Page 49 of Cruel When He Smiles

Because he’s sitting too close and his eyes are too calm. Because I’m one wrong sentence away from either breaking down or breaking him, and I don’t know which one scares me more.

I ignore what I want to say and just glare at the floor before answering, “I’m not in the mood.”

Liam shifts in his seat next to me. “I can go,” he says gently.

I jerk my head toward him, shocked—it almost sounded sincere.

Almost.

Dr. Ellis watches us both. “Nate, is that what you want?”

I open my mouth… then I close it again.

I don’t know.

I do want him gone. I want distance and space to breathe, but I also want to scream at him and drag him down into the mess he left me in. I want to ask him why he said those things. Why he spoke to me like that. Why I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.

I stare straight ahead, my jaw locked and voice flat. “I want to get this over with, please.”

The session drones on after that. Questions about control and triggers. About anger, patterns, and self-awareness. I answer in half-sentences while Liam plays polite, and through it all, I sit there with my hands clenched in my sleeves and my heart trying to claw out of my ribcage.

I know I’m not okay. I know I’m fucking unraveling, and I know if he gets me alone again, I won’t know how to say no.

I grip the edge of my chair with white knuckles, heart stuttering like it’s trying to fight its way out. Dr. Ellis asks me a question, but I don’t hear it. I can’t.

The sound fades, the world narrows, and I’m not here anymore.

I’m somewhere dark and deathly quiet. Somewhere I used to go when my mother’s voice got too loud, when her smile stopped meaning safety and started meaning I’d done something wrong. When I didn’t know what I’d done, but knew I’d pay for it.

I sit there, completely still, trying to disappear into the chair. My fingers dig into the wood beneath me. My teeth grind so hard I feel it in my ears, and everything inside me screams to run.

Run, Nate.

She’s coming.

Hide. Hide. Hide.

…but I can’t.

My body won’t move, my mouth won’t open, and it’s like I’ve been dropped into a version of myself that doesn’t respond to commands—like the connection between thought and action has been severed.

Run.

I can’t.

Speak.

The buzzing in my chest sharpens into static. A deafening hum just beneath the surface, vibrating through my skin, my muscles,every inch of me that’s supposed to feel grounded. But I’m not grounded; I’m weightless and heavy at the same time.

Dr. Ellis’s voice fades in and out. Her words are underwater, muffled and distant, as if someone knocked me out and shoved me beneath the surface of myself. I hear Liam speaking. I hear his voice cut through the silence with that careful, calculated pitch he uses when he wants people to lean in instead of run. But he doesn’t know I’m already gone. Doesn’t know I’ve left the room, the campus, the fucking year.

No one notices… not until the chair next to me scrapes back.

The sound cuts through the fog like a blade, and my whole body flinches. A full, visceral jolt that yanks me forward and rattles the bones I thought had turned to stone. I don’t mean to make a sound, but my breath punches out of me too fast, a soft, choked noise that doesn’t belong in this room.

Both heads turn.

Dr. Ellis is the first to speak, her brows furrowed. “Nate?”