I clawed at the bedside table until my nails bit into the varnish, the vibration from my frantic scraping knocked the phone clear from its charger. It skidded across the floor in a small, graceless arc and landed just close enough for me to snatch it. My thumb fumbled across the glass, trembling so violently the screen blurred into a smear of light and shadow, but muscle memory found the number, Simon William's, automatic and desperate, a single lifeline threaded through panic.
He watched the phone rise to my ear. For a heartbeat his face changed, curiosity flared there, then something colder, an irritation masked by a rehearsed calm. "Calling someone?" His voice was gentle on the surface but sharp enough to make my skin prickle.
"Simon," I said. The name came out small and ragged, like an animal sound. "Please."
The dial tone bit into my skull, thin, high, ridiculous as a glass bell above a cliff.
Edward leaned in, close enough that I could smell him, an undercurrent of aftershave and something metallic. His face was inches from mine, the expression casual and practiced the way men wear masks.
"Simon? Why are you calling him?" he breathed, an almost playful whisper that set the hairs along my arms to attention.
"He'll be here soon. You better leave."
Saying it felt like flinging a pebble at a storm, foolish, but it steadied me somehow.
On the other end, the voice I knew better than my own answered, firm, immediate. "Anna. Why are you calling me this late?"
"A--please-- hurry," I managed. My words were fragments on the air, but they landed where they needed to.
"Stay on the line," Simon ordered. "Don't, don't move." Relief laced his voice, thin and fierce. I sagged as if I could sink into his steadiness..
Edward's hands were sudden. He snatched the phone from my fingers with a speed that made my breath stutter and killed the connection before I could say anything at all. The world contracted to the cramped space between us. "Okay," he said softly. "Time's up."
A new sound cut through our small room, boots on concrete, heavy and hurried, the echo of more than one pair. The doorknob rattled like someone testing a stubborn lock.
Edward's head turned toward the door like a hound picking up scent. For a flicker he looked merely annoyed. Then a shadow slid across his features, something like interest sharpened into appetite. He cupped my cheek with fingers so cold they left a line of chill, his thumb tracing the fall of my jaw as if I were an object to be catalogued. "You're messy," he murmured, and his voice had no smile.
"Anna? Are you home?" Simon's voice came through the wood, knocking accompanies his words, hope threaded thin as a wire. My mouth had opened to answer when Edward clamped a hand over it and folded me against him in a tight, humiliating hug. My vomit of panic was muffled against his chest. No matter how I twisted, how I shoved, his grip held, an animal's containment. His forearm pinned my ribs as if my struggles were an amusing insect.
The knock stopped. Simon's voice on the other side went blunt and then silent, as if he'd realized my answering had been cut off. A long, terrible second passed while I listened to the sound of my own blood in my ears and the slow, careful inhale of the man who held me like a trophy.
"He might have thought you weren't home," Edward said after an interminable pause, irritation rubbing at the edges of his tone. Then, more dangerously casual, "Tch. You almost put him in danger. If he doesn't leave in a few minutes, I was thinking of getting rid of him, permanently." He smiled then, and the smile didn't reach his eyes. I widened mine because I had to see if I'd misheard, but there it was, his intention laid out like a scalpel.
I blinked up at the dim ceiling, trying to anchor myself, awake, not trapped inside a memory that had no edges. For a breath, the apartment held its own silence. And then I saw it in Edward's face, the wetness in his eyes, a sheen that could have been pity or something more disturbing, an affection that made my stomach knot. He watched my fingers tremble, watched the terror hollowing out my expression, and in that look was a dangerous, almost human confusion, like someone who'd learned to love the exact thing that would ruin him.
"Anna… A-Are you scared of me?" Edward's voice came out small, stunned, as though my fear was the only part of this nightmare that didn't make sense. His eyes searched my face, blinking like he was trying to align this moment with a memory that no longer fit.
Then the softness vanished.
He closed the distance in a single, violent stride. His hands clamped around my arms and yanked me forward with such force my heels scraped across the floorboards. The pain shot through my shoulders, white and sudden.
"So now you're scared of me?" he hissed. The gentleness was gone, his voice was a blade now, glinting, intimate, impossible to outrun. "Didn't you tremble when he touched you? Didn't I warn you to stay away from him?"
