Chapter 3
GABE
I’m slammed into the wall, hard. My skull rattles, ribs screaming, breath knocked out before I can drag more in.
Kyle’s face fills my vision—eyes a cold ice blue, teeth bared, spit flying. He’s too close, too loud.
“You’re pathetic.” His voice cracks the air. The word ricochets, multiplies, bouncing from wall to wall until the whole room hisses it back at me.
Pathetic. Pathetic. Pathetic.
He leans closer, breath sour with stale alcohol, wet against my cheek.
His hand clamps onto my thigh, hard, forcing my legs apart.
Fingers bite into muscle until I can’t breathe.
Revulsion spikes in my gut, hot and nauseating.
My stomach twists. I try to push, beg—but my body won’t move, won’t respond.
I’m paralyzed. My arms are too heavy. My skin crawls.
I open my mouth to say “stop,” but nothing comes. My throat burns, raw with silence. No matter how I strain, no matter how I force it, the sound dies before it leaves me.
The bed swallows me. I’m flat on my back, his weight pressing down.
Nails drag down my chest as bile sears my throat.
Sharp, hot lines split my skin, pain sizzles like fire.
I claw at his wrists, but my hands slide through as if he isn’t flesh but smoke—thick, choking, suffocating.
I can’t breathe. The harder I fight, the heavier he becomes.
“Stop being so fucking difficult,” he spits, dragging me closer. His breath sticks to my skin, rancid and suffocating. His weight crushes me, stealing every inch of space. I want to vanish, to crawl out of myself, but I’m trapped under him. Trapped inside myself.
The room glitches. Flickers. One blink, and I’m against the wall again, his palm slamming into my chest, shoving me hard. Plaster cracks. My lungs seize. His mouth moves, and all I see is teeth, words I can’t stop, can’t silence.
I try again to shout, to beg, to say anything, but there’s nothing.
Only silence.
My voice is gone.
It’s been stolen.
“Pathetic. You’re lucky I put up with you.” His voice swells, booming, then distorts, stretching until it’s unrecognizable. The words warp into a screech that drills through my skull.
Everything loops—faster, louder—until I can’t tell one moment from the next.
Then the mug.
Ceramic white, flashing in his hand. Bright in the dark. My heart stops.
He throws it—
The world slows.
It spins end over end, a blur, an inevitability.
I flinch, squeeze my eyes shut, waiting for the impact, waiting for it to cut me open—
Air slams back into my lungs in a ragged gasp. My chest heaves, ribs aching. Sweat clings to every inch of me. My throat burns with the scream I couldn’t make. My skin crawls with phantom nails, the bruising grip on my thigh still pulsing.
I tell myself to move, to get up, but my body won’t listen. The exhaustion I feel is in the marrow of my bones. I promised Abbie and Ciarán pancakes this morning. I was supposed to be up already. Instead, I’m flat on my back, shaking like I’ve run miles.
The buzz of my phone on the nightstand jars me. My chest still heaves, sweat dripping down my neck. My hand trembles when I reach for it, clumsy enough that I almost drop it.
Unknown: Hey Gabe, it’s Noah. I got your number from Aiden.
I stare at the screen, pulse jackhammering. Seeing his name makes my throat close up. My thumb hovers, retreats, hovers again. Just say hi. Easy enough. Another buzz while my thumb’s suspended above the screen.
Unknown: Noah Richards. You might remember me as the kid that licked all the icing off your 13th birthday cake before anyone had a slice…
Before I’ve even finished reading the message, another pops up.
Unknown: But it was definitely a totally different kid that threw up all over your parents’ house that day. I wouldn’t do a thing like that.
A shaky laugh leaves me. Maybe he hasn’t changed. I click into contact details and add his name.
Me: Hi Noah.
The dots appear almost immediately.
Noah: Aiden mentioned it might be okay for me to crash in your spare room for a while. Is that actually good with you?
I read it once. Twice. A third time, like the words might change. My fingers flex uselessly against the phone. My body jitters with leftover adrenaline, making my muscles twitch.
Say no. Say yes. Say something.
Me: Yeah. It’s fine.
The words are a reflex, and the second they’re gone, I’m desperate to drag them back. Say something that doesn’t sound so clipped. But it’s too late. Dots appear again.
Noah: You sure? I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.
He’s being careful. And I know why.
He knows.
