Chapter 7 #2
My father’s eyes. Hard. Empty.
The same jawline. The same set of the mouth. The same anger simmering under the skin.
The only difference is the cage I built inside my head, where he bulldozed everything. His violence goes outward—mine stays leashed until something threatens what’s mine.
My knuckles are already bruising, a deep, angry purple swelling under the raw skin.
I open the medicine cabinet, pushing past the painkillers, and pull out a roll of white athletic tape.
I tape them.
Not to heal.
To contain.
I wrap the tape tight around my knuckles, then around my wrist, creating a brace. A new ritual. A reinforcement. A leash against the rage. Each loop digs into my skin, a deliberate constriction. I pull until the blood has to fight to move past it.
The tape is a cage. One I choose. One I can tighten.
It bites, sharp and unyielding—a reminder of control, a reminder that the only monster I have any right to fear is the one with my eyes.
I’m not sorry I slammed him. I’m only sorry I lost control. Let the rage out of its cage. I am one of those monsters—just a territorial one. I caged the guy who insulted her, but the cage is still the same.
And I’m sorry she’ll hear about it.
She’ll hear the rumors. She’ll see the bruises. She’ll think I’m another animal. She’ll think I’m the monster. She’ll never know the violence was clean, directed—the most controlled thing I did all day.
She won't ever know that the second hit I craved wasn't for me; it was to wipe the sound of her name from Rylan’s mouth.
And she’ll never know I did it to keep the other monsters away from her.
I walk into the bedroom, the tape stiff on my hand. My new armor, rough and unforgiving, contains the break. It chafes, a constant reminder of the chaos I caged—and the soft skin it will never touch.
The apartment is dim, lit only by the glow of the digital clock on my nightstand and the strip of streetlight sneaking under the blinds. My bed is still made: hospital corners, pillows stacked. Order in a life that keeps trying to tilt sideways. Control held together with rituals and tape.
My phone sits on the nightstand where I threw it. The screen is lit.
Beatrice: You need to learn to control that temper, darling. It’s not attractive when it’s sloppy. Call me.
She calls it sloppy.
That’s what she thinks happened. That the violence was messy. Undisciplined.
She has no idea.
I scroll down.
Adrian: You good? Coach is still pissed. Let me know what you need.
There’s more. A text from Gio with a meme about angry goalies. A notification about some alumni donor event for which my father RSVP’d me without asking.
All of them want something. An answer. An appearance. A performance.
I scroll past their names. My thumb, stiff and awkward in the white tape, hovers. I’m looking for something I never earned.
A connection I never made.
Talia.
I scroll again, slowly, dragging the screen up. Searching for Talia Addison in a list where she doesn’t exist. For the quiet, perfect stillness that contaminated everything.
Nothing.
Of course, there isn’t.
She doesn’t have my number. She probably doesn't even know my last name. And I never took hers.
She was there tonight—I know it. That prickle in the rink. A ghost I could feel but couldn’t see. And I have no direct line. No way to confirm. No way to know. A failure of control that cuts deeper than the wounds on my knuckles.
Now I have nothing. No direct line. No excuse to breach her distance.
Only the memory of her thigh against mine and the way her shoulders snapped tight when the glass cracked at the game.
She’s hotter than I thought.
Way hotter up close.
Rylan’s voice is a fresh smear of filth across the memory.
Her face in the stands. The rigid line of her body pressed against me in the booth. The clean scent of peppermint cutting through beer. The subtle, terrified brush of her back as she left—the only real physical contact I’ve had in years.
The anger is back, cold and sharp.
The possessiveness.
Mine.
My thumb drifts to the search bar at the top of my contacts, then below it—to the browser icon.
I stop. My thumb hovers over the glass.
This is a line. I know it. Coach drew it. My father drew it. I drew it myself when I taped my hand.
It’s a stupid impulse. Weak.
I follow it anyway. It feels like breaking and entering, but I can't stop.
I type her name.
Talia Addison Briarcliff.
It doesn’t take much. Campus directory. Student staff listings. Study hall proctors.
Her name pops up in black and white on my screen:
ADDISON, TALIA—Academic Services. Proctor. Thursday/Sunday evenings. Library, Room 3B.
There it is. A time. A place. A doorway into her orbit I didn’t have an hour ago.
My thumb hovers over the email icon beside her name. One tap and I could put myself in her inbox. Ask a question. Pretend I need information. Pretend this is normal.
Hey, I’m on the team; do you know the study hall schedule?
It would be easy. Too easy.
My hand tightens, tape biting into swollen skin. She’s already flinching from ghosts I can’t see. The last thing she needs is another monster breaching her walls in the dark.
I lock the screen instead and toss the phone onto the bed like it burns.
It lands face-down, but I don’t need to see it again. I know the information now. Her name slotted under Academic Services in my head. Her hours. The room number.
A place where she’ll be.
A place I could be.
Not today. Not tomorrow. But the option exists now. A line quietly drawn between us.
Silence used to be peace.
Now it sounds like her absence.
An empty slot where a contact should be. A blank space under Addison, Coach, where her name should live.
I cross to the window and grab the cord of the blackout curtains. I yank them shut, plunging the room into absolute darkness. Closing myself off. The familiar cocoon of black should calm me—no light, no noise, no eyes. Only me and the hum of the building.
But it doesn’t work.
She’s already inside the walls.
Inside the ritual.
The darkness closes in, thick and smothering.
And all I can think is:
She is the break that won’t set.