Page 12 of The Wrong Play

You’re too much work,darling.You should be grateful I’m still here.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

I wasn’t grateful. Not anymore.

Ihatedhim.

And more than that—I hated that I had let him be right for the past year.

I didn’t have to stay here, in this room, in this house…in his grasp.

My heart thundered in my chest as I turned, dragging my aching body toward my desk, my fingers trembling as I opened my laptop.

The screen glowed in the dark, the unfinished college application I had filled out months ago still waiting. The one he didn’t know about.

I had never submitted it.

Because I was afraid. Because I thought I needed him.

But maybe I didn’t.

Maybe, I never had.

The submit button hovered beneath my cursor, taunting me.

I clenched my jaw, wiped my tear-streaked face with the back of my hand, and with one final, shaky breath?—

I clicked it.

A confirmation message popped up, stark and certain, and my body sagged, my breath coming in gasps. For the first time in a year, I felt something that wasn’t fear.

It wasn’t even relief.

It wasfreedom.

And I wasn’t looking back.

I avoided him after that.

I tried to confess everything to my mother…to tell her what had been going on, but when I tried, she’d just sighed, pressing a hand to her temple as if I were the problem, as if my words were some unbearable inconvenience she didn’t want to believe.

After that, I swallowed the words instead of screaming them.

Because that was the moment I realized—no one was going to save me.

No matter how many times he texted, no matter how often my parents told me I was being ungrateful by not letting Callum “help” me, I locked myself in my room. I let his messages go unread. I ignored his calls, his subtle threats, the way he tried to make me feel guilty for pulling away.

You don’t really want this,darling.I know you better than you know yourself.

You think anyone else will want you?You think anyone else will put up with your broken body,your moods,your issues?

I love you.I’m the only one who ever will.

I used to believe that. Maybe some part of me still did, the part he had spent months carefully shaping, molding, breaking down until I was nothing but an extension of his will. Nothing but his dirty secret.

But there was a sliver of something else now, something louder than his voice in my head.

Anger.

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