Aiden must have told him. Not every detail, he doesn’t know everything himself, but enough to draw a conclusion as to what happened. Enough for Noah to imagine me the night I arrived at Aiden’s, skin raw from cold, blood on my shirt, unable to get words out.
I hate it. Not the fact that Noah cares, just the idea of him seeing me through that lens. Cracked open and pathetic. The man who couldn’t even leave without breaking on his brother’s doorstep.
I want to tell him the truth, that it’s not him that makes this hard, it’s me. That I don’t know how to let anyone close without being afraid.
That, despite everything, I want to try. I don’t want to be like this. I want to be normal.
Instead, my thumbs type the only thing that feels safe. A lie.
Me: Really. It’s fine.
My hands won’t stay still, shaking like I’ve had too much caffeine, though all I’ve done is drown in my nightmares.
Noah: Thanks, Gabe. I really appreciate it. I promise I’ll be a good guest.
Relief and dread crash together. My body still remembers nails digging in, breath hot on my skin, silence choking me where my voice should be.
I press my palm over my sternum, feeling the wild thud of my heartbeat, and wonder how I’m supposed to survive someone living under the same roof when I can’t even survive my own head.
I settle back onto my bed and count the hairline cracks in the ceiling again. My shirt sticks to the sweat on my back, the cool pillow warms beneath my neck. My heart won’t settle. It pulses hard and wrong, like it’s learned a new, panicked language over the years and refuses to switch back.
Rain pelts loudly against the window. That usually soothes me. The rain is one of the things I love most about Willowrun. Tucked in the Pacific Northwest, we get plenty of it. Right now, it reminds me that the world is out there while I’m pinned to my bed by a nightmare that never ends.
The apartment door eases open, and I just lie there.
Abbie and Ciarán—right on time.
There’s the soft padding of feet in the hallway, the jingle of Abbie’s giant enamel strawberry keychain that she’s had forever.
The bedroom door opens slowly. Abbie’s head appears first, blonde curls piled high, escaping every pin.
Her smile is gentle, the kind that doesn’t ask me to be anything but here.
“No pancakes?” she teases lightly, her voice quiet enough to keep from startling me.
I shake my head with a thick throat.
“Bad one?” she asks.
I nod. Talking feels exhausting right now.
They know I still have nightmares sometimes, but I’ve never told them the full extent. I don’t tell them how often they come, how hard they make getting up every morning. I don’t tell anyone that my past makes each day feel like a living nightmare. That some days I’d do anything for it to end.
She lifts her eyebrows in silent question. It coaxes the smallest smile out of me. I shift and lift my left arm in invitation. She moves across the room on socked feet and slides in carefully, fitting herself into the crook of my arm like she’s been shaped for it.
Her weight is nothing and everything. I feel the steady heat of her against my side, the slow metronome of her breath teaching mine how to move again. She doesn’t ask for details. She never has to. Her hand finds my sternum and rests there, grounding the harsh beating of my heart.
This is the kind of touch I can bear. I crave it. Offered by someone who loves me. I let it hold me together when my body feels splintered.
Out in the apartment, something clinks, then the soft sound of water.
Ciarán’s watering the plants he keeps bringing me; he doesn’t trust me not to neglect them.
I don’t blame him, I always let them die.
I can’t even take care of myself, never mind a plant, but I do love having them in my space, they bring life.
He hums a lilting tune. I picture him in the kitchen, hips rolling to the rhythm, shoulders loose, dark hair swaying.
I smile at the image, my heart settling a fraction more, having them here.
He appears in the doorway and leans his shoulder on the frame, taking me in with eyes that sparkle when he’s being wicked and go very soft when he’s not. Today, they’re soft.
“Well, you’re a sight for sore eyes,” he says, his usual mischief mellowed into something like fond relief. “Shift over. I’m not missing out.” He keeps his voice low, like he’s learned the acoustics of my nervous system.
I lift my right arm without conscious thought.
It’s the oldest ritual we have. He flashes me a blinding smile that lands between triumphant and tender, crosses the room, and slides under my arm, careful as he settles against my side.
The leather of his pants is cool against the thin cotton covering my thigh.
He tucks himself into the crook of my arm and exhales. I feel it deep within me.
We make a strange, familiar geometry. Me on my back, Abbie under my left arm, Ciarán under my right. They’re both much smaller than me, they fit so perfectly. We do this when one of us frays. And lately, that’s always me. I feel so frayed, I’m not sure what will be left when I finally come apart.
