The Girl I Used To Be

   Victoria sat on the cold floor of her studio at 4:17 AM, surrounded by printed screenshots, old articles, and half-finished sketches of Sebastian.

Her hands seemed to refuse to stop shaking. She looked at one of her newest paintings leaning against the wall. It was dark, sensual, and had almost violent strokes of red and black. It had also sold for more money than she used to make in three months.

She barely recognized it.

This wasn’t her.

The old Victoria - the one before Sebastian - would have been horrified by the painting.

She closed her eyes and remembered.

_

She was twenty-one when her parents died. They were two idealistic artists who never compromised on what they believed in. They lived in a tiny studio apartment filled with paint fumes and laughter.

Her mother painted soft, luminous landscapes while her father busied himself with bold abstracts about truth and freedom. They drilled one distinct thing they believed to be true into her. One which they exalted above everything else:

“Art should always tell the truth, even when it is ugly. Never sell your soul for money or for attention. They will leave you empty and deeply dissatisfied.”

After the car accident that had claimed both of their lives, Victoria had stood in their empty studio surrounded by their half-finished canvases and made a promise to herself and to their presence that she still felt in that room.

She would honor them. She would stay clean, stay honest, and most importantly, she would stay in control.

For seven years, she did exactly that.

She worked odd jobs to avoid compromising, painted late into the night, and slowly built a quiet reputation.

Collectors respected her because her work felt pure and untainted by the drive for materialistic gains. She turned down big commercial deals that would have catapulted her a long time ago into the elite class because they felt dishonest.

She never slept with anyone in the industry and she made sure that she never compromised.

She was proud of that girl.

That girl would never have let a man fuck her on a grand piano or bend her over a restaurant desk, she thought to herself. That girl would never have touched herself while thinking about a dangerous man’s cock. For heck's sake, even, that girl would not be making sketches of the said man's erect cock. 

But that girl had never met Sebastian Montez.

Victoria hugged her knees to her chest and cried quietly.

She missed that version of herself.

The version who believed in beauty and truth, the version who could spend twelve hours straight on one painting because it mattered to her more than even eating sometimes. The version who didn’t lie awake at night wondering if the man that she was falling hopelessly in love with had destroyed someone’s life to get to the top.

Her phone sat on the floor beside her.

Lily Carter’s number was still saved from that terrifying call.

Just one more call, she thought. One conversation is all she needed. And maybe she could get real answers.

Or maybe Lily would try to destroy her too.

Victoria picked up her phone with trembling fingers. She opened her gallery and stared at the photos she had secretly taken from Sebastian’s desk - the emails, the photo of him and Lily in bed, the note saying “Problem Solved” over Marco Vale’s face.

She had evidence, not allegations. 

Real evidence.

And yet, she still wanted him. Even now, after everything, her body remembered how safe she felt in his arms.

She thought of how alive he made her feel and how no one had ever made her come the way he did.

Not even close. 

She was disgusted with herself. The old Victoria would have already gone to the police. Or at least to a journalist.

The new Victoria was sitting on her studio floor, thighs still sticky from Sebastian’s cum, wondering if she could live with the truth if it meant she could keep him.

Her phone buzzed.

Sebastian: I know you’re scared. But you don’t have to be. Come back to me tomorrow. Let me remind you how good we are together.

Victoria stared at the message until the screen went dark.

She thought about her mother’s gentle voice saying,

“Never let anyone dim your light, my love.”

She thought about Sebastian’s dark voice growling,

“This pussy is mine.”

She curled into a ball on the floor and whispered to the empty studio:

“What have you done to me?”

The girl she used to be was quietly disappearing.

And the most terrifying thing about it all to her was that she wasn’t sure she even wanted to save her.