Please. Something moved across his face when she said please. Not softness. The opposite of softness.
Satisfaction. And then he grabbed her by the throat and pressed her back against the glass.
It happened in one motion. His hand came up and closed around her neck and the wall hit her back and the sound that came out of her, short, sharp, cut off, turned every head within 30 ft.
He wasn’t squeezing with his full strength. Not yet. But the pressure was enough. Enough that her breath shortened.
Enough that her hands flew up and pressed against his chest and found nothing giving, nothing yielding.
Just the immovable weight of a man who had decided he was done pretending. Her back was flat against the cold glass.
She could feel the baby pressing against her ribs. She could feel her own heartbeat, too fast, too loud, in her ears and her throat and her wrists.
The mall had gone strange around her. The music still played overhead, some cheerful pop song that made no sense against what was happening.
A child somewhere was laughing. The smell of coffee drifted from a nearby stand. Life, completely indifferent, continuing 3 ft away.
And all she could see was Victor’s face. You took everything from me when you left, he said.
His voice was almost tender now, which was the worst version of him. The quiet, gentle sounding version that lived right at the edge of something terrible.
You think you just get to start over? You think you just get to be happy?
With him? Tears were moving down her face. She hated them. She hated that he could see them.
But she did not close her eyes. She kept them open and on his face and she thought, with every part of herself that fear hadn’t swallowed yet.
Don’t look away. Don’t give him the darkness. Around them, the crowd had grown. Phones were out.
Someone was on a call, their voice urgent and low. A woman had pressed herself against the far wall, hand over her mouth, eyes wide.
The teenage boy who had been sitting on the bench was standing now, his whole body rigid, recording everything and looking like he wanted to do something and didn’t know what.
Nobody is coming, Victor said again. Softer this time. Like a promise. Elena’s legs were shaking.
Luis, she thought. Not as a hope. Not as a prayer. Just his name, the way you think of something solid when the ground is moving under you.
