Chapter 34 #2
My jaw locked.
“You remember how much you meant to her?”
Nothing showed on my face, but he saw it in my eyes anyway.
“Nothing,” he said flatly.
“You meant nothing, the only thing interesting about you was your cock. If you had died in that bed, she would’ve replaced you without even blinking.”
The words sank into the empty pit in my stomach.
“The only thing you were ever good for,” he continued, like he was carving it out to me instead of throwing it, “was what you could give her.”
My hands curled into fists at my sides and I didn’t even notice it before my nails pressed into my palms.
“That’s what you are,” he said.
“That’s what you’ve always been. So tell me,” he bit out, stepping closer again, “what makes you think your father is any fucking different, huh?”
That was the point where something in me finally turned.
“Like you Zwierek?!” I shot back, it tore out of me before I could stop it.
The silence that followed, fuck, it was instant. I took a single step toward him and saw it hit immediately. Something changed in his face. It wasn’t anger this time. It looked closer to the kind of reaction people have right before they realize a situation is slipping out of their control.
“...I’m sorry,” he said, his voice lower now in a way that felt far more unsettling than if he’d just yelled. He tilted his head, eyes fixed on me. “What the fuck did you just say?”
Everything inside my body collapsed all at once. It was too much, pushing up through my chest like it had been sitting there for years waiting for a crack.
“I haven’t been anything else to you either!” My voice tore on the way out, scraped, broke, came out wrong. “You’re not fucking different!” I shouted and I could feel it now. My eyes burning, vision pulling tight at the edges like my body was trying to shut something down before I could say it.
“You don’t get to stand there and talk about them like you’re better, like you didn’t do the exact same thing to me!”
My breath came out in short, uneven pulls. I dragged air in too fast, like I was trying to outrun something catching up behind me.
“You made me into something that worked for you,” I kept going, words crashing into each other now.
“You knew exactly what to do, when to push, when to pull, when to say just enough to keep me right where you wanted me.” I laughed once, but it sounded wrong and not even close to anything real.
“You made me think you cared,” I said it, and for a split second the words lost some of their force, like something in me almost pulled them back.
Then I pushed them out again with enough venom to make it clear I meant every word.
“You made me think you were trying to fucking protect me.”
My jaw clenched so hard it hurt. I stepped closer without thinking about it.
Close enough now that I could see the small shifts in his face, the way his eyes followed everything, took everything in.
That same look. That same fucking look like he was still reading me, still figuring out how to use whatever I was giving him.
“You’re not better than them,” I said again, but it didn’t come out steady this time. It dragged, dipped in the middle.
“You’re just better at pretending you’re not like them.” Something broke then.
“I saw you as a fucking brother,” I forced out. The sentence came apart in my mouth before I finished it. I swallowed hard, tried to keep going, but the words didn’t line up anymore.
“But you… you,”
My throat locked completely. I opened my mouth again, but nothing came out.
Not even a sound, just air hitting something that wouldn’t move.
I tried again, pushing harder, forcing it.
It felt like hitting a wall inside my own body.
Like something old had found its way back into place and decided for me that I was done speaking.
My hands curled into fists so hard my fingers started to ache, but it didn’t ground me, didn’t fix it.
If anything, it just made it worse, because he could see it.
Of course he could.
Have you ever had that happen, little Ghost?
That moment where you have everything right there, right on the edge of your tongue, and then your body just refuses.
Like it remembers something you don’t want it to remember, like it decides for you that silence is safer.
I hated it. I hated him for seeing it. And I hated myself even more for not being able to push past it.
He didn’t come closer, didn’t reach out.
Nothing. Just that look, wrong on him, like someone had put the wrong expression on the wrong face.
“... that’s not true, Rowan.”
That was it, but it was enough to break something. It came out of nowhere, like my body skipped whatever warning it was supposed to give me. My chest hitched hard, once, like something pushing air out of me and then it just kept happening. Again, again, too fast, no rhythm, no control.
A sound tore out of me. I didn’t even recognize it as mine at first. It was too raw, too exposed.
Like something that had been buried too long and didn’t know how to come out without tearing something open.
I folded in on myself without thinking– shoulder pulling forward, spine curling like I was trying to make myself smaller, disappear into it, hide it. But it didn’t fucking work.
Another sound forced its way out, louder this time, cracked, turning into something that barely resembled a breath by the end of it.
I tried to inhale, but it caught halfway, like something inside my chest just refused.
I sucked in air again, trying harder this time, but it didn’t go anywhere.
My hands came up, fingers pressing hard into my face, dragging down like I could pull myself back together physically if I just…
No. No, nothing held. It spilled. Everything did.
And I hated it. I hated the sound of it, hated how open it felt, how fucking visible it made me.
There was no control left in it, no way to force it back into something smaller and easier to hide. It was just there and he could hear all of it.
Little Ghost, don’t look at me like that. Don’t… no, keep looking. You always do. That’s the thing about you, isn’t it? You don’t leave when it gets like this. You stay, you watch, you take it in like it belongs to you. Fuck. There’s something wrong with you too and I like that more than I should.
Zwierek’s voice reached me eventually, but it didn’t pull me out of it. It just sank into the mess already filling my head. Like it had to push through everything coming out of me just to reach me.
“Rowan… I tried to help you.”
The words hit me and disappeared just as fast, swallowed by everything else tearing through my head at the time.
“It’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted.” I heard it, I know I did.
But it felt distant, like it was happening in another room and I just happened to catch pieces of it through a wall.
Nothing lined up, nothing stayed still. My vision smeared, like someone had dragged a hand across everything I was looking at and ruined the edges.
The outline of him kept shifting whenever I tried to focus on it, my eyes unable to settle on where he was actually standing.
I dropped. My knees hit the ground and the impact should’ve hurt more than it did, but it barely registered. Everything else drowned it out.
I stayed there, hunched forward, one hand braced against the floor, the other clutching at my chest like I could grab hold of whatever was going wrong inside me and force it to slow the fuck down.
It didn’t, it only got worse. My heart slammed against my ribs so hard it felt uneven, like it was skipping something, like it couldn’t keep up with itself anymore.
I tried dragging air back into my lungs, but my body kept fighting me for it. Everything felt wrong. My heartbeat, my thoughts, the room around me, the house we were in, the fucking basement. It was like my whole body had lost track of how to function properly.
Then, for one brief moment, something ugly slipped into my head.
The hope that maybe this would finally be enough to end it.
Everything. The noise, the feeling, the way my body wouldn’t listen anymore, the way my head couldn’t hold onto anything long enough to make sense of it, just stop.
My fingers tightened in my shirt knuckles going white, like I needed something solid to just remind myself I was still there.
I was still trapped in it, and that was the worst part.
Nothing crashed or gave out. It just kept going, second after second, while I sat there unable to pull myself free from it.