His words struck like blows. I tried to answer, but fear had climbed into my throat and jammed itself there. Every breath stuttered, a broken machine.
He stared at the tears leaking down my cheeks, eyes narrowing, something dark coiling behind them. His fingers dug into my arms harder, grinding bone against muscle until it throbbed.
"Why are you crying? Aren't you happy to see me?" His breath ghosted over my cheek, hot, agitated, possessive. "You want to go back to him? You want to date Simon, huh? How dare you let him touch you. You belong to me. Don't you know that?"
I couldn't speak. The air felt too thick to swallow. He wasn't my Edward anymore, not the shy, awkward boy who used to wait for me after school just to walk in silence. This version of him was built from something fractured and obsessive, like someone had carved out the softness and left only the hunger.
"Answer me, Anna!" he snapped. He said my name like a threat disguised as affection, and hearing it in his mouth made something in me recoil so hard my lungs forgot how to work.
And then, something snapped inside him.
The sound of my name seemed to jolt him. His hands fell away abruptly, as if he'd woken up mid crime. His expression flickered, rage melting into guilt so fast it made the moment feel unreal.
"I'm sorry," he blurted, too quickly. His hands flew to my face, cupping it gently, trembling at the edges. "I didn't mean to scare you, Anna." The word landed wrong, soft on the tongue but edged like barbed wire.
"You know I hate when someone touches you," he murmured, voice smoothing out like he'd practiced it in a mirror. "So come with me."
He didn't wait for my legs to move. He dragged me toward the bathroom, gripping my wrist like ownership. I stumbled after him, words scraping up my throat.
"Edward," I whispered, more reflex than control.
He pressed a finger to his lips without looking at me. "Shh… let me do it for you," he said, his tone gentle the way poison is odorless.
At the sink, he shoved my hands beneath the faucet and twisted the tap on full. The water hit my skin like needles. He scrubbed them with both hands, so rough it felt like he was trying to erase me.
"He touched your hands and you did nothing," he muttered, each word vibrating with disgust. His fingers worked over mine again and again, scraping, punishing.
"You're hurting me, Edward," I choked out, a sob snagging on the syllables.
His ring scraped across the back of my hand, dragging sharp metal over skin. A flash of pain bloomed, hot, immediate, and when he finally stopped to dry them, I saw a thin slice of blood, a red bead rising like a warning. My gaze flicked to the ring.
A simple metallic band with a shining stone.
Too deliberate to be decorative. Too intimate to be random.
Married? Engaged? Or some delusional symbol of belonging? The thought slammed into me like cold water.
Rage rose fast, too fast to reason with. I shoved him hard. He stumbled back a step, genuinely surprised.
"Who the hell are you to order me around?" I snapped, my voice shaking but sharp enough to cut. "So what if he touched me? So what if I want to date him? Mind your own damn business and leave me alone! Whatever we had in the past is over now."
He stared at me for a long moment, then smiled, a crooked, unsettling curl of the lips that never touched his eyes.
"Is this how you welcome your Edward?" he said softly, mockingly, like an actor repeating an old line.
"You are not welcome here. Get out," I shot back, forcing the words past the tremor in my chest. My heart was thundering so hard it felt like it might break a rib.
"I knew you'd be mad at me for leaving you all this time," he murmured, voice suddenly calm, almost fond. "So I came with preparation."
The air shifted.
His hand slipped into his pocket with obscene calm. Before my brain could connect the movement to danger, I caught a glint of silver, - a syringe.
He moved before I could scream.
The needle plunged into the side of my arm, precise and quick. A brutal, electric sting shot down my spine. I slapped at his arm, but my body was already betraying me.
A molten wave of dizziness slammed into me, heavy and disorienting. The room lurched sideways. The floor seemed to tilt, then drag itself out from under me. My tongue tasted like static and copper. I tried to spit out a word, a plea, anything, but my mouth wouldn't shape sound.
My vision funneled inward, black creeping in at the edges like a curtain being pulled.
"Sleep well Anna."
The last thing I saw, before the dark swallowed me whole, was his smirk.
Small.
Quiet.
Triumphant.
Like he'd just reclaimed something that was never his.
To be continued