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I pull back just enough to look at him, vision blurred, breath uneven. “You’re ruining yourself for me.”

Something in his expression softens.“You don’t get to tell me what I’m willing to lose,” he says quietly.

His eyes fall back on the stains of blood on my shorts. The fresh cuts. And his hand covers them immediately, shielding them from this outside world, from me.

His gaze met mine again as his fingers tighten around my raw and bleeding skin carefully.

“Don’t look at them like they’re the solution. Focus on me,” his voice drops. “If you need something to cut through the pain, let it be me. I can take it.”

And I fall for it. I fall for him.

72

Mireya

Play - Hailey’s Comet by Billie Eilish

My own addiction

I’d been clean for four days. Four days of pretending my skin wasn’t trying to crawl out of itself. Four days of breathing like it was something I had to remember how to do.

My hands were not shaking this morning. That was the lie I told myself first.

Then I saw him. He was just existing, waiting for everyone to get inside the classroom. And my body reacted before my thoughts did, a small, humiliating shift in my chest happened, as if something recognizing its own poison. It hit me so quietly.

I didn’t think Damien. I thought need.

And for one terrifying second, my brain didn’t bother distinguishing what kind.

He held me that night, four days ago. He held me and stayed with me on the ground for hours, letting me cry and scream the pain out. He cleaned my dorm, played with Blue when I was dissociating and couldn’t take care of myself.

It scares me how fast I reach for what hurts me. It scares me more that he knows how easily I ask for poison to calm me down.

I spent the entire morning focusing on him talking to the students but I can still hear his voice comforting me. He doesn’t know how strange what he did feels to me.

Hayzel is coming in late today, when she sits next to me, I focus on her and stop the hyper-fixation I have with Damien.

“You disappeared for a day and weren't answering your texts, woman,” she whispers in a worried voice.

“I got sick after the Gala, probably ate something bad.”

Her eyes soften for a second. “You look really tired, Reya. I’m worried.”

“Don’t be, I’m okay, I promise,” I smile, hoping it will convince her. I feel her hand taking mine and squeezing before her eyes draft back toward Damien.

There’s a moment where I realize I’ve been listening to his voice more than the words. And then I realized something else after that. I keep thinking about him.

He’s at the front of the room talking about profiling and behavior patterns and I try to follow, but I keep slipping back into the sound of his voice instead of the words.

You don’t get to tell me what I’m willing to lose.

It’s easy to talk to him. Easy in the way I breathe without feeling like something inside my head is going to break apart. In the way I don’t feel on edge all the time when I’m near him.

I don’t even realize I’m watching him until I already am. Sometimes his eyes move across the room while he talks, and every time I look down too fast, because I wasn’t supposed to be caught thinking anything at all.

It’s easy with him.

That thought keeps coming back.