--right there. He's right there looking at you from a mirror you can't see. He's standing right there. He sees you. There's blood, so much blood, and you're trapped. Hands around your neck, gripping--gripping tight. And bruises. So, so many--

I gasped violently and sat upright, taking shallow breaths as my hands fluttered around my neck, and my skin, trying to push the wayward, haunting grip away. But there wasn't anything holding onto me in the dark. Nothing at all.

I was all alone here, in this room--in Ryder's guest room.

"Fuck," I panted, swallowed, and scurried back till my back hit the headboard. "F-Fuck."

The darkness around me was too overwhelming. It was going to kill me, I knew it was, so I reached out with flailing hands and switched on the side lamp after a few feeble and desperate attempts.

The faint glow was enough to convince me that there was no one else here in the room with me. Of course, there wasn't. That didn't mean I couldn't still feel the cold harsh fingers wrapping around my throat and squeezing with an intent so deadly--like someone wanted me dead.

Santiago. Micheal. The people in white coats who'd locked me in that underground cellar. One of them--all of them--wanted me gone.

It was too much, too fast, too sudden.

I inhaled fast and then inhaled again. I had fallen asleep somehow. I didn't know how I'd fallen asleep and I didn't know how I'd fallen asleep in the same pale pink dress that I'd worn to that diner--inside that restroom where Michael had touched it, placed his hands on it, grasped it in his clutches and tried to--

"Michael," I whispered, then whispered and whispered and whispered until that was the only name I could think of and make sense of. MichaelMichaelMichael. He was here.

I gripped onto my pulled-up knees, dug my nails into them, and pressed my face between them, a whimper escaping my lips because he was here,  wasn't he? He was here. And Alyssa had seen it all.

Alyssa was crying.

Alyssa had lost it all, all her happiness in just a handful of seconds. Without any warning, without anything; she'd just been there and then she'd lost everything.

When I could absolutely not stay in that bed a second longer, when it felt like even the soft bedding was scratching every bare inch of my skin, when it felt like I was going to bleed dry any second now, I scrambled up from the bed, taking in stuttering breaths, and headed for the closed bedroom door.

The hallway outside was cold and dark and empty. Where's Ryder? I frantically looked around as if I expected to see him right at the corner, near the grand staircase, anywhere. The only source of light was the sliver of moonlight peeking from the slightly ajar balcony doors, cascading across the hallway almost hauntingly.

I continued walking, wincing as bare feet met the cool floor, I didn't want to go downstairs but I wished desperately to find warmth--some warmth--or maybe just Ryder.

You can't tell him that, a sad, incredibly sad voice whispered in my ears, in my head--my own inner voice, you can't tell him how you feel anymore, can you? He hates you, Alice. You're exactly what he'd thought of you at first.

Stupid. A fool. And he'd said it--what had he said that night when I'd gotten drunk and vomited outside his car? You just need some goddamn alcohol and you'd do anything anyone says.

"Ryder," I whispered under my breath but I didn't look around searching for him this time. Maybe he wasn't even here in the penthouse anymore. I'd seen him walk away from me. I'd heard him slam one of the doors on me. I'd heard him unleashing all his trapped, restrained fury out in that room--I'd heard the loud thuds, shatters, glass breaking and I'd been scared but unable to move from that couch. And still, I thought he'd be here? For me?

I stopped in front of the doors at the end of the hallway--the familiar door I'd seen past only once, and I just stopped. I stopped and pressed my back into the dark wood. I stopped and slid down against it until I was sitting on the floor and until the cool tiles felt numb to the touch and just a little comforting. The only thing that seemed comforting.

I swallowed and looked around with wide eyes, pressed my fingers into the floor, curled them into my palms. I didn't have my phone because Ryder hadn't given it back to me yet. Would Alyssa have replied to my texts? Would she have told everyone--Mom, Andy, everyone--about everything by now?

I was terrified and I needed--I needed something. I needed water because my throat felt parched and tight. And I needed Ryder's jacket around me, snug around my shoulders like a heated blanket, because I felt so so cold and I didn't know where it was. Had I lost it? Why couldn't I remember what happened after Ryder had left me standing there in his lounge, stormed away because he'd been angry with me, and before I'd fallen asleep on the guestroom bed?

