the forums I paid Anders to scrub from the internet.To prove that the "Invisible Queen" is just the same broken girl who peed herself on stage ten years ago. They broke in to get the scoop. To destroy the asset. To leak the truth.
Or worse.
Maybe it was a prank. Maybe they had planned this. Maybe the emails, the contracts, the relentless pursuit of T.L. Rose had just been a long con, a decade-long joke to get back into the room and finish the humiliation they started in high school.
The shame went nuclear. It radiated from my chest, burning my skin, making the air in the room feel scorching hot and radioactive. I felt exposed, dissected, flayed open for their amusement.
I had to get out. I had to get them out.
I scrambled backward, my heels digging into the mattress, frantic to put distance between myself and the monsters from my past.
Crash.
My elbow knocked the heavy bedside carafe of water onto the floor. The glass shattered against the hardwood, the soundexplosive in the heavy silence, shards of crystal skating across the floor.
The room woke up instantly.
Anders jerked in the chair, his body snapping upright. His eyes flew open, blue, icy, and instantly alert, scanning the room for threats. "Tessa?"
Daniel grunted, shifting his massive bulk with a groan, blinking up at me with confused, hazel eyes that were slow to clear. "Wha—? Is she awake?"
Simon scrambled up from the rug, looking wild-haired and disoriented, his hands coming up defensively as if warding off a blow.
"Get away from me!" I screamed, the volume tearing at my vocal cords, hurting my throat. I kicked the tangled sheets off my legs, scrambling backward until my spine hit the headboard with a hollow thud. I pulled my knees to my chest, curling into a ball, trying to make myself small, trying to hide the body they had explored so thoroughly. "Don't look at me!"
"Tessa, wait, calm down," Anders stood up, his movements stiff and aching, taking a cautionary step toward the bed. His hand raised in a placating gesture, palm out.
"Don't you take a step!" I shrieked, my voice cracking. "I know who you are! I know who all of you are!"
Anders froze mid-step. His gaze flicked to the others, then back to me, the color draining from his face as the realization landed. He saw the recognition in my eyes. He saw the graduation stage reflecting back at him in the grey light of my bedroom.
"We didn't know," Anders said, his voice tight, grasping for that professional, agent tone he used during negotiations and failing miserably. "Tessa, listen to me. We didn't know it was you until we saw the file path on the computer. Until we saw… until we saw you."
"Liar!" I spat, venom dripping from the word. My hand scrabbled blindly on the bedside table, seeking purchase on anything solid. My fingers wrapped around the heavy brass base of the reading lamp. "You broke in! You broke down my door and invaded my home!"
"You were dying, Tessa," Simon said, his voice rough with sleep and panic, stepping forward from the window. He smelled intensely of fear and charcoal. "Your heart rate was one-eighty. You were in systemic shock. If we hadn't come in?—"
"And then you touched me!" The words ripped out of me, burning like acid on my tongue. I looked at Simon, my eyes dropping to his hands, his ink-stained, artistic, guilty hands. "You… you put your hands inside me. While I was out of my mind. While I couldn't say no."
Simon flinched as if I’d slapped him across the face. He pulled his hands into the oversized sleeves of his hoodie, hiding them from view, his jaw working as he looked away. The shame on his face mirrored my own, dark and sick, but I couldn't process it. I couldn't afford empathy. I was a cornered animal.
"It was a medical necessity," Daniel rumbled, pushing himself to his feet. He unfolded to his full height, looming over the end of the bed, blocking the exit, blocking the light. "We had to lower your cortisol levels. It was the only way to safeguard your heart from stopping."
"Bullshit!" I hoisted the lamp, ripping the cord from the wall socket with a shower of sparks. The heavy brass felt solid in my hand, a lethal weight. I held it up, shaking violently, ready to swing. "You watched! You just watched me fall apart all those years ago, and you came back to do it again! Get out! Get out of my house right now!"
