Chapter 13 Meltdown
Meltdown
Four weeks left, and the careful balance we'd built was starting to crack. Not between us—that had solidified into something unbreakable the day he'd fed me from a bottle while claiming me completely. But inside me, where Lilah's ghost still rattled her chains against Bunny's soft edges.
I woke angry. Not the performative anger I'd wielded like a weapon in early weeks, but something deeper. Older. The kind of rage that had lived in my bones since childhood, when I'd learned that being good meant being invisible and being difficult meant being seen.
"Good morning, Bunny." The AI's voice scraped against raw nerves. "Dr. Mire will arrive—"
"Shut up!" I hurled Mr. Hoppy at the nearest speaker, watching the stuffed rabbit bounce harmlessly off pink walls. "Just shut up!"
The AI went quiet, probably alerting Gabriel to my mood. Good. Let him come. Let him see what happened when his perfect conditioning met the parts of me too broken to fix.
I destroyed the morning outfit—a white sundress with tiny flowers that made me look like someone's corrupted garden party.
Ripped it down the middle, threw the pieces at the vanity mirror.
The reflection there wasn't Bunny, sweet and compliant.
It was something feral, wounded, dangerous to myself more than anyone else.
When Gabriel entered, I was standing in the middle of fabric carnage, wearing only the collar and fury.
"Bad morning?" His tone was carefully neutral, but I caught the assessment in his eyes. Cataloguing the damage, the defensive stance, the way my hands had curled into fists.
"Fuck your morning." The words came out raw. "Fuck your protocols. Fuck this room. Fuck everything about this place that makes me feel—"
"Feel what?"
"EVERYTHING!" The scream tore from somewhere deep, primal. "I can't—I can't breathe. Can't think. Can't remember who I was before you crawled inside my head and rearranged everything."
"You remember," he said calmly, not moving from the doorway. "You just don't want to. Because who you were before was miserable."
"At least she was MINE!" I grabbed the vanity chair, hefted it with strength born of rage. "At least I knew where I ended and the world began. Now I'm just—just—"
"Just what?"
Instead of answering, I threw the chair. He sidestepped easily, letting it crash into the wall behind him. The violence felt good, necessary, like lancing a wound that had been festering.
"There she is," he murmured. "The angry girl who thinks destruction equals control."
"Don't." I looked for something else to throw, settled on the books from the shelf. "Don't analyze me right now. Don't you fucking dare stand there in your perfect control and—"
A book caught him in the shoulder. He didn't flinch.
"You done?"
"No!" Another book, this one missing entirely. "I'm not done. I'm never done. There's always more anger, more hurt, more everything just waiting to explode and you—you made it worse. Made me feel it all instead of keeping it locked away where it belonged."
"Where it was poisoning you."
"Maybe I liked being poisoned!" I was out of books, moved on to pillows. "Maybe slow death was better than this—this raw nerve ending you've turned me into."
"You don't mean that."
"Don't tell me what I mean!" The scream came with tears now, hot and furious. "You don't get to decide everything. Don't get to reach inside and flip switches and then act surprised when the lights burn too bright."
I rushed him, not sure if I meant to hit him or hold him or some impossible combination. He caught my wrists easily, used my momentum to spin me, back pressed to his chest while I thrashed.
"Let me go!"
"No."
"I'll scream."
"You're already screaming."
"I'll—I'll—" The threats tangled with sobs. "I'll disappear. Go so far inside you'll never find me again. Become nothing, nobody, just empty spaces where a person used to be."
"Try it." His voice was calm against my ear, arms restraining without hurting. "Go ahead. Disappear. I'll wait."
I went limp, hoping to catch him off guard, but he just adjusted his hold. Supporting now instead of restraining, though I was still trapped.
"I hate this," I whispered.
"Hate what?"
"Feeling. You made me feel everything and now I can't stop. Can't go back to numb. Can't find the quiet spaces between heartbeats where nothing hurt."
"Because those spaces were killing you."
"Maybe I wanted to die."
His arms tightened. "No. You wanted to live. Just didn't know how. Still don't, which is why you're destroying things instead of asking for help."
"I don't need help. I need—I need—"
"What do you need?"
"I DON'T KNOW!"
The admission broke something. I thrashed again, wild and desperate, but he held steady. An anchor in my storm, unmoved by the violence of my dissolution.
