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It comes out of nowhere. One second I’m standing still, the next it feels like invisible fingers have wrapped around my heart, tugging me forward.

I don’t know why.

I just know I have to go.

The moment I take another step, Roman grabs my collar and punches me in the face.

It’s not a hard hit. Maybe it’s the alcohol. Maybe it’s the exhaustion finally catching up to me.

Either way, I stumble backwards and hit the ground.

“You’re fucking insane, Sergei. Your mama is dead and the girl you’re after doesn’t fucking exist.”

Age Twenty-one

I. Am. Not. Insane.

THIRTY

Elara

Three weeks left

Present

Imagine my surprise when my phone buzzes with a text after one week of silence.

I didn’t hear from him, haven’t seen him at the campus and now he’s dropping a ‘miss me’ text?

Usually, the doors opened the moment I stepped into his penthouse. But something refrangible inside me cracked when I realised, he’d denied me entry.

He had a key to my place. He’d torn my door down on a whim. And there I was, standing outside his for minutes, slow to understand that he had, in fact, discarded me.

Totally anticipated move.

Was I disappointed? Yes.

Heartbroken? Appallingly so.

The seed of hope had only just begun to take root when he reminded me why I shouldn’t have hoped in the first place.

I’m such an ignoramus. I’m pathetic.

Dejected, I went back home and locked myself inside the bathroom, thoughts of hurting myself circling relentlessly in my head.

The battle didn’t last long. The irrational part of me won, and before I knew it, I was searching for my razor.

The thing with self-harm is, one moment you’re happy and you believe the urge is no longer there. But the second something goes wrong; it becomes the first choice of comfort.

It’s habitual, it’s calming in its own odd way.

The fog of panic only began to clear when I saw blood spilling from my skin, a sick sort of serenity washing over me.

My hands trembled, my chest heaved violently, yet my mind finally fell silent and my heart turned numb.

I stayed holed up in my flat for days, until even breathing became impossible again. I had to leave—had to get out of that gory bathroom before it swallowed me whole.

Like the desperate whore I am, I ended up back on campus just to steal a glimpse of him, even from a distance, even from some fucking corner, like a creep as if I wasn’t discarded.