Chapter 16
I make it to the bathroom.
Barely.
Each step is agony. A sharp, tearing reminder of what just happened.
My hands shake as I lock the door. The click echoes too loud in the silence.
I don't look in the mirror. Can't.
The bathtub is old. Clawfoot. Deep. The kind that swallows you whole.
I turn the hot water on. Watch it pour from the faucet, steam rising, filling the space with wet heat.
My clothes come off slowly. The shirt sticks to my skin. My jeans drag against raw flesh and I have to bite my lip. The fabric is ruined. Stained.
My underwear is soaked through. Slick and come mixing together into something that makes me want to vomit. When they're finally off, I look down.
My thighs are streaked. Pale skin painted with dried slick. His come still leaking out of me. And blood. Just a little. Faint streaks.
I step into the tub.
The water is scalding. Hot enough to turn my skin red. I sink down slowly. Let it swallow me.
When the water touches between my legs, I gasp. The heat against abused flesh is unbearable.
I pull my knees to my chest. Wrap my arms around them. Make myself small.
Everything hurts. My ass feels torn, stretched, used. My thighs are sore. My hips will bruise where his fingers dug in.
I watch faint traces of pink swirl near my thighs where I'm bleeding. Not much. Just enough.
And then something breaks.
A sob tears out of my throat. Sudden. Unexpected.
I don't know where it came from. Don't know why now, why here, why at all.
Another one follows. Then another.
My chest heaves. My throat burns. Tears pour down my face and I can't stop them, can't control them, can't even understand them.
Am I crying because it hurt? Because he left me? Because I liked it? Because I hate myself for liking it?
I don't know.
I don't know anything anymore.
The sobs wrack my body. Ugly. Broken. I press my face against my knees and let it happen because I can't stop it, can't hold it back, can't do anything but shake apart in scalding water.
The confusion is worse than the pain. This tangle of want and shame and fear and need that I can't sort through, can't name, can't make sense of.
My thoughts are chaos. Scattered. Too loud and too jumbled and too much.
I need to get them out. Need to see them on paper where they make sense. Where I can organize them. Understand them.
The water cools. My skin prunes. The tears slow but don't stop entirely.
I need to write.
It's the only thing that's ever helped when my head gets like this. When everything is too much and nothing makes sense and I'm drowning in thoughts I can't sort through alone.
I stand. Water streams off my body.
Drying off is torture. The towel drags against sensitive skin. I have to dab gently between my legs.
I pull on sweatpants and an oversized hoodie. Everything still hurts.
I don't look in the mirror as I leave.
My room feels too empty.
I grab my diary from the bedside table. The leather is worn from years of use.
I sink onto the floor gently. Back against the bed. Pen in hand.
And I write.
I let Zero fuck me in the basement.
The words stare back at me. Stark. True.
No—that's not right. It wasn't "letting." He didn't ask. I didn't say yes. But I didn't say no either. I just stood there when I should have run. Why didn't I run?
He bent me over a weight bench and took my virginity while acting like I was nothing. That I was just an omega. Just a body. Just a hole to use.
And I came.
I came while he fucked me like a pathetic fuck toy. While he held me down. While he hurt me.
My hand shakes. The letters come out jagged.
I don't understand what's wrong with me. Normal people don't want this. Normal people would have fought back or screamed or done SOMETHING.
I just took it.
Worse—I wanted it.
Even now, sitting here barely able to move, everything hurting, I can still feel him inside me. Can still hear his voice. Can still smell him on my skin even after the bath.
And my body—god, my body—
I'm getting hard just thinking about it.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
I press the pen harder. The ink bleeds through the paper.
Linda used to hit me when I showed signs. When my scent started leaking through the suppressants at thirteen. She caught me without my shirt once. Saw the changes.
Her hand cracked across my face so hard I tasted blood.
"Disgusting," she said. "You're disgusting. Do you know what you are? What this makes you?"
She hit me again. Closed fist this time. My lip split open.
"You're weak. Pathetic. This is your fault. Your body. Your sickness."
Then she made me kneel on the tile floor. For hours. Until my knees bled and I couldn't feel my legs anymore. Until I was sobbing and begging her to let me up.
"This is what you deserve," she told me. Standing over me. Looking down at me like I was something she scraped off her shoe. "Omegas like you need to be punished. Need to learn their place."
I learned.
I learned to hide everything. To take my pills. To make myself small and quiet and invisible.
I learned that wanting anything was dangerous. That my body was something to be ashamed of. That I was fundamentally wrong.
