Page 5 of Crushed Vow
Then the sharp prick of a needle.
Then black.
Another time, I watched a woman cry for her dead son for hours. She sat in the corner, rocking and calling his name into the void. No one stopped her. No one helped. And then one day, they came for her. Dragged her down the corridor and locked her somewhere dark. She never came back.
And then there were the nights they shut me in the padded room. No noise. No light. Just white walls and my own thoughts clawing at me like rats. I spoke to shadows. I saw Cassian’s face in the ceiling. I heard his voice whispering apologies I knew weren’t real.
My nails dug into my palms, deep enough to break skin.
I refused to cry.
Not for them.
Not for what they did.
Not for him.
After the shower, I dressed in the soft robe Ethan left. My mastectomy scars were fading, the skin less sensitive now. No pain. Just phantom echoes. I prayed it would stay that way.
I lay in bed, bones aching, exhaustion creeping in like a wave.
But my mind drifted back to him.
Cassian Moretti.
The man who forced me to marry him for revenge. Who called my trauma weak. Who hated me for a crime my mother committed.
And when I left?
He moved on. Married someone else. Got her pregnant.
And the worst part? It still tore me apart.
A knock pulled me out of the spiral.
Ethan stepped in with a steaming plate of food. The scent made my stomach twist with need.
“Thank you,” I whispered, taking it.
He turned to leave, but I called out, “Ethan... can you stay?”
He nodded, grabbing a chair and pulling it beside me. “Of course. Whatever you need.”
As I ate, he kept his eyes on his phone, only glancing at me occasionally—with quiet sadness, not pity.
When I finished and stood to take the plate, he gently took it from me. “No. You rest. That’s all you need to do now.”
Then he smiled softly. “When you feel up to it, maybe join me in the living room. We’ll watch something. Something light.”
I nodded, touched in a way I couldn’t voice.
As he leaves, memories of high school flood back, anchoring me. Ethan, nerdy and awkward, was a magnet for bullies—boys slamming him into lockers, girls mocking his glasses, calling him “Bug Eyes.”
I was his shield, fierce even then. Once, I punched a jock, Tommy, square in the jaw for stealing Ethan’s backpack, my knuckles bruising but my heart soaring when Ethan grinned, “You’re my hero.”
Another time, at a pep rally, girls dumped soda on him, laughing, and I shoved through, pulling him away, drying him with my jacket while he mumbled, “Thanks, Charlotte.”
The best was our late-night study sessions at the library, sneaking snacks, laughing over his terrible math puns, our bondforged in those small rebellions. He was my safe place before Cassian, before this nightmare.
