Chapter 5: Fracture
1254 Words
Lily's POV
The hospital discharged me with a bruised jaw, a bottle of painkillers, and two men who couldn't stand to be in the same room. Jax drove me back to campus in silence, one hand tight on the wheel, the other drumming a restless pattern on his knee. He didn't say anything until we reached my dorm.
"I need you to stay away from him."
It wasn't a question. It wasn't even really a request. I looked out the window and said nothing. He took my silence for agreement, but it was far from it. I didn't say anything... not that he'd have listened anyway.
I spent the next two days in my room telling myself I was done.
It wasn't hard to reason through. Drake had pulled me into a bathroom at a party and called it protection. He'd bitten my neck and called it claiming. He'd stood in that hospital doorway and announced ownership of me to my brother like I was something he'd won. And somewhere between all of that I'd let myself believe it meant something good.
It didn't. It couldn't.
I didn't text him. I turned my phone face down and focused on the stack of readings I'd been ignoring for two weeks. Emma brought me coffee without asking and left me alone, which was exactly what I needed. Jax checked in twice a day, morning and evening, like clockwork. I answered every time so he wouldn't worry.
By the third day, I almost believed I was fine. I tried to move on even though the few days I had spent with Drake were the only moments I have ever felt so alive. He was a bad choice. That much was obvious, and I only have myself to blame for my decision.
Then Drake knocked on my dorm room door.
I knew it was him before I opened it. I don't know how. Maybe it has to do with the way he knocked; three sharp raps, no hesitation, the kind that assumed the door would open. Emma was in class. The hallway was quiet. I stood by my side of the door for a long moment before I turned the handle.
He looked like he hadn't slept. Dark circles under his eyes, jaw unshaven, a cut still healing at his cheekbone from where Jax had landed something solid. He was still the best looking person I'd ever seen up close, and I hated myself a little for noticing.
"You didn't text," he said in a raspy voice that made my breath caught.
"I know," I inhaled sharply, hoping he'd just leave me alone.
"I waited three days."
"I know that too." I kept my hand on the door to show that he wasn't welcome. "I think you should go, Drake."
Something moved behind his eyes. Not anger exactly. Something quieter and harder to read. "You're pulling back."
"I'm making a decision. There's a difference."
He was quiet for a moment, studying my face the way he always did, like he could find the real answer underneath whatever I said out loud. "This is about Jax."
"This is about me," I said. "What happened at that party — the bathroom, the hallway, all of it — that wasn't okay. You don't get to decide where I stand. That's not how this works."
"How does it work then?" His voice was even, almost careful. "Because from where I'm standing you ran every time things got real and I came after you every time. That's not me controlling you. That's me not giving up on you."
The words landed somewhere soft and I felt them settle, which made me angrier than anything else he could have said. "Don't do that."
"Do what?"
"Make it sound like something it isn't."
He stepped closer, not touching, just closing the distance until I could see the exact shade of dark in his eyes. "Tell me what it is then. Tell me you don't want this and I'll go."
The problem was I couldn't say it. The words sat right there and I couldn't make them move. He saw it happen, watched me fail to say the thing that would end it, and something in his expression shifted. Not triumph. Something more careful than that.
"I'm not Jax's property," I said finally. "And I'm not yours either."
"I never said you were."
"You didn't have to say it."
He exhaled slowly, looked down at the floor between us, then backed up. "I'll give you space. If that's what you need right now, I'll give it to you. But I'm not disappearing, Lily. That's not something I'm going to do."
I should have told him to anyway. I should have closed the door and gone back to my readings and let the silence stretch long enough to mean something permanent. Instead, I stood there while he held my gaze for one more long moment, then turned and walked back down the hallway without another word.
I closed the door. Leaned my back against it. Pressed my palms flat on the wood and breathed.
I was fine. I was absolutely fine.
My phone buzzed on the desk. I crossed the room and picked it up expecting Jax.
It was a number I didn't recognize.
You should ask Drake about Haley Morrison. Ask him what happened to her after he was done.
I read it twice. Then a third time. The name meant nothing to me but the weight behind it did, that particular way of delivering information that was designed to land like a warning. I set the phone down and picked it up again. Stared at the name.
Haley Morrison.
Jax had said it himself weeks ago. He finds girls like you and he breaks them. I'd pushed it aside because it was easier to push aside, because Drake had said past is past and looked at me like I was different, and I'd wanted to believe it badly enough to let it be enough.
I opened my laptop. Typed the name into the search bar.
The first result was a university article from two years ago. A student conduct story, names partially redacted but not entirely. A complaint filed. A hearing that went nowhere. A girl who'd transferred out mid-semester.
I sat with it for a long time.
When Jax called that evening, I almost told him. The words were right there, the name, the article, the anonymous text, all of it queued up and ready. But something stopped me. If I told Jax he'd go straight at Drake, and we already know how that ended. I needed to understand it myself first. I needed to look Drake in the eye and watch his reaction when I did.
I picked up my phone. Pulled up Drake's number. My thumb hovered.
I put it back down.
Tomorrow. I'd do it tomorrow, when I've had enough sleep to think straight, when my jaw had stopped throbbing, when I felt steady enough to handle whatever answer came back.
I turned off the light and lay in the dark staring at the ceiling.
My phone buzzed again. Same unknown number.
He knows you looked her up. He knows everything you do, Lily. That's who you're dealing with.
I sat up slowly in the dark, pulse climbing, the room suddenly feeling smaller than it had a moment ago.
I reached over and checked that my door was locked.
It was. But my hands were shaking when I pulled them back.
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