Chapter Three
Athens
Lying in bed feels like the only thing I can still do without falling apart.
The weight of everything presses down on me, crushing bone, soul, breath, and there’s no way out of it.
My world isn’t unraveling.
It’s burning. Collapsing in slow motion while I just lie here, staring at the ceiling like it owes me answers.
Finding out my entire life was a lie has cracked something deep inside me. Something that used to feel permanent. Untouchable.
Now, it’s rotting.
Josie. My aunt. My protector. My mother.
The truth slithers through my ribs like a sickness, coiled tight, poisoning everything.
How could she lie to me like that?
The question loops in my head like a broken record. Over and over until it means nothing. Until it means everything.
I haven’t gotten out of bed in days. Time has no shape anymore. The sun rises, the sun sets, and none of it feels real.
I canceled all my classes this week. It was the smartest thing I’ve done.
There was no way I’d be able to stand in front of students, pretending to care about lesson plans while the foundations of my entire identity have been ripped out from under me.
The only thing I can manage is lying here, tucked under covers that don't feel warm, in a room that doesn’t feel safe, inside a skin that doesn’t feel like mine anymore.
A cold shiver rakes down my spine, burying itself in my bones. I pull the blanket up like that’ll do anything.
It doesn’t.
I’m still freezing.
I feel like a ghost trapped in my own body.
I don’t eat. I can’t. Everything tastes like ashes. Food turns to nausea the second it touches my lips. I’ve lost weight, probably more than I should, but who gives a fuck?
Every time I look in the mirror, I see a stranger. A girl who was built on lies. Raised in silence. Betrayed by the only person who was supposed to love her without question.
My chest tightens, painful, sharp. It’s hard to breathe. Like the air itself is rejecting me.
I press my palms to my face, dig my nails into the skin. Anything to ground myself. Nothing works. I’m just numb.
Time bleeds together in smudged colors. Days vanish. Nights stretch too long.
How is it already the end of the week?
I curl into myself, folding small beneath the covers. I whisper into the dark, “Just close your eyes, Athens. Nothing can happen in your dreams.”
Even that feels like a lie. A beautiful one. But a lie all the same.
Still… I shut my eyes.
Not because I believe it. But because I need the escape.
Even if the escape is laced with darkness. Even if sleep claws at me with bloody fingers and shows me the face of every truth I don’t want to see.
I let her take me anyway.
Because the pain of dreaming is still easier than being awake.
And as I slip under, into the murk and madness, the dreams rise up like they always do, not soft. Not safe. But sharp. Bleeding. Endless.
And that’s where I go.
To suffer in silence.
Where no one can find me.
“Aunt Josie?”
My voice cracks as I blink into the shadows, wiping sleep from my eyes while fragmented memories claw their way to the surface like bones rising through wet earth.
“Are you really my mother?”
The words barely leave my lips. A whisper. A wound. Part of me already knows the answer. That’s what makes it worse.
She rises from the chair and sits beside me on the edge of the bed, her expression soft but haunted. Like someone who’s loved me while hiding from the truth.
“Yes, baby. I am.” Her voice is barely there, regret in the shape of a lullaby.
“How?” It’s all I can manage.
How did we get here?
She sighs. “There’s so much you don’t know. So much I should’ve told you sooner. But I didn’t know where to begin.”
Her words land heavy. I look at her harder now, and suddenly I see it. The curve of her nose. The shape of her mouth. The pain behind her eyes that I never could name.
All these years... It was right in front of me.
But I don't say that. I don’t say anything. Because I need her to keep going. I need to know what else she’s buried.
“I don’t have time to tell you everything now,” she murmurs. “But ask me the question. The one you’ve been dying to say since the dreams started again.”
My stomach knots.
“Again?”
She nods slowly. And then she says it.
“When you were a child… I killed your father.”
The air leaves the room.
I can’t breathe. I don’t move. I just stare.
“What?” My voice cuts out like glass against steel. I didn’t mean to scream, but what the fuck do you expect?
“Why?”
It’s not a question. It’s a desperate plea.
Her hands tremble. She looks away. And when she speaks again, her voice is broken.
“Your father was molesting you.”
Silence. She continues. Each word a blade.
“I don’t know how long it had been going on.
I didn’t want to believe it. There were signs, little ones…
but I ignored them. Until one night, you begged me not to leave for work.
You clung to me, sobbing. I didn’t listen.
” She swallows, eyes shining with unshed tears.
