Amelia's next mistake was allowing herself to believe that things were simmering down with Colton. She wasn't foolish enough to tell him that she'd gone to see Henry on Monday night—what he didn't know wasn't going to hurt him—and so they miraculously managed to make it all the way until Friday without bickering about anything else. That evening, she finished up her work projects early and spontaneously decided to swing by the grocery store to grab some spaghetti and breadsticks to cook for the two of them.

She glanced at the stove clock as soon as she dumped the grocery bags on the kitchen counter. It wouldn't be too much longer before Colton was supposed to get home from work, but if she preheated the oven and started boiling the water now, she might be able to get it done just in time. So she grabbed a pot and a baking sheet and went to work, spurred on by some intrinsic force in herself that would have her believe that enjoying domestic tasks such as cooking made her not only a better partner but somehow also a more moral person than a woman who preferred not to do such things.

As he came through the front door and smiled when he saw her there in the kitchen, Amelia's spirits lifted. Maybe this is it, she thought; maybe they were finding their way back to how they used to be. He came and looped his arms around her waist, giving her a kiss.

"I hope you're in the mood for spaghetti," she grinned. "I guess I could have asked, but I thought a surprise might be nice."

"Spaghetti's great," he assured her, then pressed one more quick kiss on her mouth before leaving to change clothes while she made their plates.

When he came back, she was setting the table, striking a match to light the candle they kept as a centerpiece despite rarely actually lighting it.

"I take it that work was okay?" she asked as he sat down.

"Yeah, nothing too exciting but not too busy, either. How about you?"

"Mine was good," she agreed, reaching across the table for his hand while using the other to twirl her noodles around her fork. His fingers were much more calloused than hers, which was more so due to all the time he spent playing his guitar after work than anything else.

He volunteered to clean up their dishes and put the leftovers away since she had done the cooking. Departing with a swift kiss on his cheek, Amelia changed into pajamas and then climbed into bed to scroll through Netflix and find a movie for them to watch. They had pretty different tastes in films, so they rarely diverged from the few things they knew they both liked. But one of their mutual sources of entertainment was Werewolf in the Catacombs, a film so bad that it was almost good, so she clicked on it and let it start buffering while she waited for Colton to finish up in the kitchen.

He joined her a minute or two later, leaning back against the headboard and letting her rest on his shoulder after she hit play. His skin was warm to the touch, and so she started to grow uncomfortably hot under the blankets after a few minutes of that, but she was so cozy in every other regard that she couldn't bring herself to move. Later, she'd wish she could turn back time and change anything, but in the moment she was too naively optimistic about how their night was going so far to do anything differently.

It was about a quarter of the way through the movie when he slowly started kissing her. Amelia was somewhat enjoying it, having felt so deprived of affection recently, and yet she didn't notice herself being entirely excited about it, either. She was a little too sleepy for it, a little too aware of the unpleasant taste in her mouth because she hadn't brushed her teeth yet.

One of his hands slowly traveled down her sternum, his thumb trailing onwards along her midsection, and that was the point when she finally decided to say something.

"Will you cut it out?" she asked meekly, quite intentionally making her voice sound small as to counteract the harshness of her question. "I actually wanted to watch the movie."

Colton opened his eyes to look at her with a lazy sort of possessiveness, lifting his eyebrows. His hair was mussed, stray strands of it falling into his face. "We've watched this like five times."

"I don't care how many times we've watched it."

He softly sighed through his nose, sounding disappointed in her. "We could be having a lot more fun than watching a movie, you know."

Before she could think of how to protest, he shifted his body so that it was on top of hers, bracing his weight with his forearms. Amelia's breath stuck in her throat, little alarm bells sounding off in her head.

"I was having perfectly good fun before," she said as plainly as she could, but whereas she had been slightly irked before, now she was quite genuinely nervous.

Her voice wanted to quiver, but she told it that it could not, that she needed to deescalate this.

His lips formed a small, almost sympathetic smile. "C'mon, Amelia. I have a hard time believing you're not enjoying this at all."

