Addiction & Surrender

Spiraling

The Next Day: Trying to Bury Her

Her number burned in my phone.

Her taste burned on my tongue.

So I did what cowards do.

I called someone else.

Someone who wasn’t her.

Someone who didn’t know how to cut me open with a single look.

We met at some quiet place I wouldn’t remember. She smiled too easily, touched my arm like she already belonged there.

I tried to let her.

In her apartment, I kissed her like I was starving. I wanted to disappear into the heat of someone else, the rhythm, the weight, the distraction.

She moaned my name, but it didn’t sound right.

She touched me, but her hands didn’t know the map of me.

She tried to match my pace, but her body didn’t speak the language mine was begging for.

I closed my eyes, forced the memory of Val’s mouth, Val’s grip, Val’s breathless curses.

But it wasn’t her.

Nothing was her.

I couldn’t get hard.

The girl noticed. She tried to fix it. Soft words, gentle touches, a practiced patience.

But it wasn’t the problem.

She wasn’t the problem.

I was.

I pulled away, dragging my hands down my face, frustrated, angry, wrecked.

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, shoving my jeans back on, already backing toward the door. “It’s not you.”

She asked what was wrong.

I didn’t answer.

I left before I could admit it out loud.

It was Val.

It’s always her.

⸻

Val’s POV: The Voicemails

I didn’t check my phone that night.

I didn’t need to.

I already knew what it would say.

Or what it wouldn’t.

I showered, scrubbing his scent off my skin like it might peel the memory away with it.

It didn’t.

I could still feel his hands, his breath, the desperation he poured into me like it could save him.

When I finally picked up my phone the next morning, I wasn’t expecting the missed calls.

Three.

All from him.

I stared at the screen, thumb hovering over his name like maybe if I hesitated long enough, the messages would disappear.

They didn’t.

First voicemail:

“I shouldn’t have come.”

His voice was frayed, like he was fighting something and losing.

Silence.

“But I wanted to.”

Click.

I swallowed hard, pulse thudding in my throat.

Second voicemail:

“I miss you.”

His breath hitched.

“No, I mean—I missed you. I still—”

It cut off. He must have hung up. Or deleted it halfway.

I wished I didn’t care.

But I played the third one.

“You know I can’t stay, right? You know I’m not good for you.”

I closed my eyes. I’d memorized that line. I could hear it in every echo of him.

A long pause.

His voice dropped, ragged, soft enough to crack something inside me.

“But f**k, you’re the only place I ever feel real.”

The silence that followed wasn’t empty.

It was weighted. It was the truth he couldn’t carry and couldn’t let go.

I should have deleted them.

I should have blocked his number.

I should have cut the thread.

Instead, I played the last message again.

And again.

His voice sank under my skin like it belonged there.

Like I’d been waiting to hear it.

Like I never really wanted him to stay away.

I threw my phone across the couch, buried my face in my hands.

I could still feel him.

Still wanted him.

Still hated him for making me need him like this.

But the worst part?

I knew the next time he knocked, I’d open the door.

I always do.

⸻

Haunted by the Heat

I told myself it didn't mean anything.

What happened was just tension. Lust, not intimacy.

I told myself I was still in control.

But I lied.

Because ever since that night, he's everywhere.

His voice in my head.

His hands in my dreams.

His mouth-God, that mouth-etched between my thighs like a ghost that lingers even when the room is empty.

He left a few voicemails and then, silence.

Just silence, like he hadn't breathed my name into my neck or come undone under my touch.

But I couldn't let it go.

I didn't want to.

l'd lie in bed at night and replay the sound he made when I stroked him slow.

I'd slip my hand between my legs and close my eyes, back arched, imagining the weight of him under me again.

I touched myself to the memory of his breath.

To the shape of his jaw, the way he said my name like it was a sin and a salvation.

"Fuck..." l'd whisper into the dark, fingers circling deeper. "Please..."

Every moan was for him.

Every gasp, every ache, every clench of pleasure was a twisted prayer begging him to return.

I stared at the door like he might knock again, drunk and full of guilt and wanting.

But the knock never came.

And I hated how empty I felt without it.

During the day, I faked it well.

I laughed with friends, answered texts, wore red lipstick like war paint.

But at night, I fell apart in whispers and wet sheets.

It wasn't just s*x.

It was the almost of it.

The pause before ruin.

The way we teetered on the edge of something neither of us would name.

One night, I stood in the shower and let the water scald my skin until it was pink and raw. I pressed my forehead to the tile and slid my fingers down again-slower this time-imagining his hands holding me there, firm and unrelenting.

I moaned his name like it was carved into me.

Like I didn't care if he heard.

He had become a hunger I couldn't starve.

A wound I kept reopening with shaking fingers and closed eyes.

And somewhere deep inside, I knew-this wasn't the end.

This was just the beginning of the spiral.

⸻

The Cut that Wont Heal

It had been six weeks.

Forty-two days of no contact.

No calls. No messages. No drunk knocks on my door.

I was starting to breathe again.

Starting to believe I could live without him-like I hadn't memorized the curve of his lips or the way his breath hitched when I touched him just right.

l even started dating someone else.

He was kind, steady, safe.

But he didn't burn.

And then-because the universe is cruel, or because he knew-I saw him again.

Random Tuesday. Coffee shop. I was there for a meeting. He was just... there.

He looked at me like he hadn't eaten in weeks.

Like seeing me physically hurt.

And I hated that I felt it too.

He waited until I was alone. Came over, casual, like we were old friends.

"Hey."

That voice. Still warm, still dangerous.

I swallowed hard. "Hi."

He smiled, soft and crooked. "You look good."

"You shouldn't be here."

"I know."

"Then leave."

"I can't."

That was always the problem with him—he never fought to stay, but he never truly left either.

That night, i laid in bed, fists clenched.

I didn't cry. I didn't text him. I didn't cave.

Instead, I made a decision.

I blocked his number. Deleted the photos. Buried every memory in the part of me that knew how to survive heartbreak.

I told myself:

This is done.

I won't be the girl who waits.

I won't be the girl who begs.

And for a while... it worked.

I let time be the distance. I relearned silence. I even started to forget the exact color of his eyes.

Two months passed.

I saw my reflection changing-stronger. Lighter.

My skin didn't crave his touch.

My nights didn't echo his name.

Until the night he came back.

1:17 a.m.

A knock at the door-his knock-slow, deliberate, familiar.

I froze. Heart pounding. Every cell of me lit up with equal parts dread and desire.

I opened the door.

There he was-sober this time. Eyes clearer, but full of the same dark pull.

"I needed to see you," he said.

"No," I whispered. "You don't get to need me anymore."

"I never stopped," he said. And then, quietly, "Did you?"

I didn't answer. I couldn't.

Because the truth was— I had never not wanted him.

And as much as I wanted him to come in... I told him to go home. And I closed the door like he was no one.