Chapter 7 #2
She shrugs and grabs her purse. “I don’t like Chinese.”
Liar. Neve loves Chinese food. It’s literally all we ate all weekend.
Bridger stands up from the couch, looking confused and vaguely betrayed. “Wait, I kind of wanted Chinese.”
Neve plants a hand on his back and starts shoving him toward the door. “Cool. You can have some after. Let’s go.”
“But—”
“Out.”
The door closes behind them, leaving me alone with Damian, the smell of spicy sauce, and a thousand unsaid things hanging thick in the air.
He doesn’t say anything right away, and neither do I. I stand there, still holding my keys, trying to decide if I want to scream, eat, or sleep until tomorrow. All three choices sound plausible.
Damian stands from the couch without a word, stretches like he’s been sitting there all day, and heads into the kitchen.
He pulls two bowls from the cabinet, grabs two pairs of chopsticks, and sets them on the table.
Quiet. Methodical. Like this is just another night, not the one where I’m trying not to fall apart in front of him.
He pulls out a chair for me and sets a bowl in front of it.
The gesture, simple and steady, shouldn’t hit me the way it does. But it does. I sit down before I can change my mind and bolt. I pile some chicken and broccoli onto my plate, stomach grumbling even though I’ve felt like I’ve been dry-heaving since sunrise.
“I’m surprised you went in so early this morning,” Damian says, his voice low, like we’re trying not to wake the ghosts in the room.
I stab a piece of chicken, immediately enraged at him.
“I had to,” I say. “Who the fuck is Reese?” teeters on the tip of my tongue, but I’m afraid if I give the words life they’ll come out shrieking.
I shovel a heaping load of food in my mouth.
If I say what I’m thinking, it’ll be ugly.
Because I know in my gut, something is up.
It’s not just jealousy about the possibility of him sleeping with someone else, it’s the hiding it, the ache of it in my chest. Damn it.
The tears are right there, hiding just behind my lashes, waiting for one crack to slip through.
Why is it so hard to just say what I need to say?
What—because I’m afraid of his answer? Because he’ll tell me yes, I slept with her, yes, she matters more, yes, you’re always too much or not enough or too broken?
So what if he leaves? So what if he doesn’t love me back?
I’ve survived worse. I’ve survived being my father’s daughter.
I’ve survived blood and lies and silence that stretched for years. I can survive a stupid breakup. Right?
Except I don’t want to. Not with him.
I set my chopsticks down. My hands are shaking. No, no, no. Don’t do it, Lo. Just finish eating and get a good night’s sleep. I look at him across the table and all the words bubble up at once, “Who the fuck is Reese?” Yeah, I shriek it. Voice high-pitched and cracking.
He has the audacity to look confused. Brows drawn in, mouth parted like he genuinely doesn’t know what I’m talking about. “Huh?” he says.
I grip the edge of the table to steady myself, voice low and shaking. “Reese. There was a message on your phone. From someone named Reese. It said, ‘Don’t worry, she won’t find out.”’
His jaw tightens.
I don’t stop. “What the fuck am I not supposed to find out, Damian?”
His eyes narrow like I’ve just hit a nerve, like I’ve crossed some invisible line I didn’t even know was there. He pushes back his chair, stands slowly, and growls, “You went through my phone?”
I stand too, almost knocking into the table, heat rushing up my chest. “That’s not the correct answer, Damian.”
He stares at me, chest rising and falling, and for a second, neither of us moves. The silence between us is sharp and mean, filled with everything we’ve both been avoiding.
“You went through my phone,” he repeats, slower this time, like the words taste like betrayal in his mouth.
“No, I saw the screen light up and read the screen notification,” I snap. “So?” I demand, chin high, voice cracking higher. “Who is she? Who the fuck is Reese?”
He waves it off. Just like that. Like I didn’t just bring a live grenade to the table.
Then, without a word, he grabs his plate and hurls it into the trash.
The whole thing crashes in—rice flying, beef and broccoli splattering against the wall.
A vase of flowers topples off the counter from the impact and shatters across the floor.
