Page 273 of Craving Venom

“I let him,” I hiccup. “I let him inside me after everything. I let him touch me. I let him hurt me and then I, God, I wanted it.”

I wipe my nose on my sleeve, still folded into her side.

“You know what’s wild?” she starts. “The world keeps telling women to listen to their gut. Follow their intuition. Trust their instincts.”

I wipe at my cheeks, trying not to fall apart again.

“But the second your instincts don’t line up with what people expect they call you blind. They call you weak. They treat you like you were too dumb to know better.”

I settle beside her. My skin itches with sweat and shame I didn’t ask for.

“And you start asking yourself,” Tria says, glancing at me, “Was I really that stupid? Did I imagine it all? The way he looked at me? The way it felt real in the middle of all the wreckage?”

I don’t answer.

I don’t have to.

Because she sees it in my face.

“You didn’t imagine it,” she says softly. “And you’re not stupid.”

I squeeze my hands together until my knuckles ache.

“You want to know what’s actually hypocritical?” she asks. “People act like they understand complexity. Like they’re above black-and-white thinking. But the second a girl says ‘I loved someone who wasn’t good for me,’ suddenly she’s labeled.”

“Dangerous.”

“Or pitiful. Or dramatic. Or fake.” She scoffs. “They want your story wrapped in a moral. In a headline. They want closure. And when you don’t give them that, when you say you still feel something? They turn on you.”

My nails dig into my palms. “I never even said it out loud.”

“But you feel it.”

I nod.

“And you’re trying to apologize for it.”

Another nod.

Tria pulls her legs up and rests her chin on her knee. “You don’t owe anyone an apology for the way your heart beats.”

My mouth trembles. “Even when it beats for the wrong person?”

“Even then.”

My mouth trembles.

Then Tria grins. “Unless it beats for your freshman-year Tinder match, Tyler, who wrote poetry about his cock.”

A laugh punches straight out of me.

She lifts her hands in mock defense. “I’m just saying. That man spelled orgasm with a ‘z’ and you still called it art.”

I snort. “He said my pussy tasted like destiny!”

“And you believed him!”

We’re both laughing now, harder than we should be, and it’s the kind of laughter that makes your ribs ache and your eyes tear for a reason that has nothing to do with crying.

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