035
1043 Words
~Iris
I lay awake staring at the ceiling, counting the cracks like they might rearrange themselves into answers if I looked long enough.
They didn’t.
The bond was still there, quiet now, like an old bruise you forget about until you roll the wrong way. It pulsed beneath my ribs, dull and aching, a reminder I didn’t ask for. A reminder of a man who had walked into my life like fate and walked out like it meant nothing.
I turned onto my side, curling inward.
At least before him, I knew who I was.
That thought hit me harder than the video.
Before Alpha Duncan, my world had been simple in one crucial way. I had loved women. Fully. Confidently. Without shame or confusion twisting my insides into knots. I hadn’t doubted myself every time my heart raced or my body reacted. I hadn’t lain awake wondering if I’d been rewritten into something unrecognizable.
I had been a lesbian.
And I had been sure.
Now?
Now I felt fractured. Like parts of me were arguing in the dark, none of them willing to win.
I reached for my phone, scrolling without purpose, until I stopped at Ky’s contact.
She hadn’t asked for explanations.
She hadn’t demanded pieces of me I didn’t know how to give.
She’d just stayed.
That mattered more than I wanted to admit.
The next morning, I moved through campus like a ghost.
Yes, I was still heartbroken.
Is this how heart break felt like?
People talked. Laughed. Lived.
I felt detached from all of it, like I was watching my own life through glass. Alice waved at me from across the quad, and I lifted my hand automatically, my smile practiced and hollow.
Guilt crawled up my spine.
She loved me. She really did. And even after everything, part of me still loved her too,not in the desperate, consuming way she loved me, but in a way that ran deep and familiar, like muscle memory.
But love wasn’t enough when trust started rotting.
Ky found me after my last class.
“You look like you didn’t sleep,” she said gently, falling into step beside me.
“I didn’t.”
“Want company?”
I hesitated. Then nodded.
We walked without deciding where we were going.
That was the thing with Ky,she never rushed me. She matched my pace, hands tucked into her jacket pockets, shoulder brushing mine every now and then like an accident neither of us apologized for.
Campus blurred past. The trees. The benches. The noise.
“You don’t have to talk,” she said after a while. “But you can, if you want.”
“I don’t even know where to start,” I admitted.
“That’s okay,” she replied softly. “Start wherever it hurts the least.”
I let out a quiet laugh that cracked halfway through. “That’s the problem. It all hurts.”
She didn’t say I’m sorry. She didn’t say it’ll be okay.
She just nodded, like she understood pain didn’t need fixing, just witnessing.
“I used to be so sure,” I said. “About who I loved. About what I wanted.”
“And now?”
“Now I feel like I let a man rewrite me.” The words tasted bitter. “Like I handed over my certainty and let him decide what I was allowed to be.”
Ky sat up, facing me fully now. “No one gets to do that. Not even someone who felt like destiny.”
I swallowed.
“I don’t want to be confused anymore,” I whispered. “I don’t want to chase men who disappear or bonds that hurt.”
She reached out, brushing her fingers lightly against mine.“Then don’t.”
I looked at her hand. At the steady warmth. The choice.
Something in me finally gave.
I turned toward her, slow, giving her time to pull back. She didn’t. Her eyes flicked to my lips, then back to my face, searching, asking without words.
“Is this okay?” she murmured.
I nodded.
The kiss was soft. Careful. Almost shy.
Nothing like the chaos that had been tearing me apart for weeks.
It was just lips meeting, a gentle press, the kind that felt like relief more than hunger. I exhaled without realizing I’d been holding my breath, and she smiled against my mouth.
Then she laughed,quiet, surprised.
I pulled back, blinking. “What?”
She shook her head, still smiling. “I just… you look like you forgot how to breathe.”
That did it. I laughed too. A real laugh. The kind that burst out of me, light and a little embarrassed, the sound echoing off the empty steps.
“Wow,” I said, wiping at my eyes. “I needed that.”
She bumped her shoulder against mine. “You’re welcome.”
We sat there after, fingers still loosely tangled, laughing at nothing, at everything,at how awkward the moment had been, at how human it felt.
For a little while, the world didn’t feel so loud.
And for the first time since everything broke apart, I wasn’t thinking about who I was supposed to be.
I was just here.
For the first time since the video, my chest didn’t ache quite as badly.
Ky was my emotional support..
Not in a loud, dramatic way. Not with speeches or promises she couldn’t keep. She just… stayed.
She walked me back to the dorm that evening.
She talked about small things instead, how her professor had mixed up everyone’s grades, how she missed home more than she admitted, how she hated nights that felt too quiet.
When we reached the dorm entrance, I hesitated.
“Do you want me to stay?” she asked, soft, like she already knew the answer but wanted me to choose it.
I nodded.
As we lay on the bed together,
I closed my eyes and let myself breathe.
Whatever Alpha Duncan had been to me,whatever lie or truth he represented,he didn’t get to define the rest of my life.
At least before him, I had been a lesbian.
And maybe,just maybe, that wasn’t something I’d lost.
Maybe it was something I was finally taking back.
- Writer
