Chapter 1 suffocating

Chelsea

✦

The second his bedroom door clicks shut, I know I'm in trouble.

Kethan hasn't said a word since we left school. Not on the drive. Not in the hallway. Just silence—tight, suffocating silence. The kind that wraps around your neck like a noose, slowly tightening until you can't breathe.

Now we're upstairs in his room. His parents aren't home. His younger brother, Alex, is probably still at hockey practice. The house is quiet.

Too quiet.

He turns around slowly, holding his phone out like it's proof of a crime. Like I've been caught red-handed.

"You wanna explain this to me?" he asks, voice calm in that terrifying way. The kind of calm that's fake. The kind that comes right before he explodes.

I glance at the screen. My stomach sinks.

It's a post from Blake Matthison. Just a guy from school. He's standing in front of his new car, holding a stupid participation trophy from some senior banquet. I liked it yesterday without even thinking. Just a mindless double-tap in the middle of scrolling.

"That?" I whisper, already feeling the blood drain from my face. "It was nothing, I—I didn't even mean to—"

"You didn't mean to?" Kethan repeats, mockingly. "So what, your finger slipped? You accidentally liked a guy's thirst trap?"

"It wasn't even a thirst trap, Kethan, it's just a picture—"

That's when it happens.

His fist hits the side of my face so fast I don't see it coming. There's no warning. Just pain. Sharp, jarring, electric pain that bursts behind my eyes and makes my knees buckle.

I hit the carpet hard, my hands catching me just in time before I faceplant. My mouth tastes like metal. My lip's split open. My head rings.

"You think I'm fucking stupid?" he yells, towering over me.

"N-no," I stammer, trying to wipe the blood from my lip, trying not to cry. Crying makes it worse.

"You think you can make me look like a clown? You want people thinking you're single, just out here liking guys' photos?"

"No! I don't—Kethan, I didn't mean—please, I swear, I didn't think—"

He yanks me up by the wrist so hard my shoulder pops.

"You didn't think," he repeats coldly. "You never fucking think, Chelsea."

"I'm sorry," I whisper. "I'll unlike it. I'll block him. I'll do whatever you want."

"You should've thought of that before you tried to embarrass me in front of the whole school."

He shoves me back down onto the bed, hard. My hip hits the edge of the frame, sending another bolt of pain through my body. He doesn't hit me again—not yet. But the threat hangs in the air like a loaded gun.

I sit there frozen, staring at the floor, trying to hold myself together. My ears are ringing. My heart's racing. I feel like I'm watching all of this from outside my body, like maybe if I detach far enough, it won't be happening.

"I let you into my world," he says, pacing now, running a hand through his hair like he's the victim. "I could have any girl I want, but I chose you. And this is how you treat me?"

"I didn't mean to make you mad," I say softly, the words automatic. A script I've rehearsed too many times.

"You're lucky I don't kick your ass out right now."

He grabs his phone off the bed and storms into the bathroom. The door slams shut, rattling the picture frame on his dresser.

And just like that, I'm alone.

I don't move. Can't. My hands are shaking so bad I have to clutch the comforter to keep from falling apart. The pain in my face is already swelling. My wrist aches. My chest feels like it's caving in.

I'm eighteen.

This isn't what eighteen is supposed to feel like.

I glance around his room—the posters of rappers, the sneakers lined up perfectly against the wall, the shelves of trophies and medals and awards everyone worships him for. No one would believe me if I told them what really happens behind this door.

Kethan Lowe is golden boy royalty at our high school. Hockey King. Homecoming king. Everybody loves him.

Nobody knows what he is to me.

I lower my head into my hands and let out one silent, broken sob. Not too loud. Just enough to let myself feel it. But never enough to be heard.

Because if he hears me cry... it might start all over again.

✦

It's been an hour.

The music stopped twenty minutes ago, but the bathroom door stayed shut. I haven't moved from the bed, except to grab a tissue from his desk to press against my lip. My face is throbbing. My wrist is red and tender. My throat burns from holding in every scream, every sob, every word I wanted to say but couldn't.

I keep staring at the clock on the wall. Each minute feels like it's dragging a knife across my skin. I don't know which version of him is going to come out of that door.

And then it opens.