Why, I thought, why was I here?

Seconds ticked by, slow and fast at the very same time. I could see the balcony doors across the hallway and I stared at the moonlight, the hidden glow like a silver promise. It seemed tempting, but I didn't want to go out there in the cold. I wanted to curl in on myself right here. I wanted to forget the nightmare that still held me in its grasp.

Because it's not a nightmare, I told myself, it's real. All of this is real.

Closing my eyes briefly, I saw Alyssa's face flashing right before my eyes and I opened them with another panicked gasp. I couldn't, for the life of me, erase the picture of her and the look on her face the last time I saw her. Which had just been last night, I reminded myself because I was forgetting and that was the last thing I needed right now.

Where would she be now? At the hospital with Michael? Had the diner staff called the police and were they swarming the scene in that very tiny restroom? Had Alyssa called Mom and Andy, had she phoned anyone at all, when her life was broken into tiny pieces by now?

Would she call off her wedding? Would she believe Michael if he said it had all been me and not him, and would she still marry him?

Would she forever hate me and despise me and loathe the sight of me?

I closed my eyes and pressed my back against the hardness of the door behind me, pressed and pressed into it until it left a stinging pain in my spine. The skin just above my left wrist itched like a warning. I traced my fingers over the barely noticeable scar there and wondered.

Would things be different--even a little different if I'd not been such a coward and told Alyssa about this all the other times when I'd had a chance?

Does it even matter, I asked myself, when it would've ended the same way either way?

"Querida."

I snapped open my eyes, saw Ryder crouching before me with a confused--startingly bewildered look on his face, and I jerked forward in surprise. He flinched back when I nearly knocked my forehead into his, narrowly avoiding the impact.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." I rambled, then swallowed because my throat was still so achy and dry and trying to click shut. "I-I didn't see you."

He stared at me oddly. I only saw him reaching out towards me a little too late and I flinched a little too violently, my elbow knocking into the door behind me, for it to be considered normal. He froze, pulled his hand back, and then stood up like I hadn't recoiled from his touch at all. "Come. What are you doing out here?"

I blinked and stared at his outstretched hand towards me--a noticeable distance from me, almost like a...like a choice. He was giving me the choice to take his hand or not take his hand--and he wouldn't mind either way, not right now.

I stared up at his disheveled bedhead, at the plain, rumpled t-shirt he wore that was the same dark shade as his sweats--the same kind of dark as his tattoos. He looked awake like he'd been tossing and turning in his bed too.

I tried searching for any signs of the pure, unadulterated anger and hatred I'd seen on him last, and the one he'd taken out in that closed room, but couldn't see any--save for the properly snug bandages around his knuckles of both hands.

"Up, querida." He repeated patiently, too patiently, and my heart ached.

"I didn't go inside," I told him, heart beating wildly in my chest.

He glanced at the closed door behind me, the expression on his face not changing, and then looked back at me. "I know. You didn't the first time you came here either."

I tried to remember the first time I'd stopped in front of this very closed room, in front of the cozy library, but I couldn't right then. I was bone-deep tired. But I was also too scared to fall asleep again.

"You left the door open that first time." He added.

I nodded slowly because that made sense and stood up. And I hated that I hadn't taken his hand, couldn't touch it for the life of me (not right now, not right then), but he didn't seem the slightest bit perturbed by it. He only pulled his hand back like he hadn't even noticed the small, hesitant rejection.

"I couldn't sleep." I said, refusing to look away from him before adding, "I was." Scared. I couldn't make the word come out of my mouth, though.

Ryder gave me a look that told me he understood enough, but he didn't say it. Didn't point out the obvious--like the tremble of my hands or the wide-eyed scared look on my face. He only stepped aside and pushed open the door behind me.

"Come inside," was what he told me, and it was a gentle request. Another choice.

I swallowed and followed him.

The room was dark and quiet and warm--the first thing I noticed. There was fire, almost steadily dying flames,  crackling in the glass fireplace, indicating that someone had been here not too long ago. Someone who'd forgotten to douse the flames before leaving.

