Page 86 of Vengeful Melodies

What if it’s not about the stalker I know?

What if it’s about him?

What if someone remembers what I tried so hard to forget?

How did he find me?

I shake. My arms wrap around my legs tighter. My nails dig into my skin just to anchor myself. I focus on the ache, on the bite of it, because it’s better than the memory crawling up my spine like a hand I can’t escape.

I don’t want to tell them.

I don’t want them to look at me differently.

I don’t want to be pitied. Broken. Fragile.

I’ve spent too long pretending I’m not still that girl in the blue hoodie, trembling in a bathroom, trying not to exist.

But part of me still is.

The part that panics when the lights go out. The part that shuts down when someone raises their voice. The part that hears a text message ding and flinches like a gun just cocked.

I bury my face in my knees and breathe through it.

In. Out. In. Out.

This is mine.

This moment.

This pain.

But so is the love I’ve found.

So is the safety I feel in their arms—even when I can’t explain why I need it. Maybe I’m not safe yet. But maybe I’m getting closer

Chapter Thirty Six

Bradley

David’s left eye socket is as hollow as his goddamn soul.

He doesn’t cover it anymore—wears it like a badge of honor. Just a raw, sunken crater of skin where Dreya buried a corkscrew and twisted. No patch. No prosthetic. Just flesh and that black pit of nothingness staring back at the world like a warning.

“She didn’t even flinch,” he mutters around a mouthful of whiskey, lips curling catching my eyes on the empty abyss. “Locked eyes with me. Like shewantedto watch it happen. That girl knewexactlyhow to hurt me.”

I know the look he’s talking about.

I’ve seen it too.

“She was a teenager,” I say, but it feels like a lie coming out of my mouth. A pathetic attempt at justifying how we all got here.

David just shrugs, like her age didn’t matter then and sure as hell doesn’t matter now. “She was mine first,” he says, like it’s something sacred. “She learned to survive from me. You were just the soft place she landed after.”

I clench my jaw so hard it hurts. “You abused her.”

“And you betrayed her,” David fires back with a smile that doesn’t reach the gaping void in his skull. “Don’t pretend you’re the better man, Bradley. We both broke her. I just didn’t lie about it.”

It hits. It hitshard.