The sharp crack of ceramic against tile slices through the room, and just like that, I’m back there.
Back in the thick silence of that night three months ago, when he wore a skull mask and trampled over another shattered vase of roses, bringing chaos into my life like a curse wrapped in pretty petals.
The noise punches through the apartment, loud and jarring, and my whole body flinches with it.
Everything inside me pauses, suspended in disbelief. Then I ask the question that’s been eating me from the inside, slow and loud. “Are. You. Fucking. Someone. Named. Reese?”
He laughs. It’s low and dark, bitter. It’s sharp enough to cut bone.
Then he squares up to me. He’s always so physically threatening, big and menacing.
Intense. Like his presence alone could break me in half if he wanted to.
His eyes are locked on mine, jaw tight. I can see how much he wants to say something, how close he is to exploding.
But he doesn’t say a damn thing.
“Answer me,” I snap, my voice raw now, almost begging. “Say it. Tell me I’m crazy. Tell me I’m wrong. Or tell me the truth for once.”
The fucker gives me nothing. Just that stare. That silence. That goddamn stillness he uses like a weapon. The kind that makes you question everything you thought you knew. “I’m not doing this with you,” Damian says, voice cold and clipped. “Are you still drunk? Go to bed.”
He moves to walk past me, like he can just shut this down and pretend the air between us isn’t about to combust.
I step in his way. “I’m perfectly sober.”
He exhales hard, nostrils flaring.
“Just tell me who Reese is.”
“No one,” he snaps, voice rising like a whipcrack.
“It has nothing to do with you.” His hands are fists at his sides, the muscles in his arms vibrating with restraint, and then he lets out a dark, miserable snarl.
“I’m not fucking anyone but you,” he spits.
“I don’t want anyone but you. I can’t even fucking think straight half the time because all I want is to be inside you.
You think I’m hiding something?” He takes a step forward, jaw clenched.
“I’m hiding how fucking obsessed I am with you.
” His eyes are wild now, blazing with something unhinged and feral.
Before I can say anything, before I can take my next breath, he lunges.
His mouth crashes into mine, hard and demanding, no space, no hesitation.
I stumble back and my spine hits the wall with a thud.
His hands are on me, everywhere, all at once.
One hand fists my hair, the other shoves down the front of my pants, and then I feel the rip of fabric, a sudden tear, and his tongue in my mouth like it’s the only way he knows how to speak.
And for a moment, I melt. Because this is what he does. He touches me like he’s starving. Like he’s drowning and I’m the only breath he wants. It’s bruising. It’s manic. And for a second, I let him have me.
But then I feel it. The silence beneath it all. The way he’s using this, using me, to keep the questions from crawling out of my mouth. And I can’t do it. Not anymore. I shove at his chest. “Stop.”
He growls, low and sharp. “Don’t fucking push me away.”
“This isn’t me pushing you away,” I snap, breathless. “It’s the other way around, Damian. You’re the one pushing me out.”
He goes rigid, chest heaving, his hand still gripped in the torn waistband of my pants.
“I can’t talk to you,” I whisper. “You won’t let me.”
“This is how we communicate,” he says, eyes locked on mine. “This. Right here.”
“You mean with sex?” I laugh bitterly. “That’s not healthy, Damian. That’s going to fuck up our already fucked-up shit even more.”
He doesn’t answer.
And that silence? That kills me more than anything else.
We communicate with sex? That’s all this is to him?
That’s all I am to him. All this time I’ve been falling.
Fast. Stupid. Heart-fist. Thinking, hoping, maybe he was too.
But he’s not. He’s just fucking me. He never wanted me.
He just wants the shape I make around his emptiness. And God help me. I let him.
I suddenly need air. I need space. I can’t breathe. Panic claws up my neck and squeezes. I push past him, through the living room, my heart in my throat. I don’t even grab my phone. I just run.
Down the stairs. Out the front door. Into the street with nothing but adrenaline and aching in my chest.
He doesn’t come after me.
And to me, that’s worse than if he had.