The bristles jabbed into my gums. Pain lanced through me. Blood seeped out, its metallic taste mingling with mint, but I didn't stop. Couldn't stop. Water ran down my chin, pink with blood and foam, dripping into the white porcelain basin like scattered petals—red as winter plum blossoms, beautiful and hopeless.
I raised my head and met my own eyes in the mirror.
Hair tangled. Eyes swollen and rimmed with red. Lips colorless except for the blood at the corners. My gaze—empty. Hollow. Dead.
I looked like something that had crawled out of a grave.
Nothing remained of the woman I used to be.
Unbidden, memories surfaced—distant, sweet, deliberately buried. I'd locked them away, too afraid to touch them, but now they crashed over me like a relentless tide, pulling me under.
Max and I had been in love once. Once, he'd held me in the palm of his hand like something precious.
It was my eighteenth birthday. The Simmons garden was filled with white roses—my favorite—and moonlight spilled soft across the lawn, a gentle breeze stirring the petals. Eighteen-year-old Max stood among the roses in a crisp white shirt, tall and straight-backed, the tips of his ears burning red, a flush creeping across his cheeks. He clutched a bouquet of white roses so tightly his knuckles had gone pale. He looked shy. Nervous.
He walked toward me, step by step, his gaze steady and deep, his voice carrying the faintest tremor: "Marina. Happy birthday. You're an adult now."
He held out the roses, his ears so red they might bleed. "I've liked you for a long time. Since you were eight, when you first came to live with us. You hid in the corner, looking at me with those timid eyes—that's when it started. I don't want to just be your brother anymore. I want to take care of you. I want to protect you for the rest of my life. I want you to be my girl." His voice dropped, raw and earnest. "Marina, give me a chance. Please?"
The devotion in those young eyes, steady as starlight, was intoxicating. In that moment, all my shyness and fear melted into something soft and boundless. I took the roses, their delicate fragrance filling my senses, and looked at him—so bashful, so sincere. Tears slipped down my cheeks before I could stop them.
"Yes," I whispered.