Total pages in book: 171
Estimated words: 170885 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 854(@200wpm)___ 684(@250wpm)___ 570(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 170885 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 854(@200wpm)___ 684(@250wpm)___ 570(@300wpm)
I was terrified that she’d do it again.
So I ran to Lan’s room. Ironic, really, since I was the one who demanded we have separate rooms two years prior. Lan never wanted that and he became so petty afterward.
However, when I stood in his doorway, he immediately knew something was off. He jumped from his bed and asked me what was wrong.
I whispered, “Nothing. Can you hug me?”
The moment his arms wrapped around me, I broke down. I cried in his chest for so long that I think I passed out.
My brother held me through it all, and even though he doesn’t know how to soothe people, he was patting my back the entire time. He carried me to his bed and let me sleep in his arms.
He whispered, “Tell me who did this to you so I can end them.”
Then he begged me for the first time in his life.
I didn’t tell him the real reason. Instead, I poured my heart out about how I was struggling with art and school and attention. I also admitted out loud that I hated how I wasn’t as strong-minded as he was.
That worked for a while, but I don’t think he ever believed me.
Then the experimentation phase I went through bit me in the arse and some homophobes started mocking me and calling me slurs.
Lan thought the breakdown was because of that, and I saw firsthand how he targeted them and turned their lives into a nightmare. To this day, not one of them is a functioning member of society.
For a long time, Lan kept watching me, but I was already good at building façades and perfecting my image.
I stopped trying to experiment with guys and kept to girls because they made me feel like Lan. Straight. High sex drive. Normal.
As for Grace, I handled her soon after.
She made the mistake of sending me the footage of what happened with the caption: Study this and you’ll let your raw talent loose.
I told her she needed to be the one who told Mum that she was discontinuing my lessons because of work or whatever excuse she could come up with. If she didn’t, I would show the footage to Mum.
That was a lie. I would rather die than show that to anyone.
Grace was appalled. She thought we were in it together and that I liked her. She even told me that she felt like I’d used her.
I used her.
Me.
She complied, not because she thought she’d assaulted me. No. It was fear of the scandal of having sex with a minor. To this day, she believes it was consensual and has often told me we could revisit ‘the good old days.’
She was out of my immediate life, but she never left it completely, not when Mum’s career depended on the almighty Grace Bruckner. She worked so hard to be considered by her and I couldn’t be the one who ruined that.
So I swallowed the knife with its blood and pretended everything would be fine. I did encourage her. I did kiss her back. I did feel drunk on the sense of power she offered me.
A man can’t be raped by a woman.
That’s the stigma that stayed in my head even though the nausea from that time followed me for the rest of my life.
It got worse, not better, but I had it under control. I believed myself to be fine.
Until Nikolai invaded my life and forced me to see just how fundamentally broken I am. That no matter how much I hide, I’m still naked and desolate.
The truth I hid from for years coiled from the ashes. I betrayed that fifteen-year-old version of me and he rose from the decay and transformed into the reflection in the mirror. He became the pool of ink and the eyes who’ll never forgive me for letting him down.
Nikolai fundamentally changed me, because he crushed the lies I’ve been telling myself for years. I thought if I convinced myself I was normal, straight, and completely unaffected by the past, I’d eventually believe it. But that was a pipe dream.
Being with Nikolai hurts because I crave him despite hating myself. I need him so I can mend the broken pieces I shoved to the back of my closet of skeletons.
And that’s wrong.
I’m using him, and no matter how smitten he is with me, it’ll eventually backfire and blow us to smithereens.
If I want to keep him, I need to fix myself.
I need to find a way to talk to the fifteen-year-old me after alienating, discarding, and shutting him up for so long.
My muscles tighten and my migraine pounds harder when I see the woman waiting for me down the hall.
The need to run and hide pulses inside me so strongly, my vision blurs. Still, I walk at my steady pace, forcing down the deep hatred I hold for this woman.