Justin POV:
I made my way to the counter, eyes scanning the dim haze for Celeste. I needed her to set up—Pretty Cat, if she was around. Or anyone, really. Any girl who didn’t mind it rough. Hard. Fast. Soone who wouldn’t ask questions, who didn’t need tenderness.
Just release.
Just silence.
Because tonight, I didn’t want connection.I wanted to forget.
The bass pulsed under my feet, low and steady like a heartbeat on the edge of arrest. Lights throbbed—red, violet, blacklight—casting shadows where faces used to be. Here, nas didn’t matter. Faces didn’t matter. Just masks, rules, and release.
I stalked past the velvet-draped lounge, leather gloves clenched in my jacket pocket, straight to the bar.
Celeste was behind the counter, like always. Hair up, lips red, eyes that didn’t flinch—like she’d seen too many n like and stopped bothering to warn them. She gave that look, half-bored, half-knowing.
"No Pretty Cat tonight," she said before I could even open my mouth. "She’s... not available."
I didn’t ask.
Didn’t care.
My jaw twitched. "Then find soone else."
Celeste wiped a glass clean, slower than necessary. "You have a type, Justin."
"I’m not here for conversation."
"You never are." She smirked, pulling out a tablet from under the bar. Nas flickered by. Codenas. Preferences. Boundaries. She knew mine by now—hard, fast, no strings, no softness.
"Try Lace Noir," she said finally. "She likes it rough. She’s new but not green. No cuddling. No questions. No rcy."
I nodded once. That’s all I needed.
Celeste handed a sleek black mask and tapped the card reader. "Room six."
I put the mask on as I walked.
Here, I didn’t have to be Justin.
I didn’t have to rember the sound of June’s laugh or the way her voice cracked when she was half-asleep in my arms. I didn’t have to see her face when she left standing there, pretending none of it ant anything.
No one touched here unless I asked. No one judged for what I needed.
And tonight, I needed to forget.
I opened the door to room six.
She was already there—Lace Noir—in a black lace mask and heels, eyes lined like warpaint. Her gaze flicked over like a silent dare.
"Safe word?" she asked, voice low.
"None," I replied, my voice like gravel.
Her smile curved like a blade. "Good."
This wasn’t love. It wasn’t even sex in the way people tried to pretty it up with emotions and promises.
It was war—between the part of that still cared about the girl who left behind and the part that wanted to burn every inch of her mory from under my skin.
And Lace Noir?
She was just the battlefield.
She didn’t look anything like June.
Red hair. Taller. More curves. Pale skin and a voice dipped in smoke and steel.
Perfect.
Because I didn’t want June right now.
I didn’t want her soft sighs or quiet trembles or the way she made feel like I could be sothing better, sothing whole.
I didn’t want the mory of her lips on mine or the ghost of her laughter in my ears.
I wanted the noise out.
I needed the voices gone.
The way they’d started whispering again when she walked away without a word about the weekend we spent tangled in each other. The way they laughed when Army said she liked older n—like they already knew sothing I didn’t.
I needed this.
The room was dim—black satin, red light, and the scent of leather and sweat. Lace Noir didn’t speak again. She didn’t need to. She understood. That’s what Celeste was good at—pairing broken with broken.
And ? I was always a special kind of wreckage.
I didn’t take off the mask. Neither did she. That was the rule. No nas. No eye contact unless invited. No lies because nothing real was spoken.
My fingers found her throat, firm and demanding, and her lips parted with a moan of approval. She liked control. She liked power. She liked it when it hurt a little—so did I.
Pain drowned out the noise.
My movents were fast, brutal, efficient. No teasing. No foreplay. I wasn’t there to be gentle. I wasn’t there to please. I was there to exorcise.
Every thrust was a scream I didn’t let out.
Every breath was a shove against the fucking demons clawing at my mind.
The room echoed with the slap of skin, the creak of the bed, and her sharp moans, but I didn’t hear her.
I heard them.
The voices, snarling, hissing, laughing—
"She left you."
"She never cared."
"She chose soone else."
"You’ll always be just another freak."
I fucked harder.
Until sweat dripped from my jaw. Until my knuckles ached from gripping her hips. Until she was clawing the sheets, screaming sothing I didn’t register.
Until I couldn’t hear anything but the silence.
And when it finally ca—the stillness, the nothingness—I collapsed back, panting, staring up at the red-lit ceiling, empty.
Not satisfied.
Just... numb.
Exactly what I ca for.
She touched my chest, soft—mistake.
I jerked away, muscles tense, mask still in place. "Don’t."
She raised both hands, respectful now. "You got what you needed."
"Yeah," I muttered, standing, dressing fast, voice hoarse. "For now."
But as I left the room, the silence already started cracking.
And the voices?
They were just catching their breath.
After the club, I went back to my apartnt.
Stupid move.
I should’ve crashed sowhere else. Should’ve driven till morning or passed out in the fucking parking lot. Anywhere but here.
Because the second I stepped inside, it hit —her.
The scent of her shampoo still faint on my pillow. Her laughter echoing off the goddamn walls. The ghost of her curled up on my couch in one of my hoodies, barefoot, looking like she belonged.
She didn’t belong.
Not here.
Not with .
