Toxic

Toxic: Chapter #34 | Bewitched At Midnight

Zach's Past

☣ ♡ ☣

⚠️Warning: ⚠️

This chapter contains mentions of past abuse (physical and sexual), torture, rough and painful sex, choking, hair pulling, asphyxiation until unconsciousness, non-consensual somnophilia, degradation, humiliation, and brief flashbacks. Take care!

☣ ♡ ☣

I could barely contain my excitement about my swim with Giana, but I also felt a bundle of nerves settle in my stomach like a lead weight. Don't get me wrong, I was absolutely thrilled to spend time with it being just the two of us, but another part of me worried that I'd ask and she would say no. I know I'd be heartbroken if she did. It took a lot of distracting myself in order to push away the what ifs that kept trying to invade my mind along with all the words I could hear in my mind, most of them spoken in Jayden's voice.

Giana was not Jayden. Logically I knew that she wasn't, but emotionally and psychologically, I was struggling to separate the feelings I had for her. I tried to do what my mom said, and reminded myself that I had a crush on Jayden, loved Lu, liked Addie, and was infatuated with Jayden again, but when it came to Giana? Well, I was in love. There was no question about it.

With that fact in mind, I was able to push away the memories, the pain, the abuse, the trauma. Of course, it wasn't a permanent solution by any means, and I knew I would be dealing with the trauma for the rest of my life. However, it was getting easier to differentiate between what was and what wasn't. With each day that passed I was healing and doing so much better being surrounded by people I loved and who loved me. Giana loved me and whether or not it would ever be more than friendship, I just knew I was forever grateful to have met her, to know her and to call her friend. I would forever owe my life to her just the same no matter what we were to each other.

The courage to ask for what I wanted, had taken a while to build up especially after the reaction Jayden always had to me asking for things. He would tell me what I wanted didn't matter, that I didn't matter and that I should just be grateful that he kept me clothed, kept a roof over my head and found me fuckable as according to him in his own words:

"Fucking is the only thing you're good for, Zach. You know that don't you bitch? You're just a little slut, a whore, a fuck hole. You're just a hot piece of ass for me to use as I see fit. I can't help it that you had all those naive, romantic and childish hopes for what this would be. It's simple really. I saw you, wanted you and now I have you. You're mine. Say it, my pretty little slut! SAY IT!"

He would slap my face hard enough to bruise, thread his fingers through my hair and pull as hard as he could. Then he would wrap his other hand around my throat, cutting off my ability to breathe because he loved how tight I would squeeze his cock. By constricting my air flow, he felt even more control and then he would fuck me hard enough to bruise my ass and thighs. He squeezed my throat until it bruised and then some, waiting to let go until I had passed out and then he'd keep using me while I was unconscious.

I shuddered at the ghostly feeling of his hands on my body. I had shed a tear or five the other day when I saw that the last and darkest bruise that he had left on me before I tried to take my life had finally faded. I had hoped with time, which heals most wounds, that just like the bruise faded, so would the pain, the trauma, the fear and the uncertainty among other things.

As I thought about Giana, from the day we met to the night before when I asked her to go swimming with me, I knew that there was hope. She was the lighthouse that had guided me safely out of the eye of the storm, rescued me from the bowels of Davy Jones's Locker, stood beside me when the dark thoughts crept in, held my hand, held me, read to me, recited to me and made me feel normal. Despite the chaos, the tempest that was my life, she was the harbor where I was anchored, the winds and tumultuous waves no match for her grounding and mooring countenance.