The feel of them pins me to the present. My pulse slows. The room smells like Ciarán now, his tropical coconut scent taking over. I breathe all of it in and remember that my body belongs to me. That I got out. That I’m safe.
We didn’t always have this. We met in college almost ten years ago now.
Before that, I never had close friends and never realized how much I needed them.
The University of Portland is where Abbie found me—pen behind her ear, talking a mile a minute, pulling me into every study group.
Turned out she grew up a couple of towns over from Willowrun.
Then Ciarán came along. He’d trained as a dancer before switching to English lit, and you could tell. Movement was part of him. He’s not from around here, but when we all graduated, he moved here, saying, “We need to stick together.” And I’m thankful for that.
And me—I was the one hiding behind my stack of books. But they wouldn’t let me stay hidden. They kept me, sat with me, argued with me, laughed with me.
Different personalities, different worlds, but somehow we fit.
They loved me before Kyle.
They loved me through him.
And after.
We stay like that for a while. My breathing regulates. My chest loosens. The nightmare doesn’t feel quite so close when I’m between them like this.
Abbie shifts first, wriggling until she steals more of the blanket. Her shoulders tremble with silent laughter. I groan and tug it back, which only makes her cling harder. Then we’re in a playful tug-of-war over it.
“You two are insufferable,” Ciarán mutters, but I hear the smile in his voice. “Honestly. I come here out of the goodness of my heart, and this is what I get? Elbowed by blanket thieves.”
“The goodness of your heart? You thought there’d be pancakes, and you’re like a stray cat.” Abbie fires back.
“I’m a growing boy,” he says primly, patting his taut stomach.
I let out a soft laugh. Abbie tilts her chin to look at me. “Better?”
I nod. My throat still feels thick, but I manage, “Yeah. Better. Sorry about breakfast.”
“Don’t worry about that. This is perfect,” Ciarán murmurs, almost to himself.
The lump in my throat swells. I exhale a rough, “Yeah. It is.”
“Noah is going to move in,” I tell them. They both nod, matching looks of concern mixed with pride.
We don’t say anything more about it. We all know it’s a big deal, me letting someone into my safe space.
Eventually, Abbie pushes herself up with a stretch, cardigan slipping off her shoulder. “All right. Enough wallowing. Time to get vertical.”
“Yes, Ms. Dawson,” I mutter, causing her to grin. I let her tug me upright. My body feels stiff.
Ciarán follows, rolling artfully off the bed. “Come on, Gabey. If you’re going to have a breakdown, at least do it in a freshly aired-out apartment.”
I make a face at him, but the corner of my mouth twitches. “You opened all the windows, didn’t you?”
“Obviously.” He flicks imaginary dust from his shirt. “I think you try to kill the plants on purpose. They need air… and water, if you weren’t aware.”
Abbie squeezes my hand gently before letting go. “We’ll give you space. But maybe… do one small thing today. Just one. It’ll help.”
“And eat. Actual food. Not just tea,” Ciarán sasses.
I walk them to the front door. Abbie blows me a kiss on her way out, murmuring, “Text us.”
When the door shuts, I stand in the hall, staring at the spare room door. My mind is worn down, but their warmth lingers on my skin, enough to propel me forward.
The room is tidy enough already, but not for someone new. I strip the bed and get fresh sheets. I smooth them flat, tugging the corners tight. I clear the desk of the stray books I’ve been meaning to put away and clean the nonexistent dust from the surface.
I linger at the shelves in the room. My fingers trail over the spines.
It’s been years, but I remember which ones Noah used to ask about.
He’d sit at the kitchen table while I read, eyes bright, waiting for me to pause so he could ask what it was about.
Aiden never cared, he wasn’t big into reading, but Noah always asked.
Every birthday, I’d wrap one for him, hand it to him with a scribbled note inside: Thought you’d like this one.
He’d always beam at me; the memory makes me smile into the room.
He was so happy to get a book from me, such a simple gift.
I missed his birthday last month, and I thought about it for days. I felt awful. It’s not the same as a gift, but I pull one down now, a fantasy paperback I think he might like, and set it on the nightstand.
Back in the living room, I pick up my phone.
Me: The room’s ready whenever you want to move in.
For the first time since waking, the thought of tomorrow doesn’t feel impossible. Fear still lives under my skin, it never leaves, but my friends left me with the strength to try.