I dropped my keys with more force than necessary, the tallic clatter sharp and pointless. My boots ca off like I was peeling off skin, one piece at a ti, and every inch I moved further into the apartnt, the heavier the silence got.
I looked around, jaw tight.
The kitchen—she stood there Saturday morning, trying to flip pancakes and failing miserably.
The hallway—where I’d kissed her against the wall, too desperate, too soft, like I actually felt sothing.
The couch—where she fell asleep with her legs in my lap and my hand in her hair.
And then my bed.
Fucking hell.
I stood in the doorway, fingers clenched at my sides. The sheets were different now—new. I’d changed them. I wasn’t that pathetic. But it didn’t matter.
She was still here.
In the way the mattress dipped where she once lay. In the dent in the pillow from her head. In the way my blanket still folded the sa way I wrapped it around her when she shivered.
I’d been a fucking fool.
Letting her in.
Letting myself want her.
Now?
Now I couldn’t scrub her out, no matter how many girls I fucked, no matter how hard I tried to erase her with red lights and anonymous moans.
The voices in my head were quiet now, but it wasn’t peace.
It was the eye of the storm.
The kind of silence that cos before the breakdown.
I sat on the edge of the bed, elbows on my knees, dragging both hands through my hair.
"This is gonna be a long-ass night," I muttered.
No sleep. No escape.
Just mories I didn’t ask for and feelings I sure as hell didn’t want.
I laid back eventually, eyes on the ceiling, heart thudding like it wanted to crawl out and slap for being so damn soft.
I hated this.
I hated her for doing this to .
But most of all, I hated myself...
For letting her feel like ho.
********
The light flickered above —once, twice, then held steady with a soft, humming buzz that crawled under my skin like a parasite. I sat on the cold steel table, shirtless, my spine pressed against the freezing wall behind . My wrists ached from the straps that had only recently been removed. The skin was raw, rubbed pink and angry, but I didn’t touch them.
I knew better than to move too much.
The silence in the lab was worse than the noise.
It ant they were thinking.
It ant they were planning.
I exhaled slowly. My breath clouded the air in front of . Was it always this cold?
The hush tests had ended an hour ago. They hadn’t spoken a word while doing them, just scribbled their notes, prodded with gloved fingers, drew blood like I was a leaky faucet they were trying to drain dry.
They didn’t speak to . Not since she escaped.
Number Twelve.
June.
They knew I helped her. Didn’t have proof. But they knew.
One technician, the bald one with the sunken eyes, had looked at differently. Less like a project. More like a pest.
I could feel their disappointnt like smoke in my lungs.
"You were supposed to be special," one of them had whispered that morning. "You were supposed to break."
The lights flickered again.
And that’s when I heard it.
Click.
The sound of a lock disengaging. A heavy tal door groaning open at the far end of the corridor.
I froze.
Not from fear.
From sothing older than fear. Sothing primal and buried deep, like the way animals go still when they sll a predator nearby.
Footsteps echoed. Slow. Confident.
Too quiet to be a technician.
Too late to be protocol.
I didn’t look up.
I didn’t have to.
I already knew who it was.
They called him "Spoon." No idea why. No one cared to ask. He wasn’t staff. Not really. Just... attached. Security, maybe. But he wore no badge. No na. Just a permanent smirk and boots that never made a sound unless he wanted you to hear him.
And tonight, he wanted to hear him.
"Hey, sunshine," Spoon drawled. His voice was syrupy, slow, and wrong.
I didn’t respond.
My hands curled into fists, fingernails digging into my palms until I felt the sting of skin breaking.
He moved closer.
No one stopped him.
Of course not.
The techs were pissed. They’d lost Number Twelve. They needed to punish soone.
They’d let the wolves roam now.
"Quiet tonight, aren’t we?" Spoon was in front of now. I stared at the floor. At the drain between my feet. The one where blood always disappeared faster than water.
He crouched. I felt his breath. Too close. Too wet.
"You ever think about what happens to little traitors?" he whispered, voice almost sing-song.
I said nothing.
"’Cause I do."
His hand reached for my chin.
I snapped.
My hand shot out, grabbing the nearest piece of tal—sothing small, maybe a surgical clamp or leftover scalpel. I didn’t care. I didn’t look. I just moved.
Lunged.
Scread.
Slashed.
He ducked too fast. The bastard was always fast. He laughed as he caught my wrist mid-air, twisting until sothing in my elbow popped and I crumpled.
I hit the ground hard. The air punched out of my lungs.
The lights went out completely.
The last thing I saw before the darkness swallowed whole...
...was his teeth.
Too many of them.
Too sharp.
The screaming started. I didn’t know if it was mine or soone else’s.
I felt hands. Cold. Hard. Gripping .
Pinning .
I couldn’t breathe.
The floor was moving. The walls were closing in.
No one ca.
No one ever ca.
No one—
I bolted upright.
Gasping.
Soaked in sweat.
The sheets twisted around my legs like restraints, the room dark except for the faint orange hue of streetlights bleeding through the blinds.
I was in my bed.
My apartnt.
Not the lab.
Not the table.
Not the fucking nightmare.
I pressed a trembling hand to my chest, heart jackhamring against my ribs.
The voices were silent.
But only because they were watching.
Smiling.
Waiting for the next crack.
And it was coming.
God, I could feel it.
Tonight... tonight had just been a warm-up.
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