Page 102 of Cheap Shot
I curl tighter into myself. Not because I’m scared of him. Not exactly. IknowCole, but thatrage, the way his voice roared and his body swelled like he was barely holding himself back—it felt like something ancient and dangerous. Something I couldn’t reach. And it cracked something open in me I’ve kept sealed for a long, long time.
I was eight the day I found my mother. I had walked home from school, having waited over an hour for my mother to arrive.
“Mama. Are you sleeping?”I yelled, but the house remained silent. No TV. No radio. Just the ticking clock above the fireplace and the hiss of the heater turning on.
“Mama?”I call again, dropping my backpack by the door and heading toward the stairs.
I wandered from room to room until I reached the bathroom. The door was open just enough for me to see the tip of her foot on the floor. I pushed the door open and found her slumped against the tub. Eyes open, but glassy. A silence so thick it rang in my ears. Pill bottles were scattered across the floor—some still spinning lazily, like they hadn’t yet realized time had stopped.
I remember the color of the pills. Light blue and white. Like little pieces of sky and snow. I remember screaming. But no one came.
I press my fists into my eyes, digging into the sockets like I can shove the memory back into its coffin. But it’s too late. The lock’s broken. Every slammed door, every raised voice thick with anger, turns me into that barefoot little girl again, watching the world end with no one to stop it.
“Don’t leave me in the dark,” Cole says from the other side of the door, voice cracked and rough. “I don’t know how to fix this if you don’t open the door.”
He sounds like he’s crying. I close my eyes, swallowing down the lump in my throat. Not just from the panic, but from the sheer weight of it all. My father, his cruelty. His words still echo in my head.
She’s making the same mistake I did, falling for her mother. Ruining everything she’s worked her whole life toward for someone who can never put her first. Who will always put the pills before her until the day she finds him dead on the floor. Just like she did with her mother.
I know it’s not true, but fear doesn’t care about facts. It wraps around old wounds like vines, squeezing until you can't see the truth anymore. I bite down a sob and slide closer, dragging myself forward inch by inch. My fingertips graze the base of the door, as if touching it can tether me back to now.
“Cole,” I whisper. My voice is barely there. “I’m here.”
There’s a soft thump as his forehead rests against the other side. The silence that follows is thicker than before—quiet, but aching.
“I’m sorry,” he breathes. “I should’ve told you about the pills. About everything. I didn’t want to scare you. I didn’t want you to look at me the same way you looked at him. He shouldn’t have spoken to you like that.”
“You don’t,” I say, because I need him to hear it. “I would never look at you like that. But you… Youscaredme, Cole. Not because I think you’d hurt me. But because I’ve seen what those pills can do. The uncontrollable anger and mood swings, the depression and lack of will to live. I’ve seen all of it. I’ve lived with it. I’ve lost to it.”
“I would never hurt you,” he says, voice raw. “But I hurt you anyway, didn’t I?”
My throat tightens, and I can’t speak, but I nod, even though I know he can’t see it.
“I love you,” he says. “And I think I fucked everything up.”
My heart fractures at the honesty in his voice. At the grief tangled up in it, but beneath that grief, I hear something else. Fear. The kind that lives in your bones when you realize you’ve already lost what matters most. Andthat—not the shouting, not the fists against walls, not the broken glass—that’s what makes my fingers tremble toward the lock. Because I’m scared, too, but I won’t let fear be the only thing we have in common.
Click.
I pull open the door and find Cole sitting on the floor, legs sprawled, back braced against the wall like it’s the only thing holding him up. His knuckles are red, his eyes rimmed darker. His whole body looks like it’s caved in on itself.
“I’m not okay,” I whisper.
“I know,” he says softly. “Me neither.”
I sink down beside him. He doesn’t touch me. He waits until I lean into him, resting my head on his shoulder, and he threads his fingers through mine. No demands. No pressure. Just being there for each other.
And for the first time since the shouting started, I let myself breathe.
* * *
When I open my eyes, the apartment glows. Morning light spills across the hardwood, warm and soft. The kind that makes everything feel gentler than it really is. I don’t move at first. I just breathe.
Cole’s arm lies heavy over my waist, his fingers slack against my stomach. His chest rises and falls against my back in a slow, even rhythm, but I remember what his breathing sounded like in the dark—ragged, like every inhale cost him something as he pleaded for me to come out of the bathroom. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.
Neither of us said much after I came out of the bathroom. Words felt too sharp, like they’d cut us if we tried to hold them. So we didn’t. We just collapsed into each other, curled up on the couch like shipwreck survivors clinging to the same piece of driftwood. Later, we found our way to bed without even undressing, too drained to do anything but hold each other close.
Now, in the quiet aftermath, the world feels muffled. Like it’s wrapped in cotton. My body aches in that dull, wrung-out way that follows nights spent crying, shaking, remembering too much, but my chest doesn’t feel like it’s caving in anymore. And that’s something.
