Beyond the bench 18+

The air inside the bar was a suffocating shroud, a thick, stagnant mix of expensive bourbon and the jagged remains of my pride. I had walked in alone, draped in a loneliness so heavy it felt like a physical weight. My goal was simple: drown in a pool of self-pity and get well and truly trashed. This was the sanctuary that had birthed my ruin. This was the dark wood and amber light where I had first met the man who became my husband…my ex-husband. This bar held the echoes of his first "hello," the ghost of his bended-knee proposal, and the lingering scent of every anniversary we’d celebrated. It was our place, our history, until he decided to incinerate every memory. He hadn’t just cheated; he had ritualistically torn our life apart in this very spot, the night I found him buried deep inside some girl near the bathroom. “Look at yourself. Do you really think any man wants that?” His voice still rang in my ears, cruel and clinical. He’d looked me up and down like I was a stain on the upholstery while the entire club watched the spectacle. “If only you were still as beautiful as you used to be, Elena, I wouldn’t have had to find someone else to wet my dick.” I scoffed at my own reflection in the amber liquid of my glass, disgusted by the pathetic impulse that brought me back here. It was a masochistic curse; no matter how much I hated this place, my feet always seemed to find their way back to the scene of the crime. “You know, ghosts are notoriously bad company.” The voice was like velvet dragged over broken glass, deep, resonant, and instantly recognizable. I froze, my knuckles turning white as I gripped the tumbler. I didn't need to look up to know who had just invaded my space. I had spent three grueling months across a mahogany table from those tailored shoulders, watching those same lips dismantle my dignity and life. Rune Vance. He didn’t bother asking for an invitation. He slid into the booth opposite me, his movements fluid and predatory, yet possessed of a strange, dark grace. He wasn’t wearing his courtroom armor today. The tie was gone, and the top two buttons of his black dress shirt were undone, revealing a hint of a silver chain against his warm, tanned skin. Seeing the snake sitting there, looking comfortable in the ruins of my life, my eyes twitched with a visceral, white-hot hatred. If there was one person I loathed more than my w***e of a husband, it was this cunt. “What are you doing here, Rune? Looking for another innocent woman to drag through hell?” I hissed, every word laced with the venom I’d been bottling up for months. “You didn’t answer my question yesterday,” he said, ignoring my bite. He was referring to the gym. Six months of wallowing in the wreckage had finally pushed me to do something, anything, to feel human again. I hadn’t started training to reclaim my physique for my ex, or to prove I could still be "pretty" for a man. I did it because I needed to rebuild myself from the marrow up. I needed to feel like my body belonged to me again. But the universe had a sick sense of humor; I had barely stepped onto the floor before I spotted this bottom-feeder. We shared a schedule, we shared a space, and I hated every second of it. More than anything, I hated the way he acted like a confidant, like he hadn't been the one to professionally skin me alive in front of a judge. His lack of morality was a special kind of delusion. “I don’t owe you an answer,” I said, my voice low and dangerous, letting the words sink into his thick, arrogant skull. I slid out of the booth, ready to bolt, but I wasn't fast enough. As I turned to leave, his hand shot out, snaring my waist and hauling me backward. Before I could scream, he had maneuvered me into the shadows of the narrow hallway leading to the exits. He pinned me there, his presence overwhelming. “Since you don't want to answer, I’ll give you my professional opinion,” he murmured, his face inches from mine. “You are so f*****g sexy that my c**k gets hard just looking at you.” Before I could process the audacity, he grabbed my hand and, with a shameless smirk, pressed my palm firmly against the heavy, pulsing heat of his crotch. “You’re insane,” I gasped, my skin crawling and burning all at once. I snatched my hand back and, with every ounce of my mounting rage, I slapped him across the face. The crack echoed in the hallway. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t retaliate. He just watched me with those dark, hungry eyes and let out a soft, dark chuckle as I stormed off into the night. My hand was stinging, my heart was hammering, and I refused to acknowledge the treacherous spark of electricity that had just jolted through my veins as I stepped out of the club. “That f*****g snake!” I spat the words into the dark, empty street the moment I burst through the heavy doors of the club. ​The crisp, midnight air slapped my face, hitting my lungs like an electric shock and finally knocking some semblance of sanity back into my head. I was trembling, not from the chill, but from pure, unadulterated fury. My hand was still tingling from the impact of his jaw, and the phantom heat of his skin seemed branded into my palm. ​“This whole place is cursed,” I muttered to myself, wrapping my arms tight around my chest as I hurried toward the main road to hail a ride. “I’m done. I am never setting foot in there again.” ​But deep down, a dark, terrifying truth clawed at my throat: it wasn’t just the bar. The bar was just wood and liquor. The real curse was Rune Vance himself. ​He was a plague tailored specifically to my ruin. It wasn't enough that he had stripped me of my dignity in front of a judge, acting as the merciless weapon my ex-husband hired to destroy me. Now, he was slithering into my personal life, hunting me in the one space I had chosen to rebuild my broken pieces. He was trying to ruin me twice, to take whatever fragile confidence I had left and crush it between his arrogant fingers. ​I stopped under the flickering amber glow of a streetlamp, my jaw clenching as a wave of fierce, stubborn determination washed over me. I had been a victim for far too long. I had let my ex-husband make me feel small, and I had let Rune Vance dictate the terms of my survival in that courtroom. But I was done cowering. ​“I’ll be damned if I let your sly ass ruin me a second time,” I whispered into the night, the vow hardening like concrete in my chest. ​I was going to stay as far away from that terrifying, toxic man as humanly possible. If he went left, I would go right. If he stood near a machine at the gym, I’d walk to the opposite side of the building. I would build an iron wall between us, and I wouldn't let him catch a single glimpse of my weakness again. ​I believed my own promise. I truly thought I could just lock him out. ​What I didn't know then, what I couldn't possibly have guessed as I watched the headlights of my ride approach through the city's mist, was that fate was already laughing at my expense. Rune Vance wasn't a man you could simply walk away from. And the universe had already written a completely different script for my downfall. ~•~