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“No. You’re doing it to me.”
My voice broke. I felt it snap in half right there in the center of the room. Every wall I’d built. Every mask I’d glued into place. The fortress I’d kept people out of for years.
“Vivi,” she said softly, stepping around the therapist like the woman was just a piece of furniture. “You should tell them. They need to understand. You can’t keep burying it.”
I shook my head, fists clenched. “They don’t need to understand anything.”
“Vivi—”
“I said no!”
And just like that, I saw it in her eyes—pity, yes. But also fear. And heartbreak. And a lifetime of shared silence finally reaching its expiration date.
“You think I’m self-destructing?” I said, laughing bitterly through the burn in my throat. “You’re wrong. I’m already gone. That’s the part none of you seem to get. I’m not spiraling. I’ve already hit the ground.”
Madame Odette took a step forward then, her cane tapping sharply against the floor.
“You have not,” she said. Her voice cut like glass. “But you will, if you keep running from what’s chasing you.”
I turned to her slowly, trembling with rage—or grief. Maybe both. “And what, pray tell, is that?”
No one answered.
But I saw it.
I saw it in their eyes.
They knew.
Whether Emmaline had said it out loud or just let enough slip, I couldn’t be sure, but the damage was done. She’d unearthed just enough of my secret for them to smell the rot.
She didn’t say the words. Not exactly. She didn’t have to.
She dangled the truth in front of them—like a cracked door in a burning house—and let them draw their own conclusions.
And they had.
I could see it in every tilted head, every shift in posture, every look they tried not to give each other.
They didn’t know the details. But now they knew there were details to be known. And that? That was betrayal enough.
I backed up toward the door, needing air, needing space, needing anything but this.
“You think this is help?” I said, voice hoarse. “You think cornering me in my own apartment and ambushing me with a goddamn therapist is love?”
“Vivi—”
“No,” I cut in, my gaze sweeping the circle. “This was never about love. This was about making yourselves feel better. About turning me into a project you can fix.”
Jessa took a step forward. “We just don’t want to lose you.”
“Maybe it’s too late,” I said. And then I opened the door and walked out.
I didn’t wait for them to follow.
I didn’t care if they did.
I stomped down the stairs like the building was on fire, breath tight, pulse thunderous in my ears. Every floor I descended peeled another layer off me—anger, humiliation, grief—until I hit the bar again, hollowed out and shaking.