The mark on my neck glows faintly in the bathroom mirror when I tilt my head, and in certain light it pulses in rhythm with the double heartbeat in my chest – Knox’s heartbeat, louder, more present since last night, a permanent broadcast signal that I can’t turn off and don’t want to.Knox wants the mark visible. He said it this morning with his mouth against my throat and his hand between my legs and the casual authority of a man issuing a dress code: “No turtlenecks today.”I cover it for my mom because there are limits to my self-destruction that even I haven’t crossed yet, but on campus the collar of my shirt sits low enough that anyone looking can see the silvered scar tissue and the faint golden shimmer underneath, and people are looking.Whispers follow me across the quad like a weather system. Two girls in my morning lecture stare at my neck and then at each other and then at their phones, and I can feel the gossip propagating in real time.At The Grind House, Theo sits at his
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