Chapter 2

I didn't reply. Instead, I went straight to my contacts and deleted every way I had of reaching him.

Little by little, the apartment emptied. Bastian thought that leaving me hanging long enough would teach me to behave. He had no idea that if he kept it up, I'd eventually stop wanting him altogether.

Black trash bags were piled high in the entryway. While rummaging through a drawer for packing tape, my fingers brushed against an old first-aid kit. I stopped, feeling the layer of dust coating its plastic case.

I'd once been so insecure that I was notorious among our friends for constantly checking up on Bastian. If he came home even an hour late, I'd be too anxious to sleep, calling him over and over from late at night until the early hours of the morning.

Six months ago, determined to cure me of what he considered a terrible habit, Bastian had come up with a set of rules.

It started one night when he missed my calls while entertaining clients. I panicked and called him incessantly, even reaching out to his coworkers when I couldn't get hold of him.

When he came home the next day, his face was dark with anger. Instead of offering an explanation, he called Molly, the new intern at his company, right in front of me.

"Molly, get changed and come downstairs. I'm taking you to a private movie screening."

I frantically tried to stop him, but he shoved me aside, his eyes cold.

"Sydney, call me one more time, and I'll take her to a hotel. If you can't learn to give a man some space, I'll teach you how."

He blocked me for a full twenty-four hours that day.

From there, the punishments only grew worse.

Once, after discovering Molly sitting in his passenger seat, I'd gotten into a furious argument with him. Bastian merely scoffed before leaving me at home with a fever that very night to take Molly camping on a mountaintop.

He even posted a photo of the two of them warming themselves by a fire outside their tent. The caption contained just two words.

[Peace, finally.]

His friends flooded the post with likes, praising him for knowing how to keep his girlfriend in line. They thought his strategy of fighting fire with fire was absolutely brilliant.

It poured that night. My fever climbed to 102.2 degrees, and my entire body ached as though my bones were being crushed. Wrapped in a down jacket, I stood in the pouring rain for half an hour before I finally managed to hail a cab.

At the ER, beneath the harsh white lights, a nurse struggled to find a vein. The needle pierced my skin, sending another stab of pain through me.

With trembling hands, I opened my chat with Bastian, wanting to send him a simple message.

[I feel awful.]

Instead, Molly's latest social media post popped up on my screen.

[Thanks to a certain someone for setting up the tent in the middle of the night. The stars up here are so beautiful.]

She'd tagged a campground on the western outskirts of the city, and in one corner of the photo, I spotted Bastian's familiar watch.

I stared at the single grey check mark on my screen before deleting the words I'd been about to send, one by one.

That was the night I stopped checking up on him.

I no longer asked where he went, who sat in his passenger seat, or who was sending him messages in the middle of the night.

Bastian thought he'd finally trained me to behave. He proudly bragged to everyone about how well his methods had worked, never realizing that if I was no longer afraid of my heart going completely dead, why would I be afraid of losing him?

I tossed the first-aid kit into a trash bag and brushed the dust from my hands.

Looking around, I saw that the closet was empty and the bathroom counter spotless. After five years in this apartment, there was finally no trace of me left anywhere.

A faint smile tugged at my lips as I murmured, "Bastian, thank you for your desensitization therapy. It really worked. I'm cured."

The next morning, I heard the front door unlock just as I finished sealing the last cardboard box with packing tape.

Bastian stepped inside with Molly following close behind. Both stopped in the entryway, momentarily stunned by the sight of four large cardboard boxes stacked neatly in the living room.

After an entire night without a single call from me asking to make up, Bastian had arrived looking somewhat tense. Yet the moment he saw those boxes, the tension visibly drained from his face.