How He Broke Me
729 Words
I didn’t remember getting dressed.
I didn’t remember leaving his house or how the rain started halfway through the walk back to campus. All I knew was the sting behind my eyes, the bile rising in my throat, and the ache between my legs that suddenly felt less like pleasure and more like shame.
The images replayed in my head like a horror film I couldn’t look away from.
Adrian.
Another girl.
Pinned. Exposed. Violated.
He said it was out of context.
He said she wasn’t a student.
He said it didn’t matter.
But it did. God, it did.
My dorm door slammed behind me, and I slid to the floor, my knees tucked to my chest like some pathetic cliché. My heart pounded steadily. I could hear it in my ears, drowning out every logical thought.
I had slept with him again.
I let him touch me, kiss me, and say things that felt like the truth while hiding an entire life behind his eyes.
He wasn’t just a professor.
He was a f*****g liar.
By midday, I couldn’t sit still.
I needed answers.
Not from Adrian—because whatever he told me now would sound like poison—but from the only other person who might know something:
Liam.
I hadn’t seen him in days, not since the library. But I knew where he lived—an off-campus apartment, bottom floor, too many plants in the window. I told myself I was going to talk.
I wasn’t sure I believed in myself.
I knocked once.
No answer.
I knocked again, louder this time.
Still nothing.
“Liam?” I called, leaning closer.
That’s when I heard it.
A muffled groan. Low. Pained.
I twisted the handle. It wasn’t locked.
My heart leapt into my throat as I pushed the door open.
He was on the floor.
Blood trickled from the side of his mouth, a split on his eyebrow, knuckles raw like he’d been in a fight—or lost one.
“Liam!” I dropped to my knees beside him. “Jesus, what happened?”
He coughed, wincing as he sat up. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Are you—who did this?”
His eyes met mine, and what I saw there chilled me more than the bruises.
Fear.
“You think I’m the problem,” he said, voice low. “But you don’t know what he’s capable of.”
“I saw the photos, Liam.”
He didn’t blink. “Then you saw the real him.”
“I don’t know what I saw.”
He scoffed, then hissed in pain. “He’s good at that. Making you doubt yourself. Making you think you’re special.”
“Were you the one who sent them?”
His eyes narrowed. “If I had, I’d have done it sooner.”
That didn’t answer the question.
I stood, the sick twist in my stomach tightening. “If you know something, you need to tell me.”
But he just looked away.
“Whatever happened between you two—he’s still your father,” I said.
Liam let out a bitter laugh that turned into a cough. “He stopped being my father the day I found out what he did to her.”
I froze. “To whom?”
He didn’t answer.
He didn’t have to.
I was halfway back to my dorm when my phone buzzed.
No caller ID.
New email.
Subject line: How He Broke Me
I stared at the screen, frozen. My fingers trembled as I clicked.
Inside was a single file. A voice memo.
I hesitated for half a breath before pressing play.
A girl’s voice. Shaky. Young.
“My name was Claire. I was nineteen. I thought I loved him.”
My blood turned to ice.
“He told me I was different. That no one understood him but me.”
“He said I made him feel alive.”
The same words he’d whispered to me.
“But then he changed. He got possessive. Controlling. And when I tried to leave—”
There was a pause. A wet breath. Like she was trying not to cry.
“He made me believe I deserved it.”
The memo ended with a click.
And in the silence that followed, all I could hear was the sound of my heart breaking.
- Writer