"Was...was someone here before?" I asked tentatively.

Ryder walked to the floor-to-ceiling windows and pulled aside the translucent drapes. Fresh moonlight cascaded inside and I shuddered.

"I was." He said. Plain and simple.

I knew that I should've been feeling more right then, feeling something other than what I currently felt. Excited, that he'd willingly let me into a safe, warm part of him? Relieved, that he wasn't pushing me away?

I couldn't make myself feel any of it, though. Instead, I felt dirty. I couldn't take another step past the plush carpet and towards the dark shelves or the huge emerald couch that seemed to be calling my name. I couldn't because it was a feeling so visceral--knowing--because I was dirty and I felt dirty and I knew it would taint the peace, the safety, the warmth here.

What I needed was to leave right now.

What I wanted was an absolutely different thing--one that I didn't deserve.

I looked up at Ryder and he was still standing by the windows, gaze fixed on the city lights outside. I wished he'd look back. I wished he'd just say something.

When the slow, panicky feeling started increasing within me, started making my heart race feverishly, I looked around in search of something. I needed--

And then my eyes got stuck to halfway-dead sunflowers in a glass of water by one of the shelves. And it was so close to all the paperbacks, so close that anyone could tip it over--an accident that could ruin all the pages and soak them wet. But it was there still. The sunflowers were there, carefully placed there, in a desperate attempt to keep them alive.

I stared at them. I went over to them and touched the withering petals with gentle fingers. One fell off and into the water. I blinked.

"Did you keep these here?" I asked, my voice a stilted whisper.

There was silence and then I felt his heat right behind me. I turned around reluctantly and he was there, right there, and the rush of relief within me was too much. Too much.

"I tried." He glanced over my shoulder at the sunflowers, expression carefully blank. Like he hadn't cared enough to keep them alive but he'd still cared to keep them here. Here, of all places. "But it was only just a waste of time."

I wiped my palms over my dress. "This is yours. This library is...yours?"

"Yes."

"I thought, before when I first saw it, that it was someone else's. That you had it built for someone else."

He gave me the same odd look he'd given me back in the hallway, before heading for the chaise couch. "Come," he said.

I followed him.

When I was seated on it with the grounding feel of the cool leather against my back, and when he'd sat down right in front of me, one leg crossed and placing both his elbows on his knees, he added, "I don't like having people in my house, Alice. Only Rafael is allowed to visit, and I barely tolerate him at times. Even then, he doesn't ever come in here. No one's stepped inside this room apart from me, not even the cleaners."

He said it so simply, so honestly, that it struck me off guard for a moment. It struck me. It left me stunned.

"But you let me in here." I pulled up my knees to my chest, closer and closer, and noticed that even subconsciously I was trying to place space between us.

Ryder placed his hands on either side of him, leaning back as he eyed me carefully. "You wanted to see it."

As if it was that simple. It wasn't that simple.

"So you just let me in?" I asked in disbelief, throat so achingly dry that I wanted to retch. "That doesn't make sense."

"Does it have to?"

"Yes."

"Okay." He nodded once and then said, "I let you in because I find it...difficult at times, most of the time, to say no to you."

My heart thundered inside my chest. What came out of my mouth was even uglier. "You found it hard to say no to me because you were pitying me there outside. You think...You think I'm some hopeless, broken thing that--that you can't say no to."

His expression didn't change much, only his stare intensified. "I didn't say that."

"You don't have to say it for me to know!" I snapped, then reared back, swallowing heavily. "You think I'm b-broken."

"I don't think that."

"You think--"

"I'll tell you what I think," he interrupted me, voice low and steady. "I'll tell you all that I think of you after you tell me all that you haven't."

My throat clicked shut.

"Tell me about him, querida."

"What is there to know?" I hissed. "You saw it! You saw all of it! Do you want me to tell you everything that happened there, everything that happened when you weren't there?"

The only hint of him being affected by my words was a soft tick in his jaw.

"I was drunk one day, Ryder, and I kissed him." I clenched my teeth to stop the words, to stop them, but they wouldn't stop. "Why do you want to know it? Why do you want me to say it? I made a mistake!"

