Page 130 of His To Erase
I don’t leave a message because the only thing I’d say is,Hey, if I end up on a true crime podcast tomorrow, you have full permission to use a hot photo of me for the thumbnail.
Nope. Can’t do it.
My thumb hovers over Steven’s name again, and just his name alone makes something in my chest tighten, like I’m about to make a deal I won’t come back from. I stare at it for a breath. Then two. Then three.
Calling feels like too much, so I type a message instead—because it’s safer to ask for help in words I can still delete.
Me: If this is you, you win. I’m freaked the fuck out. If it’s not you, then you’re the only bastard I know who can deal with someone worse. What do I do?
I hit send before I can second-guess myself, but the second my thumb leaves the screen, my knees buckle. I slide to the floor, keeping my back against the couch, and my heart pounds in a rhythm that doesn’t even feel like mine.
This isn’t just some twisted prank anymore. Maybe it never was.
I stare at the screen, willing it to light up. Waiting for those little dots to show up and save me from whatever the fuck this is. But there’s nothing. Just black glass and the sound of my own breathing, ragged and uneven. Tears are sliding down my cheeks, and my breathing picks up.
Of course he’s not answering, it’s the middle of the night. I’m sitting here, folded into myself on the floor like a child with a nightmare, clutching my phone like it’s a lifeline instead of the evidence that I’m losing it.
I open my phone again, just to make sure the message sent. The silence starts pressing in, and I curl my knees to my chest and try to breathe, but my lungs are paper. The edges of the room tilt or maybe that’s me. I can’t tell anymore.
God, I’m tired of feeling like this.
I try to think—really think. To make my brain slow down long enough to separate reality from paranoia, from exhaustion, from whatever the hell this is spiraling into, but calm won’t come. The more I chase it, the faster it slips through my fingers like water I was never meant to hold.
And then—without warning—I’m hit with something I don’t have a name for.
There’s a white wall, and someone’s yelling. Maybe my name. Maybe not. It’s muffled, like I’m underwater.
I squeeze my eyes shut hard enough to see stars, like pressure might push it all back where it came from. But it’s too late. The memory doesn’t play like a movie. It shreds its way out—jagged and violent—ripping through me with too much sensation and not enough shape.
There’s so many fucking hands. Gripping and pulling. My legs are on cold tile, sticking to the floor. I can feel my pulse hammering and my throat closes just thinking about it. There’s pressure in my chest again and I know that feeling, I’ve felt it before. I felt it that night.
I hear a man’s voice cut through the fog. It’s accented and unfamiliar, but not completely. It doesn’t belong in the scene I remember, but now it’s there like it’s always been part of the story.“It’s already done. She’s his problem now.”
I lurch forward as acid creeps up my throat, sharp and sudden, and I clamp a hand over my mouth before I ruin the floor.
I count backwards…Five. Four. Three. Two—I can’t even make it to one before the breath shoves itself back into my lungs.
The pieces are snapping into place. Not clearly, not even all at once, but they’re slow, ugly, and crooked. I suddenly understand why that photo—the one I pretend didn’t have an effect on me—made my skin crawl the second I saw it. It’s because the truth is ugly and it’s getting harder to ignore. It’s not just that I don’t remember being in that photo, it’s that somewhere—buried beneath the walls I’ve built and the memories I swore I’d burned—I do remember.
I’ve always remembered, I just didn’t let myself know it. Now that it’s here—rising like smoke I can’t un-breathe—it’s too much. My throat tightens and my chest squeezes like someone’s yanked all the air out of the room and my hands won’t stop shaking. I try to count again—to breathe—something. But all I can hear is that voice. All I can feel is that weight pressing down on me again like it never really left.
My phone buzzes, loud and jarring in the stillness, and I flinch so hard I nearly drop it. My heart slams into my ribs like it’s trying to crack them open.
Steven: You’re not that easy to break, Ani. Don’t start acting like it now.
Get your shit together. Breathe. I assume you know enough to keep the door locked until I get there?
I’m coming, so try not to look like you need me when I get there.
I stare at the screen, and I can practically hear his voice in my head—laced with that dangerous tone that makes you forget how to blink. He probably didn’t even think twice after sending it, either. Just fired it off like a command and expected me to obey.
My jaw clenches, because somehow, in the span of a few sentences, he managed to make me feel like I’m both losing control and back in it.
I hate that it worked, but the second I read those words, my pulse slowed just enough that my lungs remembered how to move. My thoughts—still racing and messy—are locked onto one thing like a goddamn anchor.
Him.
And now I’m stuck in this fucked-up space between panic and something else entirely, because if he were here, I don’t know if I’d scream at him or climb him.
