Page 62 of Red Flagged
Her statement still echoed. She was right.Of courseI did. Of course I arranged a car. Of course I made the choice. Of course I pulled the strings and dressed it up as thoughtfulness.
It wasn’t about logistics. It was about control. It always fucking was, even when I convinced myself it was for her. That everything I did was for her safety, her comfort, her career, her peace. And it was, but maybe it wasn’t aboutherat all. Maybe it was about me.Myneed to be needed.Myobsession with control.Mycompulsion toorchestrate every moment so nothing and no one, could fall apart.
I never gave her a choice. Not really. I wrapped it in pretty things, in kindness and love and careful gestures, warm hands and whispered assurances that she was safe with me.
But safety without freedom is just another kind of cage… and maybe I was the bars.
God, I wasn’t her shelter. I was her fuckingprison.
I told myself I was helping. I told myself it was love. Maybe this whole time, I’d been calling it protection, when what it really was… ownership.
Maybe the worst part was the proof that the monster had always been there. Not just the man who made choices for her, but the one who’d taken her last night andlikedwatching her bruise. The one who’d left fingerprints around her throat and felt pride instead of guilt. I’d told myself it was worship, that every mark was devotion, but maybe that was just another disguise. Another way to make possession look like love. If I could take her apart and make herwantit, then I could pretend I wasn’t the one breaking her. And now, with this? With the decisions I’d made in daylight instead of the dark, I wasn’t sure there was a difference anymore.
The words stayed in my head like a siren, looping until I couldn’t hear anything else.
My chest was burning. My throat, raw. I could feel the tremor starting in my hands, so I shoved them into my pockets. I forced a breath in. It scraped down my throat like sandpaper. Another. It didn’t help. The air just sat there, heavy, useless. My eyes stung, and I blinked hard, fast, swallowing the taste of metal that always came right before the tears.
Don’t you dare.The voice in my head was mine this time, firm and vicious.You don’t get to cry. You did this. You don’t get to fall apart where everyone can see you.
I pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth to stop it from shaking, teeth clenched together so tight my jaw ached. It was an old trick a therapist had taught me. Gave me something to focus on to ground me in the moment, to help keep the maelstrom at bay. And once I could breathe again, I straightened.
The rage came next. It was hot, electric, desperate to burn through the shame. It pulsed under my skin, demanding release.I wanted to hit something. Break something. Anything to drown out the sound of that door closing again and again in my head.
Aurélie was a few steps ahead, acting as if nothing had happened at all. Like she hadn’t just left me bleeding behind her. I followed at the back of the group, a man built out of regret, choking on the silence he’d created.
Because what else was I going to do? Stand there like a statue and unravel in front of our friends? No. I did what I’d always done. I shoved the ache down. Moved forward like it didn’t exist. Forced the anxiety away, brick by brick, building the wall back up just to feel nothing at all. My expression reset, the performance sliding back into place.
But inside, I was shaking.
The rage had nowhere to go.
It burned under my skin like it used to when I was seventeen—when the weight of not being enough was too much and the only way to survive it was to make something bleed. I used to pick fights behind garages and down side streets, fists splitting open until the noise in my head finally quieted. The taste of iron, the shock that numbed everything else, the ache of the bruises I didn’t regret.
Back then, it was the only release I had.
Now my release had a name. It washer.It was love and sex and everything in between. It was losing myself in her body until the static stopped. Because she was the first person who ever saw the wreckage and called it worthy. She made the darkness feel deliberate, like we were built from the same fire, meant to burn together instead of apart.
Back then, no one ever noticed when I unraveled—because no one gave a shit.
But now I had everything. And somehow I wasstillfighting ghosts. Still trying to prove I wasn’t a fuckup. Still trying todeserve a woman who’d just stepped out of an elevator and walked three paces ahead of me like I wasn’t even there.
My hands curled into fists at my sides. I focused on the sound of our shoes on the tile, the soft laugh of the concierge, the cool lobby air that didn’t touch the heat rising in my throat. Sensations that reminded me that the anxiety wasn’t tangible, but the world around me was.
Just keep moving. Don’t lose it here.
Because I could feel the monster in me clawing for the surface.
Then,finally, the logical side of me roared to the surface. She told me this morning I wasn’t a monster. And she didn’t lie to me. She meant it. Shebelievedit.
So this? This was my trauma talking. My fear. The demon of every fight I’d ever picked with myself.
So I swallowed the fury, bit down on the ache, and kept walking.
One step behind her. Always one step behind her.
We reachedthe lobby’s glass doors. They looked too clean to be real, showing our group in a crisp reflection. The valet stood just beyond them, framed in a blur of headlights and golden hotel light.
A gust of air caught us as the doors opened automatically. It carried Auri’s perfume away, lavender and skin-warmed citrus replaced by something colder, damp and metallic, like the world outside was washing her away from me. The moment it disappeared, I panicked. Her scent was always the thing that grounded me.
