"Okay so what did you want to talk about?"

My boyfriend of a year and a half stared back at me with chocolate brown eyes almost the same color as his skin, his intimidating demeanor enveloping me even as the other patrons in the restaurant seemed to draw some of the nervous energy from me, the anxiety leeching off my skin like pheromones.

"I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page after what happened a few weeks ago."

I gulped audibly, and Ben tensed in his seat as the awkward silence fell over the two of us. The 'incident' he was referring to was still stuck in the back of my throat like a cherry pit, refusing to allow me air to enter through the small passage it allowed for me to survive.

"W-what about it?"

Ben closed his eyes for a millisecond and then broke eye contact to glance around the restaurant, at the happy couples smiling in their booths and holding hands and snuggling together, whereas the two of us couldn't have been worlds apart.

Maybe it would've been better to break up, but then where would I be? Alone, yet again, no one to hold me the nights I couldn't keep the nightmares down, no one to kiss me all night long when nothing else worked to combat everything else rising up inside me like barely concealed cancerous tissues waiting to rip me apart at the seams and decay my flesh from the inside out.

"I just wanted to talk about it. Like...what we want to do going forward. I mean...you saw everything, but you didn't even react, you just acted like it was normal. It kind of seems like you just didn't even care, like I could do whatever I wanted and you'd never break up with me."

"Were you trying to get me to break up with you, Ben?"

He hesitated, and I had my answer.

I was seconds away from hailing down the server when he captured my hand in his, the world tilting around me as the oxygen couldn't come to my lungs quick enough, like the lightheadedness and tingling fingers were an incoming warning, screaming: DANGER! DANGER! BEWARE OF UNSTABLE FEMALE! STAY AWAY!

"You were trying to get me to dump you. Why would you want that? Why wouldn't you just tell me you didn't want to be together anymore?"

Ben's Adam's apple bobbed in his throat, and the conflict in his eyes gave me pause just as the alarm bells reached a fever pitch.

"After everything you've been through, I just...I didn't want this to like, I don't know, throw you over the edge or anything. I mean, we had a lot of fun together and-"

His words turned into a hollowed out voice, something under water that I only caught snippets of as I stared at his tawny skin and long, slender fingers as they grasped the dinner menu, almost like an afterthought, like after this, we'd laugh about it, grab dinner and he'd wish me good luck on the rest of my life.

Like this wasn't going to be the final nail in my proverbial coffin, like his half assed attempts of being my boyfriend weren't the only thing keeping me from unraveling, wholly and completely and into an oblivion of self hatred and disgust.

A server dropped a dish nearby, sending porcelain shards scattering across the floor as someone at a neighboring table tapped their glass with a dinner knife, calling attention to the birthday girl to make a speech for her party.

All around me, those dining slurped their drinks, clinked their teeth on forks, chewed and swallowed and went on with their lives while no one noticed the girl falling apart in her seat while someone who wasn't even that relevant to her life held so much power in his careless hands.

"-and it hurt that you didn't even care that she was sitting on my lap. If I told you we'd hooked up, would you care then? It was just easier to have you think I cheated and break up with me than to do that to you...I guess I just got scared because I read somewhere that breaking up with someone like you could make them-"

"Someone like me?"

"Yeah, you know. Someone who...you know."

"No, I don't know. Tell me, Ben. Say it."

He cringed as he sunk lower in his seat, the world suddenly clearing as my anger flushed out the residual anxiety and panic and thankfully replaced it with something invigorating, something teeming with energy and finally something other than the dull numbness that soaked my veins more often than not.

"I-I don't want to-"

"Say. It."

Maybe I was a glutton for punishment. Maybe hitching my chair back until I was half on my feet, half draped over his side of the table, face right up in his was wrong, but the slimy satisfaction that slithered through my bloodstream at the sight of him shrinking before me put the power back in my hands.

I was the one to hurt him, not the other way around. That was fear of me causing a scene in his eyes, not the pity that surely burned through him.

It had to be. Otherwise I'd be the person that he was about to describe in a few lousy words.

"You know, El. Someone who was...abused."

Abused. Like it was a dirty word, but perhaps I assumed it was. The scar behind my ear tingled anew at the mention of the word that so many therapists had deemed just that: dirty.

Like it was the one defining quality of my life. I was reduced to the worst parts of myself, to the worst things that had ever happened to me.

"Fuck you," I seethed, rearing back and splashing my ice water in his face, a shell shocked grimace splayed across the face that I had traced the contours of every morning and night that we'd spent together, the person who'd taken my virginity because I thought that it would bring us closer together.

The person who had promised me in hushed whispers hiding out in my room from my brother that he would always protect me, especially since my birth father was still allowed to be free, roaming around and able to hurt whomever he wanted, while I was stuck in a perpetual state of fear, anxiety and terror from the nights when I couldn't escape the jail he'd created for me, and for my mother.

Funny how even with the exorbitant amount of money my brother and V had thrown at the state and the lawyers and the publicity for the trial, he'd still only gotten probation, and even then, it was only for two years.

He got off free while I was stuck in my head for the rest of my life. How was that fair?

"Elodie!"

I ignored his roar of anger as some girls at a nearby table clapped their applause for me.

"Get him, girl! I don't know what he did, but he deserved it!"

I ignored the wolf whistles from the table full of baseball players, recording the incident on their phones, telling me that they'd 'treat me right' if only I gave them a chance.

They wouldn't know the first thing to do with me if they tried. No one would, and the incident with Ben just proved that.

I was broken, and I didn't think anyone could ever want such damaged goods.