Submerge

R E C L A M A T I O N

M A S O N

I had imagined what it would feel like, hearing that Marco was going to jail or that they found that drunken man who ripped me apart.

I had imagined feeling lighter somehow, knowing that he'd pay for what he did to me. That he'd finally be out of my life.

The charges had been dropped.

I don't know what I expected. I should have known this was going to happen.

"It doesn't matter," I heard myself say. My voice sounded so far away, so detached.

None of it mattered. Nothing had changed. Nothing was going to change.

But later, when Nathan had left the room and the darkness of the hospital settled in around me, something else started to take shape inside of me.

At first, it was small, a seed of anger, buried deep in the pit of my stomach.

Then it started to grow, twisting and coiling through me, until it was all I could think about.

Rage. Cold, burning rage.

Marco had walked free. And Jacob... Jacob was still out there, too. They had both destroyed me, left me broken, bleeding, and no one was going to do anything about it.

But I could.

I lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling, my mind spinning with thoughts I hadn't dared let myself think before. The police weren't going to stop them.

The system had failed. It had always been broken. But there was one thing I still had. One thing they couldn't take from me.

Control.

I hadn't had control over anything since the moment Marco and Jacob came into my life.

They had taken everything from me—my dignity, my body, my sense of self. I had been helpless, powerless to stop them.

If the system wouldn't make them pay, I would.

I had nothing left to lose. Nothing left to fight for.

I wasn't going to die a victim.

I wasn't going to die feeling powerless.

I was going to make them feel what I had felt—helpless, terrified, at the mercy of someone else.

Time moved differently after that night. Weeks blurred together as I went through the motions of recovery. Eventually, they released me from the hospital.

Physically, I was healing—the bruises faded, the stitches were removed—but inside, the storm raged on.

I sat in the passenger seat of Nathan's car, staring blankly out the window as the city blurred past. 

He had dropped his semester to take me home, though he hadn't really said it outright. 

I knew. The way he lingered in the doorway, the way he was always around now—it was because of me. 

The weight of it sat heavy in my chest, another reason to feel like a burden. 

The hospital had released me earlier that morning, and now, I was heading home—not that it felt like home anymore. 

The air inside the car was thick with an uneasy silence, only broken by the occasional sound of Nathan drumming his fingers against the steering wheel.

"You hungry?" Nathan asked, his voice careful, like he was afraid one wrong word would shatter the fragile peace between us.