Page 301 of Ruin Me Gently

She stays rooted to the spot. Doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak.

I wait for something—anything. For her to rush forward, for her to ask if I’m okay, for her to even pretend to care.

But she doesn’t.

Her gaze lingers on me for a second longer before she turns and walks away. No words. No questions. Just… gone.

I slide down the wall, pressing my back against it like it might hold me together. My arm throbs, my face burns, and I can still taste blood on my tongue.

I don’t cry. I never fucking cry.

I just sit there, staring at the doorway where she stood.

She saw everything.

And she still walked away.

I snapped myself out of it with a few hard blinks. Or tried to at least.

I didn’t know why it had started happening like that. The memories, I mean. One second I was fine, the next I was somewhere else entirely, stuck in shit I didn’t want to remember. It sucked, so bad. Worse than the nightmares, because at least with those, sometimes I woke up knowing they weren’t real.

I fucking hated it here.

I wanted to leave so badly.

But I couldn’t. Not yet.

They wouldn’t let me get a job—not one that paid real money. And even if they did, I couldn’t leave Evelyn here alone with him.

He’d kill her. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday. And if I wasn’t here to pull him off her, to say something sharp enough to redirect his rage onto me instead, I didn’t know what would happen.

So I stayed.

I knew it was a risk, but I’d been siphoning cash from his wallet. Just a couple dollars at a time, never enough to make him notice. It wasn’t much, but it made me feel like I wasdoingsomething. After almost a year, the stash had grown into a small wad of bills, folded tight and hidden inside a hollowed-out book in my dresser. Hardly life changing, but enough to one day grab Evelyn, walk her out of the front door and never look back.

The thumping kept going, steady and dull, dragging through the floor like a hammer hitting soft wood.

I clenched my teeth and flipped another page.

Louder.

I knew exactly what was happening.

I knew.

And I didn’t care.

I was so damn sick of this.

Sick of playing nurse. Sick of being the one to drag her out of it—to shake her awake, hold her hair back, listen to her mutter promises she’d break a week later.

I was just angry now. Raw and bitter and done.

Evelyn needed me again. But she was never there when I needed her. Never there when he cornered me. Never there when I was patching up bruises with concealer or icing a swollen wrist in the bathroom sink. Never there when I needed someone—anyone—to pull me out of the mess she let grow around us.

But now? Now she needed me.

Again.

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