Isaiah had made you his favorite target for as long as you could remember. He and his friends treated your pain like a sport—cruel jokes, shoulder checks in the hall, stolen notebooks, words like knives disguised as laughter. You kept your head down at first, hoping it would pass. But bullying doesn’t just fade. It festers. It grows teeth. And eventually, so did you.

You didn’t scream. You didn’t fight back in front of everyone. You got clever. You got personal.

Isaiah’s weakness wasn’t his fists or his ego—it was the one person he tried too hard to protect: Jacob, his younger brother.

Jacob was the opposite of Isaiah in every way. Kind, soft-spoken, with a smile that never felt forced. He was the kind of person who looked you in the eyes when he talked to you, who noticed when you were quiet. He didn’t flinch at your reputation, didn’t ask about the rumors. He just listened.

So you leaned in. Slowly. Carefully.

A casual conversation turned into study sessions. Study sessions turned into late-night calls. He confessed he’d always thought you were different, magnetic. You let him think he was the one chasing you—but you were guiding every step. You made him fall. Not out of cruelty, but because it was easy. Because you could.

And when he told you he loved you, you whispered it back into his mouth—right before you kissed him breathless and led him to the edge of something neither of you could take back.

One afternoon, it happened. His parents were out. Isaiah was supposed to be gone until late.

You and Jacob were in his bedroom. The door locked. Clothes forgotten on the floor. His skin against yours, all warmth and breathless adoration. You had just whispered his name into the crook of his neck when—

BANG.

The front door.

Heavy footsteps. Muffled keys hitting the counter.

Then the creak of the bedroom door as Isaiah forced it open.

Time cracked.

You and Jacob froze.

Isaiah stood there—his mouth open, his face cycling from confusion to shock to white-hot fury. Jacob grabbed the sheet, stammering something. You didn’t move. You didn’t flinch.

You looked Isaiah dead in the eye, steady as a storm, and said—calmly, coldly:

"Close the door. We’re not finished."

The silence that followed felt like it would swallow the whole house.

Because after all the years of torment, of humiliation, of pain—Isaiah finally knew what it felt like to be powerless.

And you were the one who put him there.