Chapter 2

Zy's POV

I should have stayed in that house and burned it down.

Instead I ran.

My legs carried me down the stairs two at a time, past the front door, into the cold night air that slapped me across the face like it was trying to wake me up. It didn’t work. Nothing could wake me up from what I had just seen.

Ronan on his knees.

Another man’s hands on his hips.

That look on his face when he turned around — not shame, not even real fear — just pure irritation that I had ruined his night.

I made it three blocks before my body finally gave out. I stopped under a flickering streetlight, bent over with my hands on my knees, and tried to breathe. Every breath hurt. My chest felt like someone had reached inside and twisted everything until it tore.

Eight months.

The number kept slamming around my skull.

Eight months of me waiting. Eight months of me saying not yet, I’m not ready, I want it to mean something. Eight months of him kissing my forehead and telling me he could wait, that he loved me for more than that, that I was worth it.

All lies.

My phone started going crazy in my pocket.

I pulled it out with shaking hands.

Ronan.  

Ronan.  

Ronan.  

Ronan.

His name filled the screen like a disease.

I answered on the fifth call because the sound of it ringing was going to make me scream.

“Zy—”

“Don’t.” My voice came out low and dangerous. “Don’t you dare say my name like that.”

“Just let me explain.”

“Explain what? How long you’ve been letting another man fuck you while I sat in your living room like an idiot?”

Silence.

Then, quieter, “It wasn’t like that.”

I laughed. The sound that came out of me didn’t even sound human.

“I stood there and watched, Ronan. I watched him inside you. So don’t stand there and tell me what it wasn’t.”

“You’re making this bigger than it needs to be.”

That did it.

Something in me snapped so cleanly I felt it in my teeth.

“Bigger than it needs to be?” My voice rose and I didn’t care who heard. “I found a ring box in your drawer three weeks ago. I cried in your bathroom because I thought you were going to ask me to marry you. And the whole time you were out there on your knees for somebody else.”

He made a sound like he wanted to argue.

I didn’t let him.

“You told me I was dry. You told me I was naïve. You told me I didn’t understand what a man needs. All because I wouldn’t open my legs for you. And then you went and found a man who would.”

“Zy, stop...”

“No. You stop. Lose my number. Don’t come to my house. Don’t send your little apologies. I don’t want them.”

I hung up, blocked him, and then blocked every other number he could possibly use. My hands were shaking so hard I almost dropped the phone.

I walked the rest of the way home in a fog.

Aunt Molly was in the kitchen when I opened the door. One look at my face and the mug in her hand froze in mid-air.

“Zy?”

I tried to speak and failed. The tears I had been holding finally broke free, ugly and silent at first, then louder. She put the mug down hard and crossed the room in three steps, pulling me into her arms.

“I’ve got you,” she kept saying. “I’ve got you, baby. I’ve got you.”

I told her everything.

Every detail.

The coffee. The unlocked door. The sounds. The way he looked at me when he said it wasn’t cheating because I wouldn’t give him what he needed. The way he stood there with his arms crossed like I was the one who had done something wrong.

When I finished, Molly’s face was pure stone.

“That spineless bastard,” she whispered.

I wiped my face with the sleeve of my hoodie, but the tears kept coming.

“I feel so stupid.”

“You are not stupid.”

“I waited for him, Molly. I saved myself for him. I let him make me feel like there was something wrong with me because I wanted it to be special.”

She grabbed my face with both hands, forcing me to look at her.

“Listen to me. There is nothing wrong with you. He is a liar and a coward. That is not on you.”

I wanted to believe her. I couldn’t. Not yet.

My phone lit up again. This time it was Ivy.

Ivy: I’m outside  

Ivy: Open the door or I’m climbing through the window

Molly went and let her in.

Ivy took one look at me, dropped her bag, and sat on the floor in front of the couch so we were eye level.

“Talk.”

I did. Again. The words came out rawer the second time, like scraping the same wound open.

Ivy listened without interrupting. When I was done she just shook her head slowly.

“I always knew there was something off about him,” she said. “The way he looked at you sometimes… like you were a project he was tired of.”

“Don’t,” I whispered.

“I’m serious. You’re better off.”

“I don’t feel better off. I feel like someone carved me out and left the shell.”

She reached up and squeezed my knee.

“Then we sit in the shell tonight. Tomorrow we start putting you back together.”

Molly made tea neither of us drank. The three of us stayed in the living room until the clock on the wall crawled past midnight. Nobody said much after a while. There was nothing left to say that didn’t hurt.

When Ivy finally left and Molly went to bed, I stayed on the couch in the dark.

The house was quiet enough that I could hear my own heartbeat.

I pulled the key to Ronan’s apartment out of my pocket and held it up in the weak light coming through the window. It looked so small. So ordinary. Hard to believe something this tiny had given me access to eight months of lies.

I closed my fingers around it until the metal dug into my skin.

I hated him.

I hated how much space he still took up in my chest.

I hated that tomorrow I would have to walk on campus and pretend I wasn’t hollowed out.

Most of all I hated the quiet voice in the back of my head that kept whispering the same dangerous thing:

You walked out tonight.

But you left something unfinished in that house.

I curled onto my side on the couch, key still clenched in my fist, and stared into the dark until my eyes burned.

Sleep never came.