Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
-Thalia-
His apartment greets me with a peculiar blend of scents. The sharp tang of cleaning supplies layered over stale air, the remnants of cologne, and something fried.
“Shoes off at the door,” he instructs, and though the consequences of this ritual feel strange, I comply. Before I can think too much about it, he pulls me close.
His lips capture mine unexpectedly, too sure, too fast. It’s a kiss that borders the line between eagerness and aggression.
His hands grip my body with a familiarity that makes my skin crawl, like he’s done this before.
My back hits the kitchen counter, and I remind myself it’s just a kiss, just something new.
But then he lifts me effortlessly and carries me down the dimly lit hallway.
The bedroom door clicks shut behind us with a finality that sends shivers prickling down my arms. The mattress dips as he lowers me, and the room tilts.
His weight presses against me abruptly, crushing.
He kisses me harder, rougher, the kind of kiss that feels less like affection and more like a command, leaving no room for my desires or feelings.
My chest tightens. The air forcefully rushes out of me under his weight, as if he believes I belong beneath him.
He sets the rules without saying them—where my arms go, how still I should be, what tone he expects when I answer.
Every time I open my mouth, his fingers tighten; my voice is no longer mine to use freely.
Something in me fractures. I freeze, the way small animals do when a shadow crosses their path. He doesn’t notice, or maybe he does and simply doesn’t care. A palm at my throat, scarcely bearing down, just enough to say, ‘I am heavier and I take what I want.’
The room loses corners. My belt clinks faintly.
Denim scrapes down my legs. I tell myself to cooperate, to make every second pass faster.
The ceiling fan ticks a slow rhythm above us.
I cling to small, dumb details—the scratch of the comforter against my legs, the smell of detergent, the way dust floats in the stripe of light across the dresser—because I cannot hold the larger shape of this moment without breaking.
He is all weight and certainty. I am quiet.
I fold myself into the smallest version possible and count.
Five breaths, then ten, then thirty, and then I lose track and start again.
When I flinch, he laughs under his breath like I’ve told a joke for him.
My wrists burn where he pins them. He tells me to be good.
I nod because ‘no’ is useless here. I nod because I want to leave this room alive.
I picture the front door. I picture my keys.
I picture the exact path from this bed to the kitchen to my bag to my phone.
Survive now. Think later. Time becomes slippery.
My mind clings to anything but his weight.
If I make myself small, if I go quiet, maybe it will end.
“Turn over,” he commands, his voice sharp and authoritative.
Something inside me fractures. My brain races.
This isn’t a date anymore. This isn’t what I agreed to.
But his hand finds its way to my throat again, squeezing just enough to remind me of his strength, his tendency to dominate.
I stare blankly at the wall, mentally tallying the imperfections in the paint: a chipped spot in the plaster, a long scratch on the headboard.
Maybe if I count them, the moment will pass quicker.
If I do what he wants, perhaps he’ll stop. Maybe, just maybe, I can get home.
Time slips and catches. The air tastes metallic.
The bed frame knocks a small, steady rhythm into the wall like a clock counting in a language I can’t translate.
The comforter’s threads scrape my skin; a corner tag brushes my wrist again and again until it’s all I can feel.
I try to make my body disappear, to fold it down to breath and bone and silence.
He talks while he moves; ordinary words cut into something ugly.
Instructions. Corrections. That almost-bored tone, like he’s tidying a room.
The sound of his breath in my ear turns the air thick, and the world narrows to heaviness and heat and the bright, wrong knowledge that I am not steering any of this.
An unsettling calm settles over me as my body obeys, even while my mind continues to scream a resounding ’no.
’ His breath is uncomfortably warm against my ear.
I fixate on the ceiling, concentrating on the rhythm of the spinning fan blades, the beats between his sentences, the seconds I can hold a breath before the panic demands air.
I press my teeth together until my jaw aches so I won’t beg.
