Chapter 10
MAYA
I'm in the supply closet again.
The walls are too close, pressing in from all sides.
Pills dig into my spine: sharp edges, hard plastic bottles jabbing into my skin with each movement.
His hands pin my wrists above my head, fingers like vises, bruising the bone.
His weight crushes the air from my lungs, and I can't breathe, can't move, can't do anything but feel every second of it.
"Stop. Please stop."
My voice doesn't sound like mine. It's small, broken, begging.
He doesn't stop. He never stops.
The fluorescent light above flickers, casting shadows that make his face monstrous. I can smell his cologne mixed with sweat, can feel his breath hot against my neck, can hear him saying things I've spent three months trying to forget.
Just relax. This is what you wanted. Stop making this difficult.
"No—please—"
The door opens.
Lily's there.
Six years old in her hospital gown, the one with the faded dinosaurs on it. Her pigtails are askew, one higher than the other, like they always were. She's watching me with those big eyes, too big for her small face, too knowing.
"You couldn't save me," she says, and her voice echoes wrong.
Her monitor starts beeping. Faster. Faster. The sound fills my head, drowning out everything else.
Then the flatline.
That long, endless scream of a sound that means death, that means failure, that means I wasn't good enough.
The closet dissolves, and I'm in her hospital room, my hands on her tiny chest, doing compressions.
One. Two. Three. But his hands are still on me, still pinning me down even as I'm trying to save her.
Lily's ribs crack under my palms. I feel each one break, hear the snap of bone, know I'm hurting her, but I can't stop because maybe if I just keep going—
"Maya, stop." His voice in my ear, lips brushing my skin. "She's already dead. You killed her."
Lily's eyes are open, staring at nothing. The monitor screams and screams and screams.
"I'm sorry," I'm sobbing, still doing compressions on her lifeless body. "I'm so sorry, Lily. I'm sorry—"
Her small hand reaches up and grabs my wrist. Her grip is impossibly strong.
"It should have been you," she whispers.
The scream tears out of me.
I wake up gasping, hand flying to my mouth to muffle the sound before it fully escapes. A choked sob fights its way up my throat, but I clamp down on it hard, remembering Emma and Chase and Ethan are all asleep down the hall.
My throat is raw like I've been screaming anyway. The guest room is dark except for the streetlight bleeding through the curtains, casting everything in sickly yellow.
I press my hands to my face, trying to ground myself, but I can still feel it: his weight pinning me down, Lily's ribs breaking under my palms, the flatline that won't stop ringing in my ears even though I'm awake now.
The clock on the nightstand glows red, mocking me. 3 a.m.
I need to breathe, need to ground myself. Five things I can see. Four things I can touch. Three things I can hear.
But all I can see is Lily's face, her eyes empty and accusing. All I can feel is his hands bruising my wrists. All I can hear is that monitor flatline playing on a loop in my head.
The blade is in the bathroom, under the sink, waiting.
I told myself I wouldn't, told myself I was strong enough to resist after what happened at the club, after almost cutting, but managing to stop myself.
I'm not strong enough.
My legs carry me to the ensuite before I make a conscious decision to move. The bathroom is cold, the tiles icy under my bare feet, and the shock of it barely registers. I open the cabinet with shaking hands and pull out the hidden bag and unwrap the blade.
I should throw it away, flush it down the toilet, and call someone. Or do literally anything except what I'm about to do.
Instead, I sit on the floor, back against the tub, the porcelain seeping cold through my thin t-shirt. Slowly, I pull up the leg of my sweatpants and press the blade to my inner thigh.
This will help. The pain will quiet everything else, will give me control when I have none, will make the nightmare fade, and the memories blur and the guilt manageable.
The femoral artery runs right here, just beneath the surface of the skin. If I cut deep enough, angled right, I could bleed out in minutes.
It would be fast. Quiet. Everyone's asleep.
They'd find me in the morning. Emma would blame herself. Jackson would—
Jackson.
His face outside the restaurant flashes through my mind. The way he looked at Tyler like he wanted to kill him, the fury in his eyes when he grabbed Tyler's shoulder and hit him. The way he crouched in front of me after, careful not to touch, voice steady when everything else was chaos.
Just breathe. In and out. You're safe.
I press the blade harder and feel the skin start to give, a thin line of red welling up.
