Page 19 of Palingenesis

I shouldn’t have stayed out so late.

That feeling that was turning in my gut churns and twists until it’s coiled so tight that it turns to stone. Crossing the hallway to my office feels like dragging a boulder up a mountain. The knob feels oddly cold when I turn it, like there’s nothing but an arctic wave waiting for me on the other side.

Silence. Darkness.

The room opens up, the moon strains through the sheer curtains, enough to outline Henry’s blacked-out figure in my desk chair

His hands are full of something, and when he flips them, the flash of white leaves me frozen.

Pages whip through the pale light, his deep sigh loud enough that I catch it easily before he stops and holds the book closer to his face.

His voice, gravely and unamused, drifts across the distance between us as he begins to read the printed words that I wrote.

“His touch is like a live wire, electric as he strokes me. It’s like I can feel every bit of his emotions in just the singular point of contact. And it makes me feel alive.”

I hold my breath as he flips to another scene in the book, my throat too dry to swallow, too stuck to speak.

“Filled up, I slump over, his cum leaking—this is the kind of shit you write?” I can almost make out the twitch of his jaw in the low light. “And I’m the bad guy?”

My swallow clicks in the too-quiet space as he stands, slowly straightening, my book crinkling in his grasp.

“Yes,” I whisper.

I flinch, the sound of my book slamming against the desk with a loud crack.

“You. You fucking begged me for this. To come here and be with you in the middle of nowhere. So that you can sit here, night after night and make up shit like this?” The longer he speaks, the louder he gets, each decibel his voice rises stacking up and leaving me wincing. “Goddammit, Shannon, I had a fucking life.”

“T-then …”

I shake hard, my hands twisting over each other, the urge to sign the shit sitting on my tongue strong enough that I squeeze my own fingers so hard it hurts.

“T-then what?” he spits. “Say it. Go ahead.”

Huffing doesn’t quell the ache, or the need, to keep the words to myself like I have so many times over the last three years.

If anything, it draws them closer to the surface, so close to tumbling out that it’s impossible to stop them.

My stomach churns but my lips and tongue move as if I’m not trembling like a leaf beneath his stare. “Then go back to it!”

Henry jolts, my words landing like a slap.

Though, the man doesn’t recoil. He never has. Opposition has always done the opposite for Henry.

Makes him venomous.

“That’s what you want, huh?” His words drip with the resentment from his upturned lips, the kind of smile that has me seeking out the nearest exit. I’m halfway out of it when he rounds the desk, his hard gaze set on me—no.

My bookshelf.

He reaches for another paperback, tipping the special edition off the shelf to turn it over in his hands.

“Just put it back,” I plead. “And go if that’s what you want. You d-don’t have to stay here anymore.”

He licks his sinisterly sneering lips and flips the book open.

My heart clenches at the sight of it in his hands.

I know it’s just a book. Paper bound with glue and card stock.