Kai
The door doesn’t stand a chance. I shove it open so hard the frame rattles, the wood slamming against the wall like a gunshot.
She’s on her bed, startled, eyes wide like I’ve just torn into her nightmares.
Good.
Because I am her nightmare.
Rage boils in me, blistering hot, with no space left to think, no space left for restraint. I’m across the room before she can draw a breath, my hand snapping around her throat, pinning her back against the headboard with a crack that makes the whole bed shudder.
Her mouth opens, but no sound makes it out — not with my fingers squeezing, not with my weight bearing down.
“Lie to me again,” I snarl, my forehead pressed to hers, my breath hitting her lips, “and I’ll carve the truth out of you myself.”
Her pulse beats frantically under my palm, her body trembling against me. I see every flicker of fear, every flash of shame, every drop of betrayal I feel mirrored in her eyes.
“You think you can fuck with me, Scar? Smile pretty, sell me scraps, then run back to him?” My voice is all gravel and venom, my grip tightening until she claws weakly at my wrist. “You think I don’t know?”
Her lips part, but it’s only a gasp, a strangled whimper against my hand. I drink it in like it’s proof. Proof she’s mine. Proof she can’t run.
I slam her harder into the headboard, rage vibrating through me.
“Say it. Say his fucking name. Say you gave yourself to him.”
The door slams against the wall so hard the frame shakes, and she jerks upright in bed, eyes wide like she’s already guilty. Like she knows.
I’m on her before she breathes my name. My hand clamps her throat, not gentle this time, not restraint — punishment. Her back slams into the headboard, the entire bed frame rattling.
“You think I don’t see it?” I spat the words ripping out of me raw. “You think I don’t fucking know?”
Her nails claw at my wrist, her lips parting, strangled sobs spilling through the squeeze of my hand. “Kai—”
“Don’t.” I slam her harder into the wood, teeth gritted, veins splitting hot under my skin. “Don’t lie to me again. You want him, don’t you? You fucking want Tyler.”
Her tears streak fast, soaking my thumb where it digs into her pulse. “No! Please, it’s not—”
“Say it!” My roar cracks the air between us, spit flying, rage dripping down my tongue. “Tell me you weren’t with him. Tell me you weren’t giving him those looks, those filthy little smiles you save for me. TELL ME, SCAR.”
She sobs so hard her body convulses, her voice a broken rasp. “I swear—I swear I wasn’t—”
“LIAR.” My fist slams the headboard right by her face, wood splintering under my knuckles, pain shooting up my arm. It only feeds the fire. My grip on her throat tightens; her legs thrash under me.
“You think you can play me? Think you can crawl into my bed, beg for me, and then run to him?” My face presses against hers, sweat and fury dripping onto her skin. “You’re mine. Do you hear me? MINE. And if I find out he touched you—”
Her scream rips out under the choke, wet and broken. “He didn’t! Kai, please, I didn’t—I didn’t!”
I shake her by the throat, her head knocking against the wall. Her sobs tear through me, but I can’t stop. Rage has me by the bones, dragging me deeper.
“I’ll kill him. I’ll put his blood all over these hands if he even looks at you. So tell me the truth, Scar. Tell me before I make you.”
Her nails claw at my wrist, her sobs splintering the air as I pin her to the wall. Her eyes are wide, wet, pleading—but I don’t let go. I can’t.
“Stop lying to me, Scar,” I snarl, my grip tightening. “You think I don’t see it? You think I don’t fucking know when you’re hiding something?”
She shakes her head frantically, the words choking out between broken breaths.
“I—Kai—please, I wasn’t with him, I swear.”
My chest heaves, every muscle strung tight with fury. “Then what the fuck is it? What are you keeping from me?”
And then it breaks out of her, a scream so desperate it cracks:
“He texted me, okay?!”
The room stills. The only sound is her ragged breathing against my hand. My blood runs cold.
I lean closer, eyes boring into hers, my voice low, venomous. “Tyler… texted you.”
Her whole body trembles, but she nods, sobbing harder.
“I didn’t — I didn’t answer, Kai, I swear. I didn’t see him. It’s just messages. That’s all.”
Her words shake, half-truths dripping from her tongue, and I can feel her pulse racing under my fingers.
“Show me,” I growl, the demand slicing between us like a blade. “Every fucking word.”
Her nod is frantic, her sobs raw, but when I growl for the phone she freezes.
“I—I can’t,” she whispers, voice cracking. “It’s gone. I deleted them.”
