My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 114

Chapter 114

It was a clean slate. A fresh canvas.

The pain was gone, so I needed to do it again. The urge hit me hard, a dark wave.

“Do it,” the voice in my head whispered. “You need to be harder. You need to be stronger. If you’re going to be the intern, the student, and the dancer, you can’t be soft. You have to prove you can handle the pain, the stress, you have to be strong.”

I raised the stick, my muscles tensing as I prepared to bring it down against the arch of my foot. I wanted to feel that sharp sting, the one thing I could actually control in a world that felt like it was spinning out of orbit.

But then, I saw her.

My mother. She wasn’t her, but she was in my mind. I remembered the way her eyes had filled with tears when she saw what I had done to myself. I remembered the way she had knelt on the floor, her lips soft and warm as she kissed the tops of my feet, whispering that I was enough. That I didn’t have to break myself to be loved.

The stick felt heavy in my hand, heavier than it ever had before.

I looked at my healed skin again. If I did this, I was breaking her heart all over again. I was spitting on the care she had given me.

“No,” I whispered into the dark.

I shoved the stick back under the clothes, pushing it as far back as I could reach. I didn’t want it. I didn’t need the pain to be perfect, to be strong. I can just… be.

I needed to move. I needed to breathe. I grabbed a thin sweater over my night trousers and t-shirt and slipped out of my room. My bare feet making no sound on the expensive rugs, until I reached the glass doors leading to the vast, sprawling gardens.

I walked until I reached the center of the stone terrace, a wide, flat circle surrounded by high hedges and white roses that glowed in the dark.

I took a breath, closing my eyes. I didn’t need music. I could hear the rhythm in the wind, the beat of my own heart.

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