I go still. Smaller. Quieter. Anything that could distract me from the weight of his body, the smell of sweat, and the oppressive pressure that threatens to split me apart.
My body feels foreign, an object, a prop in someone else’s narrative. His words slice through the stillness, poisonous and sharp.
“You wanted this, didn’t you?”
A flicker of anger ignites within me, fragile but undeniably alive. No, I didn’t. I never did. But my voice is locked in my throat, a prisoner of fear.
A part of me watches from above; it’s always above—still, distant, clinical.
He is heavy. You are pinned. The door is far.
You have no car. This voice keeps inventory while another voice, mine, goes hoarse, insisting none of this is right.
A third voice, the cruelest, wants to bargain.
If you say please, he’ll be gentle. If you don’t make him mad, he’ll stop.
Don’t make him mad. Don’t make him mad.
The mattress creaks. The wall thuds. His fingers bite crescents into my wrists. I can feel the shape of my heartbeat in places that have nothing to do with a heart.
Then, as if it were a perfectly ordinary decision, everything shifts.
A command becomes a shove, becomes a weight that crushes the air right out of me.
The room goes soundless and loud at once.
My skin doesn’t feel like mine. He tells me I’m being good.
He tells me what I am to him. He laughs.
He sounds pleased with himself. He sounds like he’s grading a paper.
I coil inward until there is only a string of facts I can stand to think of.
The fan ticks every three seconds; the sheet smells like detergent.
If I keep breathing, time must move; if time moves, this ends.
When it does end, it doesn’t feel like an end.
It feels like a door slamming in another part of the apartment.
He exhales like he’s finished something and steps away, leaving the air loud with my heartbeat.
I pull the sheet over my hips because it’s the only thing I can control.
As he adjusts, he says something like, “That’s better.
” The next second, I’m not a person in a bed but a person being guided down a hall like I might get lost in his small home.
The next moment drags me down further as I find myself huddled on the couch.
Damian drapes an arm around me, pulling me close, as if everything is perfectly normal, like we’re a picture-perfect couple relaxing after a night out.
His tone is nonchalant, almost bored, as if his actions in the bedroom were merely a casual interruption to our evening.
I sit here in silence, my eyes glued to the muted TV flickering across the room, the world blurring at the edges while I feel rooted in a reality I desperately want to escape.
He smells like soap and something metallic.
My cheek is trapped against the rough knit of his shirt.
“I like you like this,” he murmurs, a hand spanning my waist. “Quiet.”
My body is here, but my mind floats somewhere above, detached, like I’m watching another girl sit in this place, another girl tucked neatly under a stranger’s arm.
Every twitch of his hand sends a jolt of fear through me.
He tells me to relax, but every time his hand moves, my lungs seize.
I wish I could simply vanish into the cushions of the couch, slip between the seams into oblivion, and never come back.
But I can’t move. He ensures that with an easy squeeze at my hip and a warning stroke along my throat that pretends to be tender but lands like a threat.
He laughs at a joke only he can hear. He calls me good when I don’t speak.
He adjusts me to face him on the couch, which is really just a narrow stage where he directs every angle. My spine curves to fit the space he leaves me; my knees tuck because he pushes them where he wants them.
“You’re so good when you listen,” he murmurs.
“So calm.” The words sink into me, heavy and sharp all at once.
I stare at the TV as the glow slides over us like water.
He keeps up a low commentary in my ear—what a good girl I am, how sweet, soft, and quiet—each word dropping like a stone into a pond I’m trying not to drown in.
He tells me I’m beautiful, then that I’m lucky, then that I should be grateful.
Each word lands heavier than the last. He likes to measure my stillness with his palm to test how much weight the moment will bear before it cracks.
My pulse hammers against his fingers when they circle my throat—light, then firmer, then light again, teaching me the shape of silence.
It’s a rhythm he’s learning, a silence he’s tuning to perfection.
My breath stutters. My pulse stumbles against his fingers, betraying every fear I’m trying to hide.