Page 85 of Only Mine
“Hotel security found us because I triggered the fire alarm. Broke a wine bottle over his head first. But he’d already—” Her voice cracks. “Fifteen minutes. That’s how long he was in my room before I woke up. Taking photos. Touching me. Collecting souvenirs.”
“Holy fuck,” someone whispers.
“It took months of therapy, but I thought I could push through. So I turned on the camera one day. I tried to film again. But I just froze. Because behind every username, every avatar, every ‘love you bestie’ comment, could be another him. When I looked at the camera, all I could see were the thousands of strangers who thought they owned pieces of me, too.”
The prep counter’s metal edge cuts into my palms. I’m leaning on it hard enough to break through skin.
“The police asked what I was wearing in my videos. If I’d been ‘suggestive.’ The detective, while taking photos of the bruises on my neck, said, ‘Well, you do put yourself out there.’“ Wrenley’s voice empties. “As if posting makeup tutorials meant I consented to a stranger trying to rape me.”
“What the fuck,” someone breathes.
“My safety was sold for money. And when they caught him, his lawyer argued I’d been ‘inviting attention.’ That my videos were ‘intimate invitations.’“
The paring knife slips. My thumb’s bleeding before I register the cut.
“The comments were worse. ‘What did she expect?’ ‘She made herself a target.’ ‘Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.’ Two million people watched me build a career, then told me I deserved to be violated for it.”
My bleeding thumb throbs in time with my heartbeat. The pain is nothing.
“So here’s what ‘asking for it’ looks like at 3 a.m. When I wake up feeling his weight on me, when I can’t breathe, I dig my nails in until skin splits. See these trenches in my chest? That’s from reading comments about how I should be grateful he didn’t do worse.”
My jaw locks so hard my teeth ache. Blood from my hand drips steadily onto the cutting board.
“This bald spot above my ear? From the night someone DM’d my old account to prove how easy I was to find. Pulled out a fistful of hair because at least that was my choice. My pain. My control.”
A broken sound escapes her throat.
“At least when I hurt myself, it’s someone who actually wants me to survive doing it. That’s more than I can say for the rest of you who are enjoying my trauma.”
I’m moving before I realize it. The prep table flips with acrash that shakes the entire kitchen. Plates shatter.Mise en placegoes flying while I roar, “GET OUT.”
“Chef?”
I grab the nearest pan and hurl it across the kitchen. It hits the wall with a crash that makes everyone jump.
“I said GET THE FUCK OUT.”
They run. Actually run. The kitchen empties in ten seconds flat.
I stand there, chest heaving, seeing it all differently now. The way she’d frozen while a scream wrecked her throat when I burst into the guesthouse to get her out of the storm. How she’d shut down when I noticed the scars on her shoulder. The panic in her eyes when I asked who hurt her.
She’d hurt herself.
And when she finally found peace—in my home, with my daughter, in my bed—I took that away, too.
I’m no better than every other person who’s failed to protect her.
Pacing the kitchen, I find an abandoned knife at another prep station. I grab it, needing something to do.
The knife goes into a cutting board. Again. Again. The wood splits further with each strike.
For months, she’s been carrying this. Months of jumping at shadows, of cutting herself to feel alive, of apologizing for surviving.
Then she came here. Let Ivy hug her. Let me touch her. Started to smile again.
Until I proved she was right not to trust anyone.
“FUCK.”
