Page 43 of Bratva Bride
"You can go outside the lines," Clara said gently. "There are no rules here."
No rules. The concept was so foreign it might as well have been spoken in a language I didn't know. There were always rules. Stay quiet. Be useful. Don't want things. Don't need things. Don't be childish.
But I kept coloring anyway, and slowly something in my chest began to loosen.
Eva had picked up a stuffed elephant from the daybed, cradling it against her chest while she colored one-handed. Thecasualness of it—a grown woman holding a toy without shame—made my eyes burn. Clara hummed something soft, maybe a lullaby, maybe nothing. The sound mixed with the fairy lights and the soft cushions and the careful scratch of crayons on paper to create a bubble outside of time.
"I never had this."
The words escaped without permission, barely louder than the crayons on paper.
Clara and Eva both looked up, but neither spoke. Waiting. Giving me space to continue or stop.
"My father—" My voice cracked. I set down the cerulean and picked up midnight blue, needing my hands busy. "I wasn't allowed toys after I turned seven. He said they were childish. Distracting. He threw away my dolls while I was at school. Came home and my room was just—empty. Bed, desk, computer. Nothing soft. Nothing mine."
The blue crayon shook in my hand. I pressed harder, needing the resistance.
"I spent my childhood studying instead of playing," I continued, the words flowing now like blood from a wound. "Useful things. Valuable things. By ten I was decoding intelligence. By fourteen I was running entire operations from my father's office. By eighteen I was—"
Drowning. Disappearing. Dying inside while performing brilliance.
"I never got to be little." The admission scraped my throat raw. "Never got to be young. He stole that from me. Took it and sold it for leverage and now I'm twenty-six and I don't know how to play. Don't know how to be soft. Don't know how to—"
The tears came without warning. Not gentle tears but the ugly kind—body-shaking sobs that felt like they were ripping me apart from inside. Twenty years of suppressed grief flooding my system all at once. The seven-year-old crying for her dolls.The ten-year-old who wanted to play outside instead of decode messages. The teenager who wanted sleepovers and boy band posters and all the silly, precious things that make up a childhood.
Clara and Eva moved immediately, flanking me, arms around my shoulders. Not restraining. Anchoring. Holding me together while I fell apart.
The sobs turned violent, like my body was trying to expel twenty years of grief through my throat. Each breath scraped raw, caught on something sharp in my chest, came out as sounds I didn't know I could make. Animal sounds. The kind of crying that happened when you finally stopped holding the door closed and let everything crash through at once.
I couldn't stop. Couldn't control it. My body shook hard enough that the crayons scattered across the table, cerulean rolling onto the floor, midnight blue cracking under my clenched fist. The careful mandala we'd been coloring blurred through tears that wouldn't stop coming.
"Let it out," Clara murmured against my hair. "All of it. Every year, every loss, every time you had to be big when you wanted to be small."
The permission made it worse. Or better. Hard to tell when everything was breaking apart. I cried for the seven-year-old who'd come home to an empty room. For the ten-year-old who'd spent her birthday decoding intelligence about a weapons shipment. For the thirteen-year-old who'd wanted to read about jellyfish but had to study encryption instead. For the sixteen-year-old who'd never gone to prom because my father said social events were security risks. For the eighteen-year-old who'd graduated with honors in subjects she'd never chosen while the life she'd wanted dissolved like sugar in rain.
My nose ran. My eyes swelled. I made sounds that weren't quite screaming but weren't quiet either—keening noises thatwould have horrified my father, would have earned punishment for being weak, dramatic, useless.
But Clara and Eva just held tighter.
"That's it," Eva said, her voice steady against the storm of my breakdown. "Get it all out. You're safe here. You can be angry. You can be sad. You can be fucking furious if you need to be."
"I hate him," I gasped between sobs. "I hate him for taking everything soft. For making me into a tool instead of a daughter. For—"
The words dissolved into more crying, but uglier now. Angry crying. The kind that came with clenched fists and the urge to break things. To destroy something the way he'd destroyed my childhood, methodically and without remorse.
Eva pressed the elephant she'd been holding into my arms. "Here. Sometimes it helps to hold something."
The elephant was gray velvet, worn soft from handling. It smelled like lavender. Its button eyes were kind. I clutched it against my chest like it might save me from drowning in my own grief, and somehow it helped. This soft thing that seven-year-old me would have loved. That twenty-six-year-old me still needed.
Time became irrelevant. I cried until my ribs ached. Until my throat was raw. Until the violent sobs mellowed into exhausted gasps and then into shaky breathing that still caught every few inhales. Clara and Eva never let go. Never rushed me. Never suggested I pull myself together or be strong or any of the toxic things people said when grief made them uncomfortable.
When I could finally speak again, my voice came out destroyed.
"I'm a Little."
The words hung in the fairy light air like a confession at church. Like admitting to a crime. Like revealing the secret that might make everything fall apart.
"I think I've always been one," I continued, pressing my face into the elephant's soft head. "But I never—I didn't know it was real. That other people felt like this. That it was okay to want to be small sometimes. To need someone to make decisions when the world feels too big. To want to color and have stuffed animals and wear soft things and—"
