Chapter 2
1764 Words
His hand cupped her face, thumb brushing her cheekbone, wiping away a tear she hadn’t realized had fallen.
No one had ever touched her like that.
Not for show.
Not to possess.
Just… to care.
A strange calm settled over her as her body failed. The rage remained, hot and bright, but beneath it was something else.
Regret.
Not for loving Alan. Not for trusting Cassie. Those were mistakes, yes, but they weren’t the deepest wound.
The deepest wound was that she’d ignored the man who had actually loved her.
She had been so obsessed with chasing the wrong thing that she hadn’t recognized the right one standing quietly nearby.
Lexus’s voice sounded far away now. “Stay with me,” he kept saying, like repetition could anchor her. “Stay. Stay.”
Her fingers twitched against his shirt. She wanted to hold on, but the numbness had swallowed her hands.
The last thing she felt was warmth.
The last thing she saw was Lexus’s face close to hers, eyes shining with something dangerously close to tears.
And then—
Nothing.
Darkness swallowed her whole.
She woke up choking.
Not on poison, not on pain, but on air that tasted stale and sour. Her throat burned. Her tongue felt thick, coated. Her mouth tasted like spilled liquor and regret.
She sat up too fast, panic yanking her upright, and the room lurched with her movement. For a second she expected cold tiles, a back room, Cassie’s laughter.
Instead, she found herself in her bed.
Her own bed.
The familiar ceiling above her. The faint light sneaking through the curtains. The shape of her dresser in the corner, the mirror catching a sliver of her reflection.
Her chest heaved as she dragged in breath after breath, hands clutching at the blankets as if they were proof of reality.
She was alive.
Her heart slammed against her ribs.
No.
She remembered dying.
She remembered Lexus’s arms. The warmth. The panic in his voice. The look in Alan’s eyes. Cassie’s whisper: You should’ve stayed in your place.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and immediately winced as her bare feet hit the floor. Her head throbbed like a drumline. Her stomach rolled, not with poison this time but with the ugly aftermath of a night of partying.
The smell hit her when she exhaled.
Putrid. Alcohol-soaked. The sour breath of someone who’d been trying too hard to drown herself in noise.
She gagged, covering her mouth, and stumbled toward the bathroom.
Her reflection met her in the mirror like an accusation.
Messy hair. Smudged makeup. Skin dull with exhaustion. And paint.
Paint curled along her collarbone, black and red designs that had been meant to look like tattoos. She’d done it because Cassie had suggested it, because Cassie had said it would make her look fearless. Wild. Interesting. The kind of woman Alan would notice.
Everyone had believed they were real.
She stared at the painted lines now, and her stomach twisted.
In her memory, she could still feel the cold floor beneath her dying body. She could still hear Lexus begging her to stay. She could still taste that sickly sweetness.
She gripped the edges of the sink until her knuckles went white.
This is not a hangover dream, she told herself. This is not guilt. This is not imagination.
She turned toward the calendar pinned near the mirror, the one she rarely looked at because Cassie always reminded her dates didn’t matter. The one she’d started ignoring when she started ignoring everything that didn’t involve Cassie and Alan.
Her eyes locked onto the month and year.
Her breath stopped.
Three years earlier.
A few months after she’d met Cassie. A few months after she’d started orbiting Alan like he was the sun.
Her body went cold in a way the hangover couldn’t explain.
She stared at herself in the mirror, searching for signs of madness. Her own eyes stared back, bloodshot but sharp. Awake. Aware.
A slow tremor ran through her, beginning at her fingers and spreading up her arms.
Then, very quietly, she laughed.
It wasn’t a happy sound. It wasn’t even sane.
It was relief laced with venom.
She was back.
She had time.
And Cassie and Alan were still walking around, breathing easy, smiling like saints.
A memory flashed: Cassie’s hand on her arm, that slight tightening to keep her controlled. Alan’s gentle touch as he told her she’d made it too easy.
Her smile widened in the mirror, thin and sharp.
“No,” she whispered to her reflection. “Not this time.”
Her eyes slid down to the painted “tattoos,” the ones she’d worn like armor. She remembered how Cassie had watched her paint them on, approving and pleased. How Cassie had praised her for being brave.
Brave.
She’d been scared of real tattoos. Scared of the pain. Scared of permanence. Cassie had never known that. Cassie had assumed she’d gone all the way, assumed she’d carved herself into someone new.
The thought made something almost like gratitude flicker inside her. Not for Cassie. Never for Cassie.
For her own cowardice.
For once, her fear had saved her.
