Cycle II · “The Hidden Life” · 13

Her phone glows in the dark like a dare.

Not a message she’s waiting for.

A reminder that she’s the kind of girl who keeps her notifications on because silence feels too much like being alone with herself.

She scrolls without reading, thumb moving on instinct, the way you run your tongue over a sore tooth just to prove it still hurts.

When she’s like this, attention clings—soft on the surface, trouble underneath. Men who want a wild thing they can manage. Men who beg for truth, then recoil from it.

She doesn’t even hate them for it.

She hates how good she is at finding them.

Her screen shows a name she shouldn’t have saved.

A profile that knows exactly what it’s doing. The kind of man who texts in short sentences—tight, efficient—like he’s already practicing how you’ll listen.

She told herself she was just talking.

Just flirting.

Just seeing if she could still charm, even like this—awkward, off-beat, and dangerous in the ways that don’t show up in photos.

But “just” is a lie she uses when she wants permission to do something reckless without admitting it out loud.

The truth is simpler and uglier:

She’s been craving consequences.

Not because she wants to be ruined.

Because emptiness feels like a punishment she didn’t earn, and she’d rather choose a different kind.

She rolls onto her back and stares at the ceiling like it might say something useful.

Her body is restless in a way her mind can’t soothe. Not hunger. Not loneliness. Something lower. Something sharp. The part of her that gets impatient with safety. The part that whispers that being careful is just another way of disappearing.

She thinks about the last time she did something she promised herself she wouldn’t.

How easy it was to let it happen.

A guy she’d called “Dominant” because the label made it feel like structure instead of impulse. His mouth at her ear. His hand firm on her hip. The quiet assumption that she would say yes if he waited long enough.

She did.

She didn’t ask for protection.

She didn’t insist.

She let it be “fine,” because “fine” is what she says when she wants something to happen and doesn’t want to look like she wanted it.

Afterward, lying there with her skin still buzzing, she told herself it was a choice.

And it was.

That’s what scares her.

Not that she was taken.

That she offered it.

That she can’t tell the difference sometimes between surrender and self-destruction when she’s wet and wanted and someone’s voice is low enough to sound like certainty.

Her phone vibrates again.

A new message.

Two words.

Let’s meet.

No question mark. No softness. Like her body is already on the hook.

She reads it twice and feels that familiar, shameful sweetness gather in her stomach—an ache that isn’t romance and isn’t fear, but lives right beside both.

She tells herself she’s not stupid.

She tells herself she’s not a victim.

And still her body leans toward the text like it already agreed.

Then she remembers the other thing—the private thing—the thing she never says to anyone because it would sound insane if she had to explain it:

Sometimes she hurts herself just to feel like she’s still in the room.

Not in a dramatic way.

Not in a way that would make someone stage an intervention.

In small, quiet ways that don’t look like a crisis from the outside.

Just enough to cut through the fog.

Just enough to replace numb with sting.

Just enough to make her body stop floating away.

She hasn’t done it in a while.

That’s what she tells herself, like “a while” is a redemption.

Her gaze slides to the mirror across the room. In the glass she looks normal.

Pretty.

Fine.

And she knows, with a cold certainty in her chest, how easy it is to look normal while something flammable inside you waits for a spark.

She types back before she can think:

Maybe.

A liar’s answer. A teasing answer. A “make me” answer.

She watches the dots appear.

Then:

Bring a skirt.

Her thighs tighten. Not excitement, exactly. More like recognition—her body admitting it understands the language even when her brain wants to pretend it doesn’t.

She sets the phone down. Picks it back up. Sets it down again.

She tells herself she could ignore it.

She tells herself she should.

Then she thinks about the other message thread—the other man—the one she’s been talking to late at night when she can’t sleep. Softer tone. The kind that flinches when she jokes about being “bad” and then asks if she’s okay like he means it.

The ones like that are dangerous too.

Not to her body.

To her conscience.

Because they make her feel seen, and she doesn’t know what to do with seen except turn it into a test.

She can already imagine it: him trying to be careful with her, trying to do everything right, trying to be the one who doesn’t take too much.

And her—slipping the leash into his hand and smiling, until she realizes safety won’t save her from herself.

Because she doesn’t only want desire.

She wants impact.

She wants proof.

She wants to feel the edges of someone else’s restraint and find the place where it breaks.

Not because she wants to break them.

Because something in her is convinced that if a person breaks for her, it means she mattered.

It’s a terrible belief.

It’s also one she wears like perfume.

Her phone buzzes again.

I won’t be gentle.

A line that would make a healthier girl shut the whole thing down.

Instead, she feels herself soften in the worst place. She thinks about marks—how they look like evidence the next morning. How they turn her body into a secret she can’t fully hide. How part of her likes walking through the day with a bruise under her clothes like a private grin.

She stands up too fast, like if she stays in bed she’ll talk herself out of it.

She opens her drawer and pulls out the skirt.

Short. Not obscene. The kind that becomes obscene the moment someone puts a hand under it like they own the right.

She slips it on and stares at herself again.

There’s a tremor in her mouth that isn’t fear and isn’t anticipation—more like the moment before you jump, when your body remembers gravity and does it anyway.

She grabs her familiar blade.

Then she hesitates, and that hesitation is the only mercy she gives herself.

Her thumb hovers over another chat—someone who actually cares about her.

She could tell him she’s going out.

She could let him talk her down.

Instead she types a single sentence and sends it before she can reconsider:

Feeling sleepy going to bed early.

Not because she wants him to worry.

Because part of her does.

Because worry feels like proof.

She locks her phone. Slides it into her purse like she’s done.

At the door, she pauses and listens to her own breathing.

Slow.

Steady.

Like she’s already practicing being calm while doing something she knows she shouldn’t.

She steps into the hallway and pulls the door shut behind her.

Not a dramatic slam.

Just a click.

And somewhere deep in her—under the lust, under the boredom, under the hunger to be handled—something else wakes up.

A quiet, dangerous idea:

If she keeps going like this, eventually she won’t just be the one who bleeds.

She smiles slightly.

“Maybe I like the danger.”

Cycle II · “The Hidden Life” · 13

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