My grip tightens on her jaw, forcing her to look at me. “Deleted?” The word scrapes out of me, sharp and poisoned. “You’re telling me he texts you, and instead of showing me, you fucking delete it?”
Her tears spill faster, and she shakes her head, desperate. “I didn’t want you to get mad, Kai. I didn’t want—”
I slam my palm against the wall beside her head, my face inches from hers. “Too late for that, Scar. Way too fucking late.”
Her lips tremble, searching for an excuse, something to calm me down, but all I see is guilt swimming in her eyes.
“You think I’m stupid?” I spit, my chest heaving. “You think I don’t know you’re hiding more? Tell me, Scar. Tell me the whole fucking truth before I lose what little control I’ve got left.”
She bites her lip so hard I see the blood, shaking her head again, whispering over and over—
“There’s nothing else, there’s nothing else…”
I shove back from the wall, pacing, every nerve in my body screaming. The lie is written all over her face, yet she clings to it as if it will save her.
My fists clench, my throat raw with fury. “Fine. Keep your little secrets. But understand this—” I swing back toward her, my voice dropping to a dark, dangerous whisper.
“If I find out you’re lying again, Scar… I swear to God, I’ll make sure you never speak his name again. Ever.”
She’s still muttering the lie, shaking her head like a little doll come undone, and every second of it is gasoline in my blood. I stalk back toward her, my shadow swallowing her whole, my hand catching her throat again, not squeezing—just enough to remind her I could.
“Look me in the eyes and say it again,” I whisper, my lips brushing her ear. “Say there’s nothing else, Scar. Lie to me one more time.”
Her lashes are wet, her breath trembling. “There’s nothing—”
Bzzz.
The sound slices through the air between us. We both freeze.
I turn my head, slow, predator-calm, toward the glow lighting up her nightstand.
Another buzz. The phone lights again, face down, but the screen betrays her with Tyler’s name in bold white letters.
Her whole body jolts, a strangled noise clawing out of her throat as I let go of her neck and reach past her. She scrambles to block me, but I shove her aside with a sharp jerk of my shoulder and snatch the phone up.
One glance. That’s all it takes.
The words burn like acid across the screen:
“You think you can ignore me? I’ll remind you how good my hands felt on you.”
My breath shatters. My knuckles whiten around the phone until the case creaks.
Behind me, she chokes out, “Kai, please—”
But I’m already shaking, already breaking, the red mist crawling up the back of my skull.
The screen blurs as my vision goes white. His hands.
I don’t even realise I’ve roared until the sound tears my throat raw.
I whip around, slam the phone down so hard on the dresser it skids and cracks, and I’m on her—shoving her back into the wall, my hand fisting her hair, jerking her chin up so she can’t hide.
“What the fuck does he mean—” my voice is a snarl, spitting through my teeth — “his hands on you?”
Her eyes are wide, drenched, her mouth working but no words coming out fast enough.
“Scarlett.” I slam my palm flat beside her head, the plaster shaking. “Tell me. Now. Because if you don’t—” I drag her closer by the hair, forehead crashing to hers, breath shaking with pure fury, “—I swear to God, I will hunt him down blind. I’ll carve the truth out of his fucking throat.”
She’s trembling so hard I can feel it vibrate into my chest, her lips quivering, and still she stalls.
“Say it,” I growl, shoving harder, my other hand clamping her jaw. “Say what he did. Tell me what the fuck he touched.”
Her lips move soundlessly at first, her breath caught on sobs that rip right through me. My grip tightens on her jaw until she’s forced to look me dead in the eye.
And then it comes. Shattered. Small.
“He touched me, Kai.”
Everything inside me stops—only to detonate harder.
“Where.” The word rips out of me, not a question but a demand, a death sentence.
Her face crumples, and her whole body shakes as she whispers, “My thigh. Up my leg. I told him no—Kai, I told him to stop—”
That’s it. That’s all I need.
The red haze drops so heavy I can taste blood. My hand slips from her jaw to her throat, squeezing—not to choke, but to keep her right here while my other fist slams into the wall beside her head, plaster cracking under my knuckles.
“You let me think it was nothing.” My voice is jagged, almost unrecognisable, breaking apart as it tears out of me.
“All this fucking time, Scar, you lied. You let me sit there while that motherfucker—” My throat closes.
I can’t finish. I drag in a breath sharp enough to shred my lungs.
“He put his hands on you and you think I’m just going to breathe through it? ”
Her tears are hot against my thumb. She shakes her head, broken, whispering, “Please don’t, Kai, don’t—”
But I’m already gone. Already picturing Tyler’s throat under my hands. Already deciding how slow I’ll make him scream.