Her temper flared, and she did something that she had never wanted to resort to—she smacked him across the cheek. But he only looked mildly surprised, and he didn't budge at all. He tried to smooth his expression over, but she caught the way his eyebrows started to furrow in frustration.

"Amelia," he repeated, more condescendingly this time than the last. "When you agreed to move in with me, did you really think we were just going to lay next to each other and stare at the ceiling?"

She struggled to sit upright, her pulse hammering in her chest as he braced himself more firmly around her in response. She could feel her whole body flushing with equal parts fury and embarrassment.

"Is that really all this is to you?" she demanded. "Did you just want me here day and night so you could use me like a toy at your own convenience?"

"Don't be like that. You know that's not what I meant."

She opened her mouth to retort again, but Colton stopped her, kissing her hard. Amelia could feel his fingers moving like fire on her skin, trying to edge the waistband of her shorts down, and she finally, truly began to panic. She writhed against him, pushing and banging her fists against the front of his shoulders, but it was of little use. He was much, much stronger than she was.

How did I let myself end up here?

Colton had decided what he wanted, and he had decided to take it. And so it was at that moment, when his fingers slid beneath the band of her underwear, that the last of her hope that he could possibly love her finally withered away.

And along with it died her last desire to forgive him. She wasn't going to let him keep taking and taking and taking from her without giving a single thing back.

When he pressed his lips back against hers, Amelia bit down on his tongue as forcefully as she could, nearly gagging when she almost immediately tasted blood. But it worked—he pulled back in shock and lifted a hand to his mouth, giving her a window of opportunity to roll onto her side and then run out of the room.

She could hear him cursing behind her, calling her a bitch, but she didn't allow herself a second of hesitation. Grabbing her keys, she bolted out the door without even stopping to pull her shoes on. Goosebumps instantly crawled all over her flesh; she was still wearing only a tank top and shorts. It had begun to drizzle in the form of a fine mist, and she wasn't sure if the moisture she felt on her cheeks as she flung her car door open was rainwater or tears.

She was trembling badly enough that it took her a painfully long moment to get the car started, but the fear of what might happen if she sat there for too long was what enabled her to swerve out of the parking lot and get herself back to her own half-abandoned apartment. She felt like she'd been hollowed out, her head ringing, and heard a dreadful noise that she eventually recognized was coming from her own lips.

When a pinprick of pain shot through her right foot on her way to her door, it registered in the back of her mind that she'd just gotten a splinter. But she could hardly care about that right now—her hands were fumbling to open the door and then lock the deadbolt behind her once she was inside.

Only then did the adrenaline rapidly recede like a tide. Amelia made it to her bedroom before sinking down onto the floor, her body abruptly rattling with an onslaught of horrible sobbing.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

How did I ever think he loved me?

She pulled her knees up towards her chin, overcome. What she had mistaken in him as love for herself was actually an unbridled urge to have control over her. But she had genuinely loved him in spite of all his flaws and had never wanted to believe that her love for him was unreciprocated, so she'd conjured up an illusion that it wasn't.

And look where that got me.

Colton had never cared about her love. The only thing he craved from her was mere dependence on him, and now that she had fled from him, she could see how that desire had motivated everything in their relationship—was that not exactly why he fantasized about them moving into his family house? Why he insisted on knowing where she was constantly, why he had pushed and pushed and pushed for her to move in with him? He always wanted to work harder than her, make more money than her. If there was anything that allowed her to foster a sense of self-sufficiency, he crushed it.

He hadn't wanted her to have the choice of leaving him, so perhaps she should have felt accomplished that she had.

But right then, in her darkest moment, Amelia thought that perhaps it didn't matter at all that she'd just walked away. He'd already won at this game of his by taking all of the pieces of herself that she still cherished. She'd sat aside and watched idly as he took each one of them in his hands and stifled it, choked it, until it finally died.

And knowing that she'd done this to herself, that in her inaction she had been the bringer of her own demise, made her weep and beg an invisible God that the rest of her could simply dissolve into nothingness, too.

____________________

A/N:

oh boy. idk how intense this one was to read, but it was definitely very intense to write. colton won't be making any reappearances soon—hopefully that's some consolation.

and just in case you need to hear this: it's never the victim's fault