TORN BY ECSTASY BY Vail blackRose

Chapter 15

Chapter 15

It's supposed to be a usual morning, but nothing feels usual anymore. Not after him. Not after the last incident. Everything inside me has been stirred up, flipped upside down. That familiar voice of caution—my inner aunty voice that always guided me, mocked me—has gone silent, replaced by something darker, something more primal. Now, the only voice I hear is my own—raw, uncertain, broken.

The old self. The one I barely recognize.

I sit in class, staring at the lecturer as he drones on about something I can't focus on. The words are just noise, background to the storm that rages in my mind. Fear wraps itself around me like a second skin. It crawls beneath my flesh, tangling around my throat, squeezing until I can barely breathe.

I wasn't always like this.

But even that thought feels weak now, barely a whisper of who I used to be.

Who are you now?

I don't know. I flinch at every sound, feel my heart race every time I'm alone, my skin prickling as if he's always there. Waiting. Watching. HIM. His presence has haunted every corner of my life since the moment he stepped into it, like a shadow I can't escape. Even when I close my eyes, he's there, his words lingering, taunting me.

"Be a good girl, and you'll end up exactly where you want. Be a bad girl, and you'll end up where I want. And trust me, Zara, you won't be able to handle that."

I still feel his grip on me—how he held me that night, his voice low, smooth, terrifyingly calm. I remember the way my body went rigid, every muscle freezing in place as his fingers tightened, just enough to remind me that I wasn't in control. I never was.

"You're mine. You've been mine from the moment I saw you."

He said it so casually, as if it were a fact of life, as if he owned me. And in that moment, I could feel myself unraveling, like the pieces of me were slowly slipping away. All my life, I had fought against being controlled—first at my uncle's house, where every decision was made for me, where I was stripped of my freedom. But HE... he introduced a new kind of fear. The kind that seeps into your bones.

Physical fear. Sexual fear.

Fear that he could take anything he wanted from me, and I wouldn't be able to stop him.

I used to be strong, I remind myself, trying to remember the girl I was before the accident. Before the nightmares. The girl who could command a room with her voice, who captained her team to victory. The girl who didn't bow to anyone. She knew who she was. She didn't let anyone dictate her life, her choices, her body.

She's still in there, right?

But then I hear his voice again, that mocking tone that makes my skin crawl, that reminds me I'm no longer in control of my life.

"Should I use one of the words your novel heroes like to use? Sunshine?" He smiled when he said it, tilting his head, like this was all a game—one that only he understood. And that's what scared me the most—he enjoyed this. He enjoyed the way I shrank beneath his words, the way I froze when he touched me. He held all the power, and he knew it.

The girl I used to be. She would have fought back. She would have spat in his face, thrown his words right back at him, told him to go to hell. She would have made sure he knew that no one owned her. She was strong. Fearless. Untouchable.

But now?

Now, I feel like I'm made of glass. Fragile. Every time he looks at me, I feel the cracks deepening, the fractures spreading beneath the surface. One day, I know I'm going to shatter. I can't run from him. I can't escape the way he's invaded my life, my mind, my body. And the worst part is, he knows it.