LOLA #2
Sophie hugs me at the door, whispering, “Block out the bad. Remember I’m here.” She means it. But even her arms can’t warm what Brody froze.
Back in the dark, I shiver. Marcus waits for me at home. I think about his hands, the way he traps and claims. I think about Brody’s stare. The hate. The hunger. The memory of warmth, now broken and dead.
I stagger down the path, wishing I could vomit up every last feeling, leave it in the gutter for the rats.
I can’t. I never could. I walk home alone, body buzzing and sore.
Everything feels floaty, like my bones are hollow or dissolved.
Inside, it’s so dark I see stars, but no darkness compares to the one left behind my ribs. It’s always there, waiting for me.
Always.
I breathe in, hoping for emptiness. The kind you get in late-night apartments, when no one’s home but ghosts and the echo of old arguments. But that’s not what I get. He’s here. Of course he’s here.
Marcus sits in the shadow of the hall, not reading, not watching TV. Just waiting, spine straight, hands folded like a man at his own funeral.
His eyes track me before I even shut the door. “Where were you?”
I try to be casual. “Studio went late.” But my voice is slurred. Weak. He hears it, of course he does.
He stands, smooth as a predator unfolding from camouflage. His feet are bare. I notice stupid shit like that when I’m scared. Hyper-awareness, they call it. A trauma-response. Skin, pale in the moonlight. The way his hand opens and closes by his side.
He walks like a wolf in the night. “Funny,” he says, stopping a breath away, “because I saw you walk out of the Voss house. With my own eyes.”
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
I ramp up the lies, desperate. “Sophie invited me over. Just for coffee, I didn’t even—”
His fist cracks against my cheek. The sound echoes. He doesn’t let me fall. Not yet. He grabs my hair, yanks my head up until my neck screams.
“You think you’re fucking clever? Hiding things from me?” His breath scorches my ear, sour and cruel.
Tears sting even before the pain fully registers. I claw at his wrist, pure panic. “Please—Marcus—”
He slaps me again, harder. “Did you forget what I said? Did you forget who you belong to?”
He drags me, stumbling, into the kitchen. My scalp burns. I try to twist away, but his grip is a vise.
“You lied to me,” he says, voice steady, deadly.
“You disobeyed.” He shoves me against the fridge.
My head knocks the metal and the world blurs, rings.
I want to vomit. He drops his mouth to my ear, voice thick.
“You filthy little cunt. You want to be with them so bad? You think you’re not my property? ”
My entire body shakes, useless. “Please, I’m sorry, I won’t—”
He cuts me off by squeezing my throat. No warning, just those huge hands, all pressure, cutting off sound, cutting off everything.
The noise in my head goes white hot, then dim.
My vision fuzzes at the edges, stars and black spirals chewing at the world.
He doesn’t let me go. Not at first. He waits until my hands go limp, until I’m slumping and seeing double.
Then he eases off, just barely, so I’m gasping.
He lets out a soft, amused noise. “Look at you. Fucking pathetic.” He drags my face up, fingers sticky in my hair.
“You listen to me,” he hisses. “You are mine. You go where I say. You talk to who I say. If I catch you lying again—if I catch you near that house again—I’ll make you sorry. You understand?”
I nod, salt stinging my eyes.
But he isn’t done. Not even close. He shoves me down, flat on the floor, a foot to my hip, holding me in place. His breath rasps, thickening. “Maybe you want to be a slut for them. Maybe you like being watched. But you don’t belong to them, Lola. You never will.”
He grinds his boot into my thigh, hard enough to bruise. Pain ricochets up my spine, my tears dripping onto the tile. I’m shaking so hard that my teeth chatter.
“You tell me what you are,” he growls.
I can barely form words. “I’m yours. I belong to you.”
He laughs, nastily. “Fucking right you do. You want to go next door? You want to see how they treat pretty little things like you?” Tears blind me. I can’t answer. I can only choke on sobs. His grip tightens. “Answer me.”
I gasp. “No—I don’t. I only want to be here. Please.”
“You’re not even worth breaking. Not yet.”
His hand slides up my thigh, and I freeze. The old terror, the old shame, it fills every crack inside. He doesn’t go further, but he could. He reminds me he could.
His hand lingers. Then he’s up, stepping over me. He spits on the floor, disgusted. “Clean yourself up.”
He doesn’t look back as I roll onto my side. My breath comes in gasps. My cheek is swelling already, my ribs ache. My thighs are streaked red and purple, the beginnings of marbled bruises.
I lie there, and try not to think. Try not to remember how safe I felt, just for a minute, in Sophie’s arms, with wine and dumb movies.
I never get to keep anything good. Marcus makes sure of that.
I drag myself to my feet. The house is quiet now, hush like an empty mausoleum. I don’t look in the mirror; I don’t want to see what’s left.
Staggering up the stairs, each step is an act of forgetting. I strip off my clothes, and ignore the salt trails on my skin before lying down on the bare mattress; he took the sheets last time I made him angry.
I hold my breath, wishing it would stop hurting. I wish I could be anyone else. But I’m not. I belong here. Exactly where he put me.
My body aches as I listen for footsteps, for the threat of him coming back. But tonight, he leaves me alone with the static in my skull. My soul aches worse.
I close my eyes, and try not to dream. It never works. He reminds me, every time, that I am nothing, and nobody is coming to save me. I wish I could float away into the abyss, and let it swallow me. Maybe then, I’d be free of this pain.