Page 27 of Sins of the Hidden

But I wasn't. Not when birthday balloons taped to my locker returned shredded after lunch. Not when Mom curled beside me on the couch and I flinched because classmates had spent the day whispering that I was disgusting. I had love. I just couldn't feel it through the constant work of sucking my stomach in and pretending that made me easier to look at.

I was the kind of broken that didn't make sense. The kind you didn't get to justify. I wasn't like Nyla, whose adopted Dad tried to kill her until she found her biological father. Or Joslyn, who lost both of her parents at an early age.

My mouth opened, but no words came. Throat closing around empty compliments, each attempted praise dying before it formed. "I..." My vision blurred, pressure building sharply at the corners as I searched desperately for something, anything positive. "My eyes are..." No, they were too revealing.

A sob caught in my chest. "I'm good at..." The words crumbled. Good at what? Hiding? Making myself small enough to disappear?

"Just one thing," I begged the reflection, hands pressing against my stomach as if I could physically hold myself together, feeling each rib beneath my fingers. But every potential compliment felt like a lie, each attempt at self-love corrupted by years of learned hatred, by every sideways glance and whispered comment that had burrowed into me. "P-Please just one thing."

My ragged breathing filled the space, and something warm slipped from my chin to the floor. Not even one thing. I couldn't find a single piece of myself worth loving.

My fingers found my arms, nails scraping across flesh that already knew where to break. My breath hitched in shallow bursts, the room spinning as black spots crept into the corners. The mirror multiplied every flaw, every reason I'd learned to hide, until I was drowning in a hundred failures staring back. In the harsh light, even my reflection seemed desperate to escape me.

A quiet creak of floorboards behind me made my spine snap taut, nerves jolting alive even before my eyes registered his fragmented image in the glass. My legs collapsed, knees striking the carpet as the room lurched violently. Reality tilted and fractured, scattering me into a thousand distorted echoes of myself. I crumpled fully to the floor, lungs seizing shut, my throat closing tighter with every gasp, oxygen slipping further out of reach as panic clawed viciously through my chest, dragging me deeper into chaos.

Bile surged as the room spun. My stomach lurched, but nothing came—just broken sobs I didn't recognize. I dropped to the floor, palms scraping against the carpet, forehead pressed to the cool surface like it could hold me together. The rough fibers bit at my skin, but the pain didn't help. Something tore out of me—raw and broken, too sharp to swallow. I pressed my hands to my ears, trying to block it out, but it kept pouring out like it had nowhere else to go.

My mind racked for what my court-ordered therapist told me about grounding myself. Five things I could see—moonlight cutting the floor, my jittering hands, the unforgiving mirror, his mask, and the bat. Each one grounding, but none of them enough.

Four blurred sensations—carpet scraped my palms, tears dripped down my cheeks, gasps breaking into ragged pieces. His bat tapped the floor in a steady rhythm, the air conditioner humming a hollow whisper—each dragging me further into panic, reality unraveling faster with every second.

My chest constricted, each gasp sharp and shallow, barely enough to sustain me. My vision tunneled, edges dimming too quickly to grasp. My attempts to ground myself failed; everything slipped—my body, the floor beneath me, my sense of place. Nothing held firm. Nothing stayed.

This was supposed to help. Why wasn't it working? Why couldn't I ever help myself?

Three things I could hear. The floor shifting faintly under his weight. The quiet rustle of his sleeve as he adjusted. And my own breathing, sharp and uneven, echoing in my head until it swallowed everything else. I gripped each one, desperate to stay present, to keep from slipping under.

He moved without warning, hand shooting toward my face.

My body reacted before my mind caught up. I scrambled backward, spine slamming into the wall hard enough to rattle my teeth. A thin, cracked sound escaped—raw, involuntary. My chest hammered, heart slamming against my ribs like it wanted out.

He stopped inches from me, hand suspended mid-air, unblinking eyes locked onto mine.

"Don't," I choked out, "Please."

He didn't pull away. Didn't move. Every muscle remained tight, ready to snap forward at the smallest provocation. Hisbare fingers curled slightly, hovering so close I felt the heat radiating from his skin. The tension stretched taut between us, almost painful in its intensity. My pulse roared through my ears, vision narrowing down to him—only him, waiting to see which boundary he'd break next.

Two things I could smell. The sharp musk of worn leather—familiar, thick, impossible to ignore. It had followed me through rooms, pressed into doorways, and clung to everything he touched. I could taste it at the back of my throat. The second was metal. Cold. Faint, but there. It hit somewhere deep, pulling memories forward faster than I could shove them back.

One thing I could taste—the salt from my tears, bitter and sharp. But it wasn't just salt. It was powerlessness, a taste I'd learned too young and carried too long.

My senses returned slowly, dragging me back piece by piece. The room steadied, leaving behind a different kind of unease—here I was, nearly naked in front of V.

My fingers wouldn't obey as I tried to push myself up from the floor. My legs felt like water, muscles trembling from the aftermath of the panic attack. And he just stood there, watching me stitch myself back together.

"V," my arms wrapped instinctively around my middle, trying to hold together pieces that felt scattered across the floor. "You broke in." A statement, not a question. "Again." Each word broke on my tongue, too thin to hold up—how do you tell a hurricane not to destroy you when you're already in its eye?

His eyes locked onto me, unblinking. In the dim light, they looked almost liquid, like spilled ink searching for something to stain. My chest, just beginning to steady, kicked back into its frantic pace under that penetrating stare.

"What happened?" The question was deceptively gentle but carried that underlying titanium that made my spine straighten despite itself.

"P-Panic attack."

"Panic?" His head tilted, not understanding what it was.

I buried my face in my hands, peering through my fingers like a child hiding from monsters—except the monster was real, and hiding only seemed to draw him closer. "You can't keep breaking in."

He held up something that caught the moonlight like a broken promise—a key. My key. "You stole my key?"

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