And tonight—tonight I proved she was right.
Because I went down to that basement knowing. I heard the music and I KNEW it was Zero and I went down there anyway. My body was already reacting before I even saw him. Getting hot. Getting slick. Wanting something I shouldn't want.
When he told me to leave, I didn't.
When he kissed me, I kissed back.
When he bent me over that bench, I let him.
No—I wanted him to.
I stop. My hand is cramping. I shake it out and keep writing.
I'm so fucked up. There has to be something wrong with me. Because Zero was ROUGH. He hurt me. Used me. Said things that should have made me hate him.
He called me pathetic. Said I was just a hole. That I belonged to him. That my body was his property.
And instead of being horrified or angry or disgusted—
I got off on it.
I came harder than I've ever come in my life while he was degrading me.
That's not normal. That's not okay. That's exactly what Linda always said about me.
That I'm broken. Wrong. That there's something sick inside me that needs to be beaten out.
Maybe she was right to try.
Maybe I deserve the way Zero treated me. Maybe that's all I'm good for. All I'll ever be good for.
Just a body. Just an omega. Just something to be used.
The tears are back. Blurring the words. I wipe my eyes roughly and keep going.
But here's the thing I can't stop thinking about:
For those few minutes in the basement, I felt ALIVE.
Not invisible. Not nothing. Not the quiet kid who doesn't matter.
Zero looked at me like I was the only thing in the world that mattered. Like he was losing his mind over me. Like my body, my scent, my very existence was driving him crazy.
He couldn't control himself around me.
ME.
How fucked up is it that the thought makes me feel powerful?
He said he was mad at me. That I made him want things he shouldn't want. That I was ruining him.
Good.
I don't know where that thought came from but it's true. GOOD. I'm glad I affect him that much. I'm glad he can't ignore me. I'm glad I get under his skin.
Because maybe it means I'm not nothing.
Maybe it means I matter.
Even if it's twisted. Even if it's wrong. Even if the only way I matter is as something he wants to destroy.
At least I'm SOMETHING to him.
I'm writing faster now. The words pouring out.
I've spent my whole life trying to be invisible. Trying not to take up space. Trying not to be noticed because being noticed meant getting hurt.
Linda noticed me and she beat me.
Foster parents noticed me and they sent me back.
Teachers noticed me and they pitied me.
But Zero—
Zero notices me and he wants me.
It's fucked up. It's so fucked up. I know that. I'm not stupid.
But I've never been wanted before. Not like that. Not with that kind of intensity. That kind of need.
He said I belonged to him. That I was his.
He was cruel and rough and he hurt me.
But for those minutes, I was HIS.
Not invisible. Not nothing. Not the foster kid charity case that Margot took pity on.
His.
And god help me, I want to be his again.
I want his hands on me. His voice in my ear. His body pinning me down. His cock inside me making me feel things I shouldn't feel.
I want him to use me again. Want him to hurt me again. Want him to call me pathetic and an omega and his property.
Because at least then I know I exist. At least then I know I matter. At least then I'm not invisible.
Is that what Linda meant? Is this what being an omega is? Just wanting to be owned? Wanting to be claimed? Wanting someone to take away every choice so you don't have to be responsible for the wanting?
Maybe she was right. Maybe I AM disgusting. Maybe this is the sickness she tried to beat out of me.
But I don't care anymore.
I don't care if it's wrong. I don't care if it makes me everything she said I was.
Because tonight, for the first time in my entire life, someone looked at me like I mattered.
Even if he hated me for making him feel it.
Even if he left me bleeding and broken on the basement floor.
Even if this thing between us is toxic and twisted and doomed from the start.
I mattered.
And I'd let him ruin me all over again for that feeling.
I close the diary. My hand aches. My chest heaves.
The words sit on the page. Raw. Honest. Terrible.
But they're out now. Out of my head. Where I can see them.
Where they make some kind of fucked-up sense.
I'm broken. I know that now.
And maybe that's okay. Maybe that's just what I am.
I crawl to my bed. Every movement careful. My body screaming.
Lying on my back is impossible.
I roll onto my stomach instead. Face pressed into the pillow.
The bed is soft. The pillow smells like fabric softener.
My body is wrecked. My mind is fractured.
But I'm still here.
Sleep comes slowly.
And when it does, I dream of ice-blue eyes and rough hands and a voice telling me exactly what I am.
Mine.
Even if he didn't mean it.
For those few minutes, I was his.