Kethan steps out in a clean hoodie, his damp hair sticking to his forehead. His expression isn't angry anymore—it's soft. Broken, even. Like he's the one hurting.

"Chelsea," he says gently. His voice is calm again. That fake calm that always makes me feel crazy for remembering what came before it.

He walks toward me slowly, like I'm some fragile thing that might shatter if he breathes wrong. I stiffen instinctively, but he notices. He always notices.

"I'm sorry," he murmurs. "I didn't mean to lose my cool like that."

He kneels in front of me and reaches for my hands, but I hesitate.

"You know I'd never want to hurt you. You just—" He lets out a shaky breath and looks up at me with those eyes that once made me fall for him. "You make me go insane because I love you too much, Chelsea. That's all this is. That's all it's ever been."

My eyes sting again. Not from pain—this time from confusion. From the awful guilt that floods in every time he does this. Like I'm the reason he becomes a monster.

"I just... I can't stand the thought of losing you," he whispers, brushing a strand of hair from my face, fingertips soft where his knuckles struck me earlier. "I see guys looking at you. I see them liking your pictures. I know what they're thinking. And it drives me crazy."

"You didn't have to hit me," I say quietly, almost afraid to say it at all.

"I know," he says, kissing my hand. "I know, baby. I hate myself for it. I really do."

He stands, crosses the room, and opens a drawer. Pulls out a small first aid kit his mom keeps stocked for hockey injuries. He returns with a damp cloth, some ointment, and a bandage.

He crouches down again and gently dabs the corner of my lip, wiping away the dried blood. "I'm gonna fix this. You'll see. I'm working on myself. You're the only one who makes me want to be better."

I want to believe him. God, I want to believe him.

Because if I don't, then that means I'm just... stuck.

Stuck with a boy who breaks me and then kisses the wounds he caused. Who says "I love you" in the same breath he uses to destroy me.

And somehow, that's the part that hurts the most.

We've been together for a year now.

One full year of this—of high highs and hellish lows. Of kisses in the hallway and bruises behind closed doors. Of pretending in public and breaking in private.

I used to think love was supposed to feel like butterflies. Nervous excitement. Hands held in the back of classrooms. Staying up until 2 a.m. texting about nothing and everything.

But with Kethan, love feels like walking through a minefield barefoot.

He finishes wiping the blood from my lip and presses a kiss to my cheek—right next to where it's already swelling.

"I'll make it up to you," he says softly. "I promise."

I nod because it's easier than disagreeing. I've learned that silence is safer than the truth.

He curls up beside me on the bed, arms slipping around my waist like I'm something precious. He always does this after. Like his comfort can undo the damage.

"I've just never felt this way about anyone," he whispers into my hair. "You make me feel things I don't know how to handle."

It should sound romantic. It doesn't. It sounds like a warning.

I stare at the glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling. He put them up in middle school. He told me that once. Said he never took them down because they helped him sleep when things were bad with his dad.

He's not all bad. That's the part that messes me up the most. There's a version of Kethan I still love. A version who remembers my coffee order, and ties my skate laces for me at the rink, and kisses my neck while I'm doing homework.

But that version never stays.

He always disappears the second I make the wrong move, say the wrong thing, breathe the wrong way.

Sometimes I think about what it was like before him. Back when I was still just Chelsea Brogdon, the girl who laughed too loud and wore glitter eyeliner and thought love meant safety. That version of me feels like she died somewhere along the way. Like he killed her in pieces.

Now I'm just... whatever this is. His girlfriend. His obsession. His possession.

"You know I'd do anything for you, right?" he asks suddenly, tracing circles on my hip through the fabric of my hoodie.

I nod again, swallowing down the lump in my throat.

"Good. Because you're mine. And I don't want to share what's mine."

I don't respond.

He leans down and kisses the spot where his fist connected earlier. I flinch. He notices—but this time, he lets it go. Doesn't say anything.

Eventually, he pulls me in tighter and turns off the lamp, leaving us in the soft blue glow of the LED strip lights lining his ceiling. My head rests on his chest, and I close my eyes, counting his heartbeat, trying to make my own slow down.

This is what love looks like for me now.

Fast heartbeats. Bruised skin. Whispered apologies that sound too much like threats.

And the terrifying, unspoken truth:

He might love me—but he could kill me too.