Ouch.
1607 Words
I woke up to the dull, rhythmic beep of a monitor, followed by a wave of dizziness so heavy it might’ve been a whole ocean dumping on my skull. Everything smelled like antiseptic and burnt plastic, and my throat ached like I’d swallowed metal.
Hospital.
I was in a hospital.
I blinked, vision swimming, and the blur gradually resolved into the shape of a man leaning too close—too comfortably close—for a stranger.
Leo.
Of course.
His hand sat on my cheek, casually possessive, like it had every right to rest there. His thumb made these tiny, unconscious strokes against my skin, soft and slow, the way someone touches something fragile they feel oddly connected to.
And when he noticed my eyes open, he lit up.
Not metaphorically.
Actually lit up—his whole face flickered with this ridiculous, unfiltered joy, crackling through him so suddenly I wasn’t sure whether to be alarmed or flattered.
Well, s**t.
My brain didn’t feel organized enough to produce coherent speech, so what came out was flat and graceless:
“What are you doing?”
He didn’t remove his hand. He just looked at it, then at me, as though I’d asked why he was breathing.
“You’re awake,” he breathed, softer than before, but then—immediately—he snapped upright, half turning his head toward the door. “Nurse! She’s awake! And she’s talking!”
His voice boomed through the room, and I winced.
Seconds later, a nurse burst in with the kind of bright enthusiasm morning people seem to weaponize.
“See, hun? I told you she’d come around! You gotta have a little faith.”
Hun?
What the hell was with everyone calling me affectionate nouns when I’d nearly died?
She smiled warmly, oblivious to my hostility, then rushed back toward the hall. “I’ll grab the doctor. She’ll be thrilled.”
When she disappeared, Leo sat on the edge of the bed with the quiet confidence of someone who had sat there many times already. His hand drifted from my cheek to my forearm, thumb dragging slow, soothing circles over skin still swollen from IV tape.
My brain supplied images—flashes—of that same touch on bare skin, on places that weren’t bruised, weren’t bandaged.
Heat whipped through me, knee-jerk and embarrassing, so I jerked my arm away before instinct betrayed me further.
His face flinched—joy to despair to anger to confusion—and I couldn’t help thinking: overdramatic much?
“What are you doing?” I repeated, throat tight. “Why am I here? Where’s—”
The memory snapped into me like a wire pulled taut.
Mr. Fellows.
His weight.
His breath.
My ribs cracking like twigs.
My stomach rolled violently, and before I could even summon the word help, Leo had already shoved a trash can beneath my chin.
I retched.
Hard.
Metallic and sour and wrong.
Specks of blood hit the bottom of the bin like someone dropping coins.
Pain tore up my middle. Sharp, radiating, familiar in a terrifying way.
God. Not this again. Not another flare—no, not the same kind of pain. Worse. Deeper. Something ripped apart and stitched back together without my consent.
Severe internal bleeding. Surgery.
I didn’t need a chart to know. My body had spent years teaching me how to interpret its horrors.
“Well,” Leo said finally, voice carefully neutral, “I can say he is taken care of.”
I wiped my mouth, breathing hard. “What does that mean?”
“It means he’s fired,” he replied, tone clipped. “And probably in custody. If you want to press charges, you can. But you…” He hesitated, eyes flicking to my abdomen. “You had severe internal bleeding. They had to operate.”
My breath caught.
So it wasn’t just a rupture.
It was real damage.
The kind they cut open for.
The kind that kept you from ever really trusting your body again—if you’d ever trusted it to begin with.
“Did he…” Leo’s voice cut low, careful. “Did he do anything to you? Before anyone got there?”
I shook my head.
No penetration.
No rape kit.
One small grace in a storm.
“Good,” he murmured—too softly, too dangerously. “He’ll never come near you again.”
Before I could process the complicated mess of relief and rage and shame simmering beneath my ribs, a cheerful voice broke in.
“Well, hello there!”
A doctor stood by the door, white coat swishing, eyes bright as if she’d won a raffle.
“Good to see you awake! Your husband was so worried.”
Leo looked at me with a suppressed smirk.
I looked at him with homicide.
“Well, if he’s that worried,” I muttered, “he can go get me water or something.”
