The Girl He Broke to Keep.
~ 🖤
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Maya used to believe that being broken meant you were damaged.
Now she understood the truth:
Being broken meant you were claimed.
And Elias had broken her so carefully, so thoroughly, that every sharp little fragment of herself now pointed back to him.
---
She didn't remember how many days it had been.
Maybe three. Maybe a week.
Time didn't exist in Elias's world.
Only silence.
Only heat.
Only the soft scratch of his voice behind her ear whenever she tried to think about leaving.
> "Why would you want to go back to a world that let her die and left you with nothing?"
> "You're not nothing," she'd whispered.
He smiled like he'd won.
Because he had.
---
He didn't let her sleep in her own bed anymore.
Didn't let her leave without touching her first.
Didn't let her wake up without his voice crawling across her skin like a collar.
> "You belong here," he told her one morning, cupping the back of her neck.
> "You belong to me."
She didn't respond.
Because deep down… she didn't want to deny it.
---
When Maya stood in front of his mirror that night, wearing nothing but one of his black hoodies and the bruises he left between her thighs, she didn't recognize herself.
Not the soft girl with dreams.
Not the grieving sister.
Not the version of her who still believed people could be good.
All she saw was a reflection of his madness.
And the terrifying part?
She wasn't running.
She was standing still.
---
> "Look at you," Elias said, stepping behind her.
"You used to flinch when I touched you."
He wrapped an arm around her waist, hand sliding down until she gasped.
> "Now you need it."
Maya met his gaze in the mirror.
Her voice was quiet. Almost mournful.
> "You broke me."
He smiled against her skin.
> "I broke you open."
> "And filled me with what?"
> "Me."
---
Later, she sat on his lap, facing him, his shirt bunched around her hips, her legs wrapped around him like she didn't know how to be anywhere else.
He didn't kiss her.
He just held her.
Pressed his forehead to hers.
> "I see the way people look at you," he whispered.
"Like you're soft. Fragile. But they don't know the truth."
> "What truth?"
> "You're not soft anymore."
He ran his thumb across her bottom lip.
> "You're made of fire now. Because I burned away everything that wasn't mine."
---
When they finally moved to the bed, it wasn't gentle.
It wasn't slow.
It was teeth and hands and bruises.
It was her back arching off the mattress as he claimed her again — and again — and again.
> "Say it," he breathed against her throat.
"Say you're mine."
> "I'm yours," she cried out, tears in her eyes and pleasure burning in her lungs.
> "Louder."
> "I'm yours, Elias."
And this time, she didn't whisper it like a girl scared to be caught.
She screamed it like a truth she could no longer deny.
---
Afterward, she lay in his arms, marked and aching, unable to remember who she was before him.
And maybe that was the point.
Because love didn't live here anymore.
Only ownership.
And Maya wasn't the girl he loved.
She was the girl he broke—
> —just to keep.
---
🖤