“Where, Scar.” My voice is nothing but ground glass. “Say it. Every fucking inch. Make me hear it.”
Her sob catches, and for a moment I think she’ll stay silent. But then—broken, trembling—her hand drops, guiding mine, forcing me to feel.
“Here,” she whispers, dragging my fingers across the inside of her thigh. “In the cinema. While everyone laughed at the movie, he—” Her breath splits into a sob. “He shoved his hand up, Kai, he wouldn’t stop. I told him no, and he just—”
I rip my hand back like she’s burned me.
The cinema.
That night.
The night she came home with her mascara streaked, the night she couldn’t even look at me, the night she begged me—please, replace it, make me feel something else.
It hits me like a blade through the ribs.
My chest caves, my vision going white at the edges as it all locks into place. She wasn’t just desperate. She wasn’t just broken. She was running away from him. And I—fuck—I let her crawl onto me, I let her beg, I made it worse.
“You cried,” I choke, more to myself than to her. “That night—you came home, and you were fucking shaking. And I thought—I thought it was me. But it was him. He did that.”
Her eyes squeeze shut, more tears spilling, and I hear the knife twist inside me when she whispers, “You’re the reason I wanted it, Kai. You’re the reason I begged. After him, all I could think was—if it has to be someone, let it be you. At least, you.”
The words gut me.
I stagger back a step, my knuckles pressed to my mouth as if I can physically hold myself together. My lungs won’t fill, my heart’s tearing itself apart trying to climb out of my chest.
Because I wanted her broken. I wanted her begging. And now I know—I was her bandage, her way to claw the rot out of her skin.
And I’m the one who put the stain deeper.
The second she whispers it—the cinema—I’m not standing anymore. I am sinking and sliding down the wall as if someone ripped my bones out. My chest won’t work, my lungs are clawing at nothing, and my fists are dripping with blood from hitting plaster, but I can’t even feel it.
Scar’s still crying, her voice so small it guts me. And all I can hear underneath it is my own roar inside my skull—you were supposed to protect her.
I press my hands over my face, digging my nails into my skin hard enough to draw blood, because I can’t look at her. I can’t fucking look at her knowing I touched her after—knowing she begged me to erase him, and I didn’t see it, I didn’t see her.
“Scar…” My voice breaks open, torn and useless.
“Jesus fuck—I let you down. I let him touch you, and then I—” I choke, can’t even finish the thought.
My head tips back against the wall, tears burning down my temples, soaking into my hairline.
“I should’ve known. I should’ve ripped him apart the second his eyes landed on you. ”
She reaches for me, fingertips brushing my wrist like she doesn’t care about the blood or the ruin. And that’s what finally kills me. That she still reaches.
I grab her hand and press it to my chest, right over the heart that feels like it’s detonating. “You’re everything, Scar. You don’t understand. You are fucking everything. And I failed you.”
My body shakes so hard it feels like I might split open. I’m whispering it over and over, a prayer and a curse against her skin. “I failed you. I failed you.”
Her fingers press harder against my chest, right over the spot that won’t stop burning, and then her other hand is on my face.
She doesn’t hesitate; she doesn’t flinch from the mess I’ve made of myself.
Her thumbs swipe at my cheeks like she can erase the tears, like she can put me back together when I’m the one who broke her first.
“Stop,” she whispers, and it shreds me worse than any scream. “You didn’t fail me, Kai.”
The words barely scrape out of her throat, but they land like fire. My head shakes hard, violently, because she’s wrong, she has to be wrong, and I can’t breathe with the weight of it.
But then she’s closer. She kneels between my knees, and then she presses her forehead against mine, dragging me down. Her scent in my lungs, her breath against my lips. Her voice breaks as she says, “You didn’t fail me. You’re the only reason I can still stand.”
My whole body jerks, as if those words hit a live wire straight through me. My hands come up, trembling, and I cup her face even though I don’t deserve to touch her. My blood stains her jaw, and she doesn’t pull away. She leans into me.
“I’m not strong without you,” she says, softer now, like it’s a confession. “So stop trying to push me away.”
I can’t even fight it. Not when she’s looking at me like that. Not when she’s giving me something I swore I’d never deserve. My forehead drops to her shoulder, and I breathe her in like she’s oxygen, like she’s the only thing keeping me alive.
My voice cracks open on a whisper, raw and desperate: “Then don’t leave me, Scar. Don’t ever fucking leave me.”
And when she nods—when she presses her lips against my temple like a promise—I swear I feel my shattered heart try to stitch itself back together in her hands.