Page 61 of Pick Me Up On Tuesdays

I turned my attention to the bedside clock. 12:03 AM.

That was when I noticed him.

Ethan lay in his bed, half-hidden under the blankets, his back rising and falling with slow, steady breaths. But his eyes—God, his eyes.

They were open.

And glowing.

A deep, unnatural glow pulsed within them, something foreign, something wrong. It wasn't the soft reflection of a streetlamp or the glow of a phone screen. This light didn't emanate from anything. It simply was.

My blood turned to ice. I hoped I was dreaming, that all this was my overactive, sleep-deprived brain playing tricks on me. But the longer I stared, the more I knew.

He was looking directly at me.

And then he smiled.

Before I could move, he launched at me.

°*°

I sat up with a start.

It was a dream. No. A nightmare. Despite feeling as real as anything could be.

My chest rose and fell rapidly, gasping breaths as I fought to realize where I was. The room remained dark, the first light of dawn creeping through the curtains. No glowing eyes. No eerie silence. No sinister movements.

Just a dream—a nightmare.

The bathroom door creaked open.

I rolled my head just in time to see Ethan come out, rubbing a towel through his soaking wet hair. He was naked from the chest up, his muscular body visible in the pale light. I quickly looked away, pushing blankets off me.

"You good?" he asked gruffly from sleep.

I didn't say anything. I just grabbed my clothes and headed into the bathroom, shutting the door behind me.

It wasn't real.

I kept telling myself that as I turned on the shower, but even as the warm water pounded against my skin, the nightmare clung to me like a second skin. My fists were balled as I stood leaning against the cold of the tile

This trip wasn't turning out to be the way I wanted.

I was supposed to stick to the documentary, keep my head down, create something worth doing. Instead, I was partnered with him. I was now having nightmares—nightmares I was pretty damn sure weren't random.

I knew those eyes.

The way they glowed. The way they burned me, full of something harsh, something unhuman. It wasn't Ethan. Not precisely.

But my stepdad's eyes had glowed that way as well.

When he struck me.

When he raged at me with words, fists, with something darker than both.

I glanced down at the scar beneath my belly. The ridged, jagged line was invisible under the steam. A reminder. A wound healed but never faded.

I'd learned to live with demons. Forced myself. Because they filled every corner of me. Because I was not going to let the past own me.

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