Do it. End it. Stop being a burden. Stop pretending you're okay when you're drowning. Stop taking up space in their house, in their lives. Emma doesn't need this. Jackson doesn't need this. Nobody needs you.
The blade bites deeper.
A knock on the door makes me freeze.
"Maya?" Jackson's voice, muffled through the wood. "You okay?"
No, I'm not okay. I'm sitting on a bathroom floor with a blade to my thigh, thinking about how easy it would be just to stop existing, to make all of this someone else's problem instead of mine.
"I'm fine." My voice comes out strangled. "Go away."
The door opens anyway.
Jackson stands in the doorway wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt, hair messy from sleep, eyes alert despite the hour. His gaze goes straight to the blade in my hand, then to the scars covering my thigh, then to the fresh line of blood where I pressed too hard.
He doesn't yell, doesn't panic, doesn't look at me like I'm crazy or broken or beyond help.
He just walks in, closes the door behind him with a quiet click, and sits down on the floor across from me like this is normal, like he does this every day.
"Drop it," he says quietly. "Drop the blade and come here."
"No." My voice cracks, and I hate how weak I sound. "You don't understand—"
"I understand that you're hurting. I understand that you think this helps." His voice is calm, too calm, like he's talking someone off a ledge. "But it doesn't, Maya. It just delays the pain."
"I can't—"
"Yes, you can." He doesn't move closer, doesn't try to take the blade from me. Just sits there, steady and solid. "Drop it. Come here."
"You don't know what it's like." Tears are streaming down my face now, and I can't stop them. "You don't know what's in my head, the nightmares, the memories. I can't make it stop, and this, this makes it stop."
"Tell me." His voice is steady. "Tell me what's in your head. No more pretending. No more hiding. Just tell me the truth."
The dam breaks.
"I was raped." I force the words out. "Three months ago.
My supervisor at the hospital. I'd opened up to him in the break room about Lily, about how I was still struggling with losing her even after all that time.
He acted like he understood, like he cared.
Then he asked me to help him with something in the supply closet after my shift.
" My voice cracks. "He cornered me in there. I told him no, but he didn't stop."
Jackson's jaw clenches, but he doesn't move, doesn't speak, doesn't do anything but listen.
"And I froze. Didn't fight. Didn't scream.
Just let it happen like a pathetic coward while he—" My voice breaks.
"I reported him. Did everything right. Rape kit, police report, told HR everything.
You know what happened? They fired me. Two weeks later.
'Budget cuts.' He kept his job, his office, his fucking life. And I lost everything."
The blade is still in my hand, still pressed to my thigh.
"I lost my job. My apartment. My sense of safety.
I can't walk into a hospital without seeing his face, can't let anyone touch me without freezing up.
Tyler grabbed me, and I couldn't move, couldn't push him away, just froze like I did when…
" I can't finish that sentence. "And Lily.
God, Lily. I couldn't save her. She was six years old, and I was her nurse, and I couldn't save her.
Over a year and I still see her face every time I close my eyes, still hear that flatline, still feel her ribs breaking under my hands. "
The sobs are trying to tear out of my chest, but I keep them quiet, pressed down into whispers.
"It should have been me. I should have died instead of her.
I should have fought back instead of freezing.
I should have been better, stronger, anything other than this useless broken thing that can't even—"
"Maya—"
"No. You wanted the truth? There it is. I'm broken, I'm unfixable, and I don't want to be here anymore. I don't want to keep waking up and pretending and performing and acting like I'm okay when I'm drowning. I'm so tired, Jackson. I'm so fucking tired."
Jackson moves, not toward me but closer, shifting so he's within arm's reach but still not touching.
"Drop the blade," he says again, softer this time, and something in his voice makes my chest ache. "Please. Drop it and come here."
"I can't do this anymore."
"I know. I know you're tired." His voice is steady, solid, the only stable thing in my collapsing world. "But you don't have to pretend with me. Not anymore. No more performing, no more acting like you're fine. Just be honest. Be real. And let me help you."
"You can't help me. Nobody can."
"Let me try." He leans forward. "Please, Maya. Let me try."
Something in his voice breaks through the fog, cuts through the spiral of self-loathing and despair. Some fundamental certainty that maybe, just maybe, I don't have to do this alone.
The blade falls from my hand and hits the tile with a metallic clink that seems too loud in the quiet bathroom.
"Come here, Stardust."