She straightened, decision settling over her like a cloak. Slow burn, she thought, not even realizing she’d put words to it. Slowly. Carefully. With pleasure.
She would take everything from them.
She would make them beg.
But first—
She looked at her face again, at the smeared eyeliner, the ghost of who she’d been. She could almost see the future version of herself layered over it: hollow, desperate, obsessed. Easy to manipulate.
Not anymore.
She turned on the bath.
Water rushed into the tub with a steady roar, steam beginning to rise. She stripped out of her clothes without ceremony, dropping them into a heap like shed skin. When she stepped into the bath, the heat wrapped around her, sinking into sore muscles.
She poured soap into her hands and began to scrub.
Not gently.
Not lovingly.
Like she was trying to erase something.
The painted lines on her skin smeared beneath her fingers, dark trails bleeding into the water. She scrubbed harder. Over her collarbone. Down her arms. Across her ribs. Every inch where she’d painted herself into the image Cassie wanted.
She remembered people staring, whispering. She remembered the thrill of attention, the way Cassie had smiled proudly at the reactions she’d caused. She remembered Alan’s eyes lingering a second longer than usual, and how she’d mistaken that for affection.
She scrubbed until her skin was pink, until it stung.
When the last traces of paint finally disappeared, she sank back into the water and closed her eyes.
In the quiet, Lexus’s face came back to her.
Not the polished, distant Lexus she’d known in passing. Not the man whose last name matched Alan’s, whose presence had always felt like a shadow she never bothered to look at.
The Lexus who had held her while she died.
The Lexus who had begged her to stay.
A heaviness settled in her chest.
She didn’t know what she would do about him yet. She didn’t know how to face him, how to live with the knowledge of what she’d ignored.
But she knew one thing.
He wasn’t her enemy.
Cassie and Alan were.
She drained the bath and stood, wrapping herself in a towel. She brushed her teeth twice, scrubbing her tongue until the bitter taste of alcohol faded. She washed her face, careful and thorough, like a ritual. When she looked in the mirror again, she looked cleaner. Clearer.
More like herself.
Or maybe like someone she’d never allowed herself to be.
She dressed simply: a plain top, soft sweatpants. No dramatic outfit. No statement pieces. No attempt to look like Cassie’s idea of exciting.
She ran a brush through her hair until it lay smooth. She didn’t reach for makeup.
When she opened her bedroom door, the hallway outside looked the same as it always had. The house was quiet in that morning way, the kind of quiet she used to avoid because quiet made her think too much.
Downstairs, she could hear voices. The clink of cutlery. The low murmur of her family at breakfast.
Her family.
A sharp guilt twisted in her stomach. In the life she’d lived, she’d turned them into enemies because Cassie had planted that idea in her head. Cassie had made her feel suffocated by love, made her believe that boundaries were control, that concern was manipulation.
She’d fought them. Shouted. Locked herself away. She’d started taking breakfast in her room, as if the people who cared about her were the problem.
Now she stood at the top of the stairs, fingers resting lightly on the railing, and she felt something she hadn’t felt in years.
Clarity.
She walked down.
Each step felt like a choice.
Not to hide.
Not to sulk.
Not to punish them for loving her.
When she reached the bottom, the smell of breakfast hit her and for a second she almost swayed. Eggs, toast, something sweet. Warm food. Normal food. A normal morning.
Her family sat around the table as usual, mid-conversation.
And then they saw her.
The words died in the air.
Her mother’s hand froze halfway to her coffee cup. Her father looked up as if he’d heard a ghost. Her eldest brother’s eyes widened, and the shock was so sudden he inhaled at the wrong moment.
He choked.
A harsh, startled sound as he slapped at his chest, coughing into his fist.
Her younger brother stared at her like she’d walked in from another planet, mouth open, a ridiculous little line of drool forming at the corner before he seemed to notice and wiped it away with the back of his hand, still not closing his mouth.
No one spoke.
Their eyes dragged over her face, her neck, her arms, as if searching.
Searching for the tattoos.
Searching for the heavy makeup.
Searching for the version of her that had been loud and reckless and angry.
But there was nothing.
Just her.
Clean. Simple. Fresh-faced.
She walked to the table and pulled out a chair.
Sat down.
And then, with all the calm in the world, she looked from one stunned face to the next and let her expression settle into innocent confusion.
“Why,” she asked, voice even, “are you all staring at me?”
Silence.
And somewhere deep inside her, beneath the calm surface, something dark smiled back.
Because the game had finally begun.
- Writer
