52. Haven
Haven
Three weeks.
That's all it took for my carefully constructed plans to collapse like a first grader’s science project.
How did my life get this fucked?
Maybe there’s something to the whole Heaven and Hell thing, because this feels biblical, like I’m being punished on a karmic level.
I let myself relax for one minute at the taco stand. Stopped to smell the flowers one time at that boutique.
Then the Almighty slaps me on the knuckles with a ruler…wrapped in barbed wire.
This is what happens when you let two different predators mark their territory on your body in the same week. Kai’s knife wound throbs under the bandaid. I can still feel Bastian’s fingers around my throat.
Should have known this was all just some elaborate misery trap disguised as a second chance.
I was emptying out my uncle’s overflowing trash when I saw the crumpled up envelope from Agony Hollow College inside.
Thought I’d gotten too many cocaine crumbs on myself when I brushed my teeth that morning. But I opened up the envelope, and I read the letter congratulating me on being awarded the Social Change grant, and I burst into tears.
I’d done it.
I’d fucking done it.
I thought the hard part was over. I’d miraculously gotten my GPA up to the required 3.5, volunteered every Sunday at the local church until the pastor gave me a recommendation letter, and spent nearly a week rewriting my application essay.
The girl from Riverside with the threadbare clothes and the haunted eyes had finally gotten a seat at the table.
And I was fucking ready.
Ready for any academic challenge thrown my way. Ready to pretend I belonged in those lecture halls.
What I wasn't ready for was them.
Kai. The boy from the woods who taught me how to hurt before he taught me how to heal. Now a man whose angry green eyes follow me across campus like he's calculating the exact pressure needed to break each of my bones.
Every time I see him, he excavates another buried memory. Pretty soon, he’ll have dug up the girl I was before I became whoever the hell I am now.
Then there’s Professor fucking Rooke—predator disguised as salvation. One manicured hand open, palm up, offering me safety, security, belonging…the other wrapping around my throat.
The way he looks at me makes me feel seen in ways that should repulse me. Instead, it lights up circuits in my brain I didn't know existed. Whenever I’m with him, he peels back another of my layers with surgical precision, finding the rot I've tried to hide and telling me it's beautiful.
I feel both of them circling. Watching, waiting for the smallest misstep.
Both of them forcing me to question which parts of me are real and which parts I invented to survive.
College was my attempt to build something from the ashes of Haven Lee, trailer trash survivor.
I had a fucking plan. Keep my head down. Get a degree. Change my town…and maybe even change myself in the process.
Instead, I'm caught between a pair of monsters.
Some sick, broken piece of me thrives on it. Like I was always meant to be the lamb running from wolves.
Guess it makes sense—I only ever feel alive when I'm seconds from being devoured.
But how much longer can I keep this up?
The mental gymnastics of anticipating their moves, their manipulations, the sharpness of their teeth—it’s fucking exhausting.
How can I pretend to be normal when every nerve ending in my body is primed for fight or flight?
More importantly, which one of them will tire of the game first, and go for the kill?
Three weeks.
Three fucking weeks is all it took to unravel a lifetime of survival instincts.
Guess this is what happens when you try to outrun your past, instead of accepting that some people aren't meant for better things.
Or maybe this is just another test.
Another obstacle to overcome.
Another ‘what doesn’t kill you’ story I'll tell myself someday when I'm safe and whole and far away from men who see me as prey.
Only time will tell.
All I know right now, is that something has to give.
And I'm terrified that something…will be me.