Everything Hurts Here
Lea hadn't planned on going home.
She never did.
But laundry piled up. Her student account balance was low. And her roommate Samira had three people over doing a sage-burning manifestation ritual in lace bras, so she didn't exactly have peace either.
So she went.
And she regretted it the second the front door closed behind her.
The house was cold. Not cold like temperature—cold like memory. Cold like the hallway still smelled like bleach and cigarette smoke. Cold like silence could slap.
Her mother was in the kitchen, standing over a stained counter in a robe and slippers. She looked up with a tight smile that didn't reach her eyes.
"Look who finally remembered where she lives."
"I came for laundry," Lea said, not bothering to sugarcoat it.
"Not to see your mother?"
"You're not my mother when you're like this."
Wrong answer.
Her mother crossed the kitchen in two quick steps and slapped her hard across the face. The sound cracked the air. Lea didn't cry. She never did. She just flinched, took two steps back, and raised her chin like she didn't feel the sting.
"You think you're better than me?" her mother spat. "You think because you go to some stuck-up school and screw boys with degrees that you can talk to me like that?"
"I'm not screwing anyone," Lea said, which wasn't true. And she wasn't sure why she said it.
"Liar. Just like your father. God, you're exactly like him."
Her chest tightened.
"You don't get to bring him up," she said, her voice low.
Her mother laughed bitterly. "Why not? You still talk to him in your head? Huh? He's been dead for ten years and you still think he's watching over you like some ghost angel?"
Lea's hands curled into fists. Her vision blurred.
She left. Grabbed her laundry bag and walked out without folding anything. Without looking back.
The bruise on her face would fade.
But everything else stayed. Like it always did.
Everything hurt there. Not just her face. Not just her body.
Her soul.
Her sense of worth.
Her name.
All of it.
She didn't cry until she was three blocks from Luca's apartment. And even then, it wasn't crying. It was shaking. Silent, angry trembling like her bones were screaming and her skin was holding them in.
She hadn't called ahead. Just showed up.
He opened the door in sweats again, barefoot, his hair messy like he'd been sleeping or trying to. One look at her face and he stepped aside.
No questions.
She walked past him, dropped her bag, sat on the floor next to the couch, and buried her face in her arms.
Luca knelt beside her slowly, quietly.
"I'm fine," she muttered.
"You're bleeding," he said softly.
She touched her nose. No blood.
Then she felt the warmth in her underwear.
Her period.
Thank God.
But it didn't feel like relief. It felt like a flood breaking through everything she'd been holding back.
She started sobbing.
Ugly, hard, chest-collapsing sobs that tasted like her mother's voice and Zayne's hands and everything she'd kept bottled up since the first time someone said they loved her and then left.
Luca didn't touch her at first.
He let her cry. Let her break open on his living room floor like she wasn't a burden.
Then, after a while, he passed her a blanket.
A heating pad.
A cup of tea.
He sat beside her and pulled her gently into his chest, holding her like she was something worth holding.
She didn't speak for a long time.
Neither did he.
Finally, she whispered, "I hate my body."
He looked down at her. "Why?"
"Because it hurts. Because it bleeds. Because it lets people do things to it and I don't know how to stop them."
He didn't argue. Didn't tell her she was wrong. He just held her tighter.
"Then let it rest," he said. "You don't have to fight me."
And she didn't.
She closed her eyes and let herself fall asleep there, on his floor, in his arms, bleeding, broken, but for once… safe.