“We have nurses for that,” she said.
“I don’t care. Leo—go.”
His shoulders drooped like I’d kicked a puppy.
And I felt a stab of guilt I absolutely did not want to feel.
“You can come back in an hour,” I added.
He brightened. Actually brightened.
Then left like I’d given him a mission from God.
I had to physically stop myself from smiling back at him.
The doctor smirked knowingly. “You two are adorable. He carried you in, by the way. Screaming for help. We assumed the husband thing.”
My heart twisted.
I pictured it: him barging in, body shaking, voice raw, holding me like something precious instead of broken.
It shouldn’t have mattered.
But it did.
Too much.
“Anyway,” she continued, stepping closer, “you had severe internal bleeding. We repaired it surgically. You’re lucky—damage like that isn’t always caught in time.”
Lucky.
Sure.
If that was what this was.
Because luck wasn’t waking up gutted and stitched, ribs still protesting every breath.
Luck wasn’t reliving familiar agony in a new, more invasive form, imagining new scars layered over old ones.
Luck was not living inside a body that treated pain like a baseline reality.
“When you’re ready,” she continued, “we’ll bring in police and legal support. We’d like a full account, both for the case and to ensure there aren’t any lingering medical concerns.”
There were.
There always were.
But I nodded and said nothing.
She left.
Lights dimmed.
Silence settled.
I let sleep drag me under.
Darkness didn’t stay empty.
It pressed against me, heavy, suffocating.
-----
No. Not again.
Weight.
Hands.
Breath that wasn’t mine.
A body pinning mine down, turning me into a locked cage of bones and blood.
Get off.
Get off.
Let me go.
NO.
And then everything changed—velocity, temperature, gravity—
Leo.
But not real Leo.
Dream Leo, heat-slick and hungry, eyes molten gold, hands impossibly steady as if the world trembled but he didn’t.
Say my name.
His voice—deep, commanding, amused.
Say my name.
“Leo—”
Not that one.
His mouth traced fire along my throat, and my hips arched helplessly.
Say my name.
“Zeus.”
Electricity detonated through me.
My body arched hard enough to hurt.
Heat surged, violent and consuming—
“ZEUS!”
I screamed it into waking, chest heaving, sweat cooling too fast on overheated skin.
Leo sat by the bed, eyes wide, smirk barely contained.
“Dream of anything interesting?”
I stared at him, breath ragged.
“What did you hear?”
“Well,” he drawled, “I heard you screaming from the hall and rushed in because I thought you were being murdered. And then, given a few seconds, I realized… that wasn’t fear.”
He lifted an amused eyebrow. “Unless you fear pleasure.”
My cheeks burned so hot they might’ve ignited paper.
And then I realized:
He was holding my hand.
Fingers threaded between mine.
Like it was natural.
Like it belonged.
His hand was warm.
Too warm.
Big enough to swallow mine whole.
Heat shot through me, second wave, unstoppable.
“Leo,” I rasped. “You need to go.”
His expression fell. “Wait, what—”
“Leave.”
“But should I call a doctor? Are you in pain? Is something wrong?”
Yes.
God, yes.
Everything was wrong.
Everything was screaming.
Pain, heat, shame, fear, desire—fighting for space inside a body that never healed right, even before it was torn apart.
“No. I just need space. Please.”
Hurt flickered across his features.
Not anger.
Actual hurt.
He stood slowly.
“Okay.”
“Wait,” I said, and he spun back too fast, like he’d been waiting for permission to stay. “Can you pull down the window shade and turn off the lights? They’re giving me a migraine.”
He nodded.
He did it.
He didn’t argue or pry.
Then he slipped out.
I waited two minutes, heart pounding.
Every instinct screamed that moving was a terrible idea—my core felt fragile, stitched, unstable—but the other sensation, the one flooding through my bloodstream like wildfire, didn’t care.
I carefully drew my knees up, breath shaking, pain slicing through me in familiar patterns, deeper now, threaded with surgical aftermath.
I shouldn’t do this.
Not with bleeding sutures.
Not with a body that already punished me for anything it didn’t like.
But the heat didn’t care about logic.
It never did.
I stared at the ceiling, chest trembling.
I can’t believe I’m about to do this.
- Writer
