Chapter 2: Chapter 2
“I don’t know.”
The words hung in the air, thin and final. Finn stared at her, at the tear cutting through the glitter on her cheek. The adrenaline that had been roaring through him began to recede, like a tide pulling back to reveal wreckage. His gaze dropped from her face, down her body, sprawled across his kitchen table.
She looked so small.
The torn pink nightie was bunched around her waist. Her thighs were trembling, pressed together now. And between them, a slow, slick trail of his own come was leaking out, dripping onto the scratched wood of the table. The visceral, possessive thrill he’d felt moments ago curdled in his gut.
Then he saw it. A faint, smudged streak of blood, mixing with the other fluids.
A cold fist closed around his heart.
Was she a virgin? But that was impossible. Last night. The club. The storage closet. He’d been inside her. He remembered the hot, tight clutch of her, the way she’d moved. That wasn’t a virgin. So where the hell was the blood from?
Guilt, sharp and acidic, flooded his mouth. He’d fucked her like he was trying to break something. He’d seen the fear in her eyes, heard her say it wasn’t safe, and he’d plowed right through it. He’d used her confusion like a battering ram. He was no better than an animal.
“Shit,” he breathed, the word scraping out of him. He stumbled back a step, fumbling for his jeans, pulling them up with clumsy hands. “Lyra. Are you… are you hurt?”
She didn’t answer. She slowly pushed herself up on her elbows, wincing. She looked down at herself, at the mess on the table, and a shudder ran through her. Without a word, she slid off the table, her legs almost giving way. She caught herself on the chair, the cotton nightie falling back down, hiding the evidence.
“It’s not that,” she said, her voice hollow. She wouldn’t look at him. “The blood. It’s not from… it’s not from that.”
“Then what is it from?” He reached for a dish towel, clean, and held it out to her. She just stared at it.
“Sometimes,” she whispered, “when it builds up too much, when I can’t… release it one way, it comes out another. Little ruptures. Inside.” She finally took the towel, pressing it between her legs, her face pale. “The sex… it helps. It focuses the energy. Lets it out through a channel. But it’s not always enough. The pressure… it finds other ways.”
Finn felt the world tilt. This wasn’t a hang-up or a quirky trait. This was a pathology. A terrifying, literal internal pressure that could make a person explode into confetti or bleed from their fucking insides. And he’d just treated it like a kink.
“You need a doctor.”
A sharp, bitter laugh escaped her. “And tell them what? That my existential joy manifests as a somatic pressure disorder that occasionally turns me into a human party popper? They’d lock me in a different kind of room, Finn.” She leaned heavily against the chair. “I just need to sleep. It… resets things. For a little while.”
He couldn’t just let her go back across the hall like this. The guilt was a physical weight.
“Stay here,” he said, the command softer now. “Take the bed. I’ll take the couch.”
She shook her head. “I shouldn’t be near you. It’s… attracted to you. Your energy. It’s like a stabilizer and a catalyst at the same time. Being close makes the buildup slower, but when it goes… it goes bigger around you.”
“That’s the most fucked-up thing I’ve ever heard,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “So what, I’m a human lightning rod for your emotional shrapnel?”
“Something like that.”
He looked at her, really looked. The vibrant, chaotic force from the club was gone, completely drained. In its place was a profound exhaustion that seemed centuries deep. She was a shell. And he’d helped empty her.
“Tough,” he said, his voice rough. “You’re staying. You can barely stand. If you’re going to rupture, I’d rather you do it where I can hear you fall.” He moved past her, into the small, messy bedroom. He yanked the rumpled sheets straight. “It’s not an invitation. It’s triage.”
She hesitated in the doorway, the dish towel clutched in her hand. The fight had left her. She was just a tired, scared girl who bled glitter and mystery. She shuffled to the bed and sat on the edge, her movements slow and pained.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, to her knees.
“Don’t,” he cut her off. “Just don’t.” He grabbed a spare blanket from a pile on the floor and turned to leave.
“Finn?”
He paused.
“Thank you. For not being… afraid. Yet.”
He didn’t have a response to that. He was afraid. He was terrified. But of what, exactly, he couldn’t pinpoint. He closed the door softly behind him.
In the main room, the afternoon light was fading. He righted the chair, wiped the table clean with a brutal efficiency, the smear of blood and come vanishing into the cloth. He sank onto the couch, the springs groaning. The smell of her, of sex and ozone and lavender, was everywhere.
He replayed it all. The club. The confetti. The shy neighbor. The violent coupling on his kitchen table. The blood.
He suddenly felt guilty for what he just did. She looked vulnerable and small as she sat on his counter, his seed dribbling from between her legs. He spied a bit of blood. Was she a virgin? But didn’t they have sex already?
The questions coiled in his head, unresolved and ugly. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and waited for the sound of her breathing to even out from behind the door. He was caught in her orbit now, a prisoner of her beautiful, terrifying mystery. And he had no idea how to escape, or if he even wanted to.