Page 60 of On Your Knees

Ethan is staring in the direction she left. His hands are fisted and his chest is heaving.

“I’m sorry,” I mumble.

He doesn’t reply. He turns and walks away.

I make it two more days before I have one of my episodes. I’m in the kitchen again. It’s the middle of the night, but I can’t sleep. I’m pouring cereal into a bowl, but when it’s full I just keep pouring. I watch the flakes overflow onto the counter. Some fall to the floor, pinging my bare feet. I set the box down and pick up the bowl.

On a certain level, I know what’s coming, but I’ve shrunk inside myself and am not really in control anymore. I walk into the middle of the kitchen and drop the bowl. It hits the tile with a crack. The white ceramic shatters and cereal explodes out across the floor. I bend and pick up one of the shards. It’s pretty. I like how it broke. I put it in the pocket of my sweats. Then I walk through the mess.

I open a cupboard and start pulling out the glasses, dropping them on the floor. My heart starts racing. I’m starting to feel things. Finally, something is happening.

I toss glass after glass onto the floor.

“What the hell are you doing?” Ethan barks from somewhere, but I just keep pulling out the glasses.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he growls, and I hear him moving my way.

I don’t think much of it until his arm hooks around my torso, hauling me off the ground. Something snaps inside me. I scream. I flail in his grip, but he’s so much bigger and stronger than I am that he just carries me out of the kitchen.

I manage to get turned in his arms, and I bite him on the neck. He shouts, grabbing my hair to pull my face away. He wrestles me onto the couch, holding me down with one hand in the middle of my back while he spanks me with the other. I buck and jerk at the sharp stings, shrieking in a wild mix of emotions. Fury. Relief. Desperate, aching need.

My cock stiffens as he continues.

Finally. Finally, he’s going to fuck me.

I brace against the couch, expecting him to yank down my sweats, but he doesn’t. He shoves away from me.

I push up from the couch in fury as he staggers back. I scream at him, wordless and animalistic, like I’m possessed. I flip the coffee table.

It’s disorienting and strange to be this angry. It feels so good and so bad at the same time.

Ethan comes back to me. He shoves me down onto the couch again. This time, we’re face to face, and I grab his shirt. When he tries to pull back, I’m pulled up off the couch. I scramble for him as his shirt rips. I’m not sure if I do it on purpose, but my hands grab at Ethan’s cock—and he absolutely loses it.

He shoves me away into the couch so hard and with such a vicious scream that I half fall, half scramble over the back of it.

I don’t really process his shouted words, but I hear don’t and never and hate.

It finally breaks through my haze. I curl up on my side on the floor, sobbing.

I hear him stalking around for a long time. He throws things, like I did. But he never touches me.

And, eventually, he storms out of the room and down the hallway. A door slams.

I stay curled up on my side for a long, long time as reality sets in.

It’s over, like I knew it would be.

He doesn’t want me here, and it’s been obvious for days.

I’ve ruined his life.

With the picture.

With my existence.

I drag myself up off the floor. I get to my feet. I walk through the penthouse to the door.

I’m myself again, so I open it quietly. I close it quietly too.