Page 23 of The Vagabond

MAXINE

A fter the door clicks shut behind him, everything inside me shatters. It’s not loud or cinematic. Just quiet. Like bones cracking under too much pressure. Like something breaking that was already held together by threadbare hope and a whispered lie.

I don’t move. I can’t . My knees lock. My chest caves in. My breath catches like it forgot how to be a living thing. Because he’s gone. Again. And I let him touch me like he had a right to do so.

I stumble back like I’ve been punched, and my shoulder hits the edge of my bookshelf, hard enough to bruise.

“I’m so fucking stupid,” I whisper. The words tremble out of me like they’re afraid of their own truth. “I let him touch me. I let him touch me?—”

I don’t make it to the wall before the scream rips out of me. It’s feral. Ugly. Real.

I grab the lamp and smash it against the floor. Glass explodes. Sparks. Maybe I’ll burn this whole fucking house down. Maybe I should.

I claw at the framed photos—Mia smiling, Sophia laughing— rip them from the walls and throw them like they were the ones who left me in that goddamn room. Like they were the ones who promised to save me and never came back.

And I am screaming. Not just with my voice, but with my entire body. The sound of betrayal doesn’t come from the mouth. It comes from the ribs. From the place where hope curled up and died.

“I begged for him!” I cry, voice raw. “I begged, and he left me there!”

I fall to my knees, glass crunching beneath me. Blood paints the floor, but I don’t care. There’s something in me that wants to crawl out. Something dark and desperate and done.

“I needed him,” I whisper. “And he knew. He knew what they were doing to me. He knew what would happen to me.”

My palms slap the floor. Again. Again. Until my skin splits and my vision goes black at the edges.

“I waited.” My voice cracks. “I waited for you, Saxon.”

The night outside is silent. Mocking. Even the moon won’t look at me.

I crawl toward the window, dragging blood with me, and throw it open like it might offer air, but there’s not enough of it, and all I can do is choke on my own breath. And then I scream. Into the wind. Into the sky. Into the void that never once screamed back for me.

“I died in that place!” I sob. “And no one fucking came!”

My scream rips apart the night, but no one answers.

I press my forehead to the cold windowsill and sob like the broken girl I’ve spent a year pretending I’m not. The girl who was bought. Beaten. Passed around. Forgotten.

And still— still —I let the man who abandoned me press his mouth to mine like he had any right to taste the wreckage he left behind .

“I can’t do this,” I whisper to no one. “I can’t carry all of this anymore. I’m so tired.”

My body shakes. My teeth chatter. I curl into myself like I can make myself small enough to disappear.

But I don’t disappear. I stay. Alone. Broken.

Bleeding on hardwood. And when the silence finally settles again, when the screaming stops and the only thing left is the throb of my pulse and the sticky drag of tears down my cheeks—I understand something.

This isn’t rock bottom. This is the ground.

There’s no more falling. Only existing in the wreckage.

And learning how to breathe in the aftermath.

I don't know how long I’ve been lying here.

The air feels thick, too heavy to breathe. My face is pressed to the cold floorboards, tears drying in sticky trails down my cheeks. The sharp sting of glass cuts into my skin, but even that feels far away now—like it’s happening to someone else. Some other girl. The one who broke.

My body’s shaking; it’s that kind of trembling that comes when the soul has had enough. When grief eats through the bone and leaves you hollow. My throat is raw. My fists are bloodied. And I’m still here.

I stare at the edge of the rug. There’s blood on it. I think it’s mine. Maybe not. I can’t bring myself to care.

Then—the front door creaks open. I don’t move. I can’t move. Maybe it’s Saxon again. Maybe it’s death. At this point, I welcome either.

But then I hear Mia’s voice.

“Max?” It’s soft. Unsure. And then louder. “Maxine?”

Her footsteps quicken, and I can feel her panic before I even see her face .

The moment she finds me, everything stops.

“Oh my God.” Her voice breaks like a bone. “No, no, no—Maxine—what happened?”

She drops to the floor beside me. I can’t lift my head. I can’t even speak. All I can do is lie there like roadkill while the person I love most in this world sees me like this.

Wrecked. Ruined. Unrecognizable.

Her hands hover, afraid to touch me—afraid I might shatter further.

But then she gathers me into her arms anyway, pulling me against her chest like she can hold the pieces of me together.

And that’s when I fall apart. Again. Only this time, it’s louder.

Uglier. It’s the sound of a sister watching her sister disintegrate in her arms. I cling to her shirt like a lifeline.

My body convulses with sobs, and I hate that she has to see me like this.

I hate that she’s holding the broken version of me—the one that still smells like Saxon, like regret, like trauma. Like a past I can’t outrun.

“I’m sorry,” I sob. “I’m sorry, Mia, I’m so sorry?—”

She presses her lips to my hair and holds me tighter, like she can squeeze the pain out of me with her love.

“Don’t,” she whispers. “Don’t you dare apologize. Not to me.”

“We never should have left that night,” I gasp, chest heaving. “I was the one who made the decision to leave; I wanted to, and I hate myself for it.”

Her arms tighten around me.

“I hate where we ended up—” My voice breaks. “I still feel the guilt in my skin. I can’t wash it off.”

Mia rocks me gently, her own tears falling onto my cheek.

“You didn’t deserve any of this,” she whispers. “None of it. Guilt and sorrow don’t make you weak, Max. They make you human.”

I shake my head, but I can’t stop crying. Can’t stop breaking.

“I wanted to die,” I admit, voice so low it’s almost a secret. “ Back then. In that place. Every day that I woke up, I wished I hadn’t.”

She pulls me closer, fingers threading through my hair, voice cracking.

“I know, baby. I know.”

“I hate this.”

And then—I scream.

It’s buried in her chest, muffled by cotton and arms and safety, but it rips out of me like a death rattle. I scream until my voice is gone. Until all that’s left are sobs and hiccups and the sound of my heart splitting open.

She doesn’t let go. Not once. She holds me through it. Like she always does. And when the storm finally ebbs, when my throat is raw and my body limp, she wipes my face with the sleeve of her shirt and kisses my temple.

“I’ve got you,” she whispers. “No matter how broken you feel… I’ve got you.”

And somehow, despite the blood, despite the wreckage, despite the gaping hole inside me?—

That’s the first time I believe I might survive this.