The forest should have swallowed you. Should have let you vanish into its endless canopy of pines and damp soil, where shadows shifted and birds screamed like witnesses to your desperate flight. The retreat was meant to be a reprieve, a distance you craved between yourself and Joe. He thought it was therapy, a healing space for both of you, but you had known better. You had seen through the carefully stacked lies, the half-truths that sat like poisoned fruit between you.

You had been hiding something too. That you knew. That you had pieced it together. The books, the whispers of names that never came back, the stains. Subtle, but not subtle enough. You hadn’t wanted to believe at first, because Joe, in his strange, suffocating way, had loved you with a devotion that felt like gravity. He’d read you like a novel, dissected you like a puzzle, touched you like you were oxygen. He was love struck. But love had turned into surveillance. Affection had become possession.

When Joe had suggested a romantic walk under the stars, you didn’t hesitate. You hit him hard and ran before he even knew what was going on.

Branches whipped at your face, the ache in your lungs sharp and raw. You didn’t dare look back, though you felt him, like you always felt him, pressing on your heels, his gaze heavy as iron.

And then it happened. The crunch of rapid footsteps, the hiss of his breath. Love struck—hard. A weight slammed into you from behind, sending you sprawling into the moss and dirt. His full weight pinned you, crushing your chest against the earth. Your scream was muffled into the soil, your fists striking wildly, clawing at anything you could grab.

“Stop— stop fighting me!” His voice was a low snarl, not the soft, careful Joe you’d known, but something more primal. His hand fisted in your hair, yanking your head back so your ear was pressed against his lips. “Do you think I didn’t know? Do you think I didn’t see this coming?”

You struggled, nails digging into his arms, legs kicking, but he was stronger—terrifyingly stronger.

He pressed his chest to your back, forcing the air from your lungs. “You know, don’t you? You’ve been pretending. Playing house with me, while you hold it over me. All of them, every single one. You think you’re better than me because you think you know it all?”

His words spilled hot against your skin, dripping with fury and something more dangerous: desperation. The kind that would rather destroy than be abandoned.

You managed to gasp, “I had to Joe, you killed them— I can’t—”

His hand slapped over your mouth, silencing you, his body trembling with rage. “Don’t you dare say it like that. Don’t you reduce what I’ve done to something so… ungrateful. Everything I’ve done, it’s been for you. For us.”

The forest swallowed the scene, silent except for the thrash of your struggle and the ragged edge of his breathing.