"I know what you need," he said when I finally stilled, exhausted. "But you're too deep in your spiral to hear it. So we're going to reset."
"Reset?"
Without warning, he lifted me, carrying my naked form toward his bathroom. I'd been in there once before, all black marble and luxury. But this time he headed straight for the shower, turning it on full blast.
Cold.
The water hit like ice needles, shocking a scream from my throat. I tried to escape but he held me under the spray, both of us getting soaked, his clothes plastering to his body while I shivered and cursed.
"Stop! It's freezing!"
"Good. Maybe it'll cool down that overheated brain." He adjusted his grip, making sure the water hit every inch of me. "Wash away whatever demon you're fighting."
"I'm fighting YOU!"
"No." He turned me to face him, water streaming between us. "You're fighting yourself. The part that wants to trust battling the part that thinks trust equals death. The soft parts declaring war on the sharp edges. I'm just standing here, getting wet."
"I hate you."
"You love me." Said with such certainty. "And that's what's really driving you crazy. That you love someone who sees every broken piece and doesn't look away."
"Shut up."
"You love me and you don't know what to do with it. Because love has always meant loss in your experience. Meant being left. Meant not being enough."
"SHUT UP!"
I fought harder but the cold had sapped my strength. Could only beat weakly at his chest while he held me under water that felt like punishment and baptism combined.
"But I'm not leaving," he continued relentlessly. "Not going anywhere. Which means you have to figure out how to be loved without destroying it. How to be held without fighting. How to be yours AND mine without losing either part."
The fight went out of me all at once. I sagged against him, letting the cold water wash away the rage, the fear, the terrible certainty that I was too broken for even him to fix.
"There we go," he murmured, reaching to adjust the temperature. The water warmed gradually, like mercy after judgment. "Let it out. Let it all go."
I cried then. Not the angry tears of destruction but something deeper. Grieving, maybe. For the girl who'd thought numbness meant safety. For all the years of being half-alive. For the terror of being fully present now, with nowhere to hide.
He held me through it, soaked clothes and steady arms. When the tears finally stopped, he turned off the water and wrapped me in a towel that probably cost more than my entire former wardrobe.
"Better?"
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
"Good. Now—" He pointed to the floor. "Crawl."
"What?"
"You destroyed your room. Threw furniture. Attacked me." His tone had shifted to something darker. "There are consequences. So crawl. From here to my bed. Show me you remember how to be good."
"I can't—"
"You can. You will. Because despite that impressive tantrum, you're still mine. Still wearing my collar. Still the girl who begs so pretty when she wants something."
My legs felt too shaky to walk anyway. I dropped to my knees, then hands, the plush carpet soft against my palms. The towel fell away but I didn't reach for it.
Just started crawling, aware of his eyes on me.
Of how I must look—wet hair streaming, skin pink from cold and emotion, moving on all fours like an animal.
The distance felt endless. Each movement reminded me of what I was, what I'd become. Not the angry girl throwing chairs but the one who'd chosen this. Who'd begged for exactly this kind of control when the world felt too big to navigate alone.
I reached the bed and stopped, unsure what came next. Afraid to look up. Afraid to see disappointment or worse, clinical distance.
"Up on the bed. Face down."
I climbed up shakily, pressing my face into sheets that smelled like him. Like us. Like all the nights I'd spent here learning how submission felt like coming home.
"I'm sorry," I whispered into expensive cotton.
"For what?" The bed dipped as he sat beside me.
"For—for losing it. For throwing things. For being too much."
"You're never too much." His hand found my hair, still wet from the shower. "Intense, yes. Complicated, absolutely. But never too much. Not for me."
"I couldn't stop." The words came muffled. "Once I started feeling angry, it just kept building. Like I'd opened a door I couldn't close."
"Because you've been keeping it locked for years. Maybe decades." His hand moved to my back, tracing patterns that soothed. "All that rage at a world that hurt you. At yourself for not being stronger. At me for making you feel it."
"I'm scared," I admitted. "Scared there's more. More anger, more hurt, more everything just waiting to explode."
"There probably is." Matter-of-fact, not minimizing. "And when it comes, we'll handle it. With cold showers or warm baths. With control or freedom. With whatever you need to survive the feeling without drowning in it."
"What if I hurt you? Really hurt you?"
"You won't."
"How do you know?"