He remained silent, though he tensed.

"I made a move on my sister's boyfriend when they'd just ended their relationship." My words soured, lips curling in hatred and distaste. "I made a foolish mistake. I convinced myself I had something going on with him until it was too late. I wanted him to want me and I wanted to be noticed by him because I was a stupid fool!"

Ryder exhaled slowly, dark blue eyes fixed on me. "He forced you--"

"He didn't!" I heard my voice raising. Ryder didn't even bat an eye at it. "I did it! I did this! I used to beg him."

He blinked then, his all too restrained composure finally--finally cracking.

"I used to beg him to--"

"Querida." He said, stopped, then seemed like he was trying his hardest to work his way through the next words. His voice came out stilted, thick with the lilt of an accent, eyes going flinty and hard. "Don't finish that sentence."

"Didn't you ask me to tell you everything?" I asked him, pushed my knees down and leaned towards him. "You want me to tell you everything and then you don't listen. You say you want to know everything but you don't. No one does, Ryder! No one fucking does!"

"Querida."

"Stop calling me that!" I shouted at him, felt it piercing my heart so deep when I saw something painful, dark--hidden--shuttering over his eyes.

He fell silent.

My skin grew hot, burning. I ran my hands over my face and squeezed my eyes close because I was losing it, losing everything, losing every bit of it, and my hands kept shaking, and RyderRyderRyder.

I was hurting him. I was doing it all on purpose. I was sick in the head because you're not supposed to hurt everyone else when you're hurting. I shook my head, gripped my hair with my fingers and felt the sting on my scalp. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. God, I'm sorry."

Ryder didn't say anything. Until he did. And then he was there, right there, hands gently trying to pry my fingers away from my hair. I didn't let him. I tried snatching myself back because his touch was too hot, warm, burning, and I was drowning. He didn't let go though, instead, he held my wrists in a firm grip.

"You can shout at me all you want, Alice, but I'm not letting you hurt yourself."

I shook my head again and again and again and I tried to speak but all that came out was a sob--a dry, dirty sob with no tears because I wasn't crying because I was exhausted. Tired. Terrified.

"Alice."

"I'm sorry."

"Okay." He said softly, then pulled on my hands again, engulfing the fingers of both my hands with his palms. "Look at me. Will you look at me?"

I tried squeezing my fingers together but he held tight. "I," I choked, looked at him and saw the heavy concern in his eyes, the furrow between his brows, and the tight way he held his jaw. "I don't want this."

He didn't lean close but he didn't pull away either. "I won't hurt you. You know that. I promised you that I'd keep you safe."

"But you didn't."

"I know."

"You didn't keep me safe." The words tasted like poison in my mouth. The words tasted like acid--like something that was aimed to kill.

The scowl deepened on his face. "I know, Alice."

I inhaled sharply, leaning just a little closer to him until one of my knees bumped into his arm. "Querida," I whispered, desperate, pleading, apologizing--and I knew I wasn't saying it right the way he did, but I needed. It felt like I was slipping away.

His frown softened just a fraction. He tugged on my wrists and I crept even closer to him. He let go of one of my hands. I wanted to ask him to trace his fingers over my throat, over the bare skin that felt like it was burning and it had been burning ever since I left that diner, because there were bruises there and I was scared to look at them, feel them, see them until they faded away.

My voice broke. "Ryder."

He pushed a tangled, loose lock of my hair behind one ear. "I know, querida."

A harsh breath left my lips. "I'm sorry."

I watched him swallow. I watched his scowl deepening. "I know. I forgive you."

And it was the tiniest of reliefs. It was a breath of air, a moment of reassurement of getting one thing right at least. He said he'd forgiven me. I wasn't drowning anymore.

The hem of my dress slipped over my knees and I shuddered violently. "I don't want this. I don't--" I shuddered again, goosebumps rising almost painfully over my arms. I tugged on the awful ugly dress I still wore, at the awful fabric that smelled like wine and unfamiliar cologne and MichaelMichaelMichael. "He touched this. I don't want it, I don't want it. I need to--Please."