“I turned around. It was raining. Slippery roads. Call it mother’s intuition, but the second I pulled into the driveway, I knew something was wrong. I walked in, and I saw it. Him. You.”
She chokes on the memory. “I snapped. He tried to shut the door, tried to stop me, but he couldn’t. Because you were my baby. And I would kill for you.”
She cups my face, her touch warm. Fragile. “So I did. I killed him. And I’d do it again.”
I can't speak. I can’t scream. There’s something acidic crawling up my throat, but it won’t come out. It just burns.
She continues, voice lower now, more confessional than explanation. “Those dreams you’ve been having? They're not nightmares. They’re memories. You buried them deep. Kaia helped you forget. She was a hypnotist. And my best friend.”
Kaia.
I can barely form the thought before I’m shaking my head.
“No. No, molesting me? Why would he do that?” I don’t realize I’m crying until I taste the salt on my lips. “To his own daughter?”
“Babe...”
Gaia’s voice breaks through. I'd forgotten she was even in the room.
“What part do you play in this?” I demand, turning to her, voice splintered with rage. She flinches like I struck her.
“Believe it or not... I don’t. We met after you were placed with the foster family. We just clicked. That’s it.” Her arms fold over her chest, defensive.
Too defensive.
My hands tremble from how badly I want to break something.
But I settle for words. I always do more damage with those anyway.
“You’re lying. Who are your parents, Gaia?”
The room goes still. Everything cold. Still.
She opens her mouth. Closes it. Her arms wrap around herself, and her voice is barely audible. “I... I’m your best friend.”
I rise from the bed like a force of nature, ripping the covers off, storming up to her.
“You’re lying!” I shout, finger in her face. “We’ve been best friends for twenty years. Don’t insult me. I know when you’re lying.”
“She’s your sister, Athens.” Josie’s voice slices between us like a guillotine. I freeze.
“She didn’t tell you because it wasn’t time. Kaia made sure of that. You’ve met before, when you were little. But together, the memories could come back. When you were ready.”
I let out a bitter laugh, turning toward her. “And you’re saying I’m ready now?”
Josie nods, tired. “Seems like it. When did the dreams come back?” She grabs my wrist gently, pulling me back toward the bed.
“I don’t know.” I shrug. “A few weeks ago. What does that even matter?”
She softens. “Have you ever felt like you lost time? Like your reality wasn’t yours?”
I pause.
I close my eyes, trying to feel. Trying to remember.
But all I find is static. Blankness. Like someone wiped the slate clean with bleach and sorrow.
“You drop this on me,” I whisper, then louder, bitter, broken, “and then expect me to believe I’ve got some twisted archive of abuse and secrets shoved in the back of my head?”
I rise again, heart pounding. “You’re not just my aunt. You’re my mother.” The word lands like poison on my tongue.
“How the fuck do you expect me to come back from that?” I make for the door.
“Athens, don’t you dare talk to your mother that way.” Gaia’s voice cuts clean through the fog.
I stop. Turn back.
Slow. Controlled. Lethal.
“My mother? If you’re my sister, why don’t you call her that?”
The silence is crushing.
Then she speaks, and the truth she spits leaves the room in shreds. “Because we had the same father. But no one came to save me.” Her voice cracks.
“I ran. Lived on the streets. Until Josie found me. Took me in. Raised me like I was hers. If she hadn’t, I’d be dead.”
The words suck all the oxygen out of the room.
“What?” I breathe. A whimper. A scream. Both.
Josie nods, eyes full of mourning.
“Your father was a cruel man, baby. Once, you and Gaia were his world. But power rotted him. And his lust... ruined everything. He stopped seeing you as his daughter. And started seeing you as something else. Something he wanted.”
I collapse back onto the bed, the walls spinning.
Every lie they told me. Every memory I can’t touch. Every part of me that feels like it doesn’t belong in my own body.
The truth doesn’t set you free.
It breaks you. Quietly. Irreversibly.
That dream hits like a fist to the gut, dragging me out of sleep like I’ve been yanked from the bottom of the ocean. I shoot up, gasping, heart hammering, head spinning.
Josie’s voice, the one that used to soothe me, is now etched into my skull like a curse. “I’m your mother.” Over and over again. A loop I can’t outrun.
“God… when will it stop?”
I collapse back into bed, burying myself beneath the covers like they can protect me from everything unraveling outside this room. Maybe if I stay buried long enough, the truth won’t find me again.
The only ones who’ve dared to break through my self-imposed exile?
Wyck and the Devils.