"Alice."

I snapped my eyes up to his, my chin trembling, but still no tears came. I felt empty and dried up, yet I could still feel myself shaking. "I told him no. I didn't want him to...I asked him not to. But he kept--He didn't listen to me. You've got to know that, please. He wasn't listening to me, Ryder. I'm not--I'm not broken, Ryder. No one's going to believe me. They won't believe me and they won't hear me out."

I heard him curse so softly under his breath, a whisper I didn't make out because my mind was racing despite the cold feeling in my bones and the awful burn on my skin. He grabbed me low by the waist and pulled me close to him. "I know that, querida. I believe you."

"You b-believe me?"

"Of course, I do." He murmured, lifting my hands off my dress and bringing a halt to my attempts at tearing the dress off of me. "I know when you lie to me. You're not lying right now."

I blinked, exhaled sharply, and nodded. "Okay. Okay."

He gently pushed my hair over my shoulder, looked into my eyes, and I watched the unconcealed emotion in his eyes. It was a wild, fiery thing. It was for me.

"You're not broken. I didn't say that. I would never say or think that."

I shook my head. "B-But--"

"You're not." He cut me off. "Trust me. Please."

Please. I froze, stared at him, then shuddered again. He whispered something else under his breath, something that I didn't hear or understand. And then he was pulling back just a little, reluctant for a short second before pulling his shirt over his head until his head and his rumpled hair emerged from the other end. He sighed almost wearily--frustratedly, looked up at me and then leaned close once again to help me put the shirt on--his shirt on--over my dress.

I held the hem of the dark t-shirt in my fist when he was done, and I felt it envelop me in a kind of warmth and scent that I didn't think could exist for me anymore.

I blinked and my eyes stung with tears all so suddenly.

"R-Ryder--"

He leaned close and whispered to me, "Trust me, Alice?"

I nodded, relaxing infinitesimally.

"You're not broken," he told me, eyes so blue and earnest and looking at me like he could see something in me. "But. If you think you are, then you're not alone."

I shuddered, felt my throat clamping shut in warning, and I made a move to touch him, touch him in any way because I suddenly had a very bad feeling about this, but he grabbed my hands in a gentle grip and moved them to his torso, his skin warm and solid and safe, and I slid them around him because I needed to be close to him and I needed to touch him and I--

I stopped, froze, and felt the moment he stiffened.

I stared at his chest, right above the dark intricate tattoo of a symbol I couldn't decipher then, and traced my fingers over his back, just below his shoulders, the warm skin and the muscles there raised in gnarled bumps, irregular long slashes, like scars, like--

I pulled back from him, couldn't let go of him but I pulled back enough to look up at him with wide eyes, my heart racing at a panicked, frightened pace, because within my battered, dizzying thoughts I knew what I'd felt on Ryder's back, below his shoulders, right there, and they were scars, deep scars, and he was hurt.

"What...How..." I couldn't speak. I was scared. Frightened. I took in short, sharp breaths, and I ran my fingers over his back again and it wasn't just his shoulders but his whole back was littered with the same scars--irregularly raised scars as long as my fingers--and I felt them beneath my fingertips and I could feel him staring at me, waiting and patient and not shoving me away for touching him, and I felt the moment my breathing started going haywire.

He did too.

"Querida," he murmured, nudged his nose along my temple, and shushed me, "it's all right. I'm all right. It was years ago."

Years ago. He said it like a statement. A mere, acknowledged statement. Like he was repeating something that had happened to some stranger and not him.

"Ryder." It wasn't my voice that left my lips. It was one filled with terror. So much of it. "You're hurt. Y-You--"

"Years ago, Alice. I'm fine now." He held my face in his hands. "I promise."

But he wasn't fine. He wasn't fine. I gripped his sides and then I was crying. Really, truly crying. There were tears there, raw and broken and scared. For him.

He was hurt and I hadn't noticed. I hadn't ever noticed. He'd never once told me.

He held me close in his arms and didn't let go and I pressed my face against him, holding onto him because I hadn't known.

Because I had scars so deep inside me and he had them on his back.

Because nothing was all right. It hadn't been for a long time.