Mornings used to smell of pancakes and passion, his touch the proof that love was real. Now, the same arms that held her safe threatened to snap her in half.
Bella lay still, staring at the ceiling as dawn spilled weak light over their shared room. Her chest moved softly with pain, a pain that slowly became constant. Some mornings, she wanted to scream. To feel alive again. To remind herself that she still had a voice.
How did something lovely turn so sour?
Four years ago, she would have sworn Chris was the answer to every broken part of her. He had a dangerous smile and the softest hands. He picked up her broken pieces and told her she was more than the chaos she came from. Back then, love felt like safety. Now it felt like a cage with silk ribbons tied around the bars.
Chris wasn't cruel in the way stories often write villains. He looked calm and composed, but he didn't recognize his faults. His control had teeth. His envy dressed as care, and his insecurities tightened like a noose every month.
And Bella? She was easy to love, easy to read, and easy to bruise.
She grew up where love was conditional—thrown like scraps on the table whenever her parents remembered to try.
Her mother once whispered to Bella in exhaustion, "If it weren't for you, Bella, we would never have been a family," as if her birth had chained two unwilling people together.
The divorce came, but the damage sank deep. It wove into her skin and stitched itself into the way she loved. She learned early that love meant giving pieces of yourself to keep others from leaving.
Chris had seen that softness and turned it into a chessboard. In love, you plan, he always said, or you get played.
At first, she believed he was protecting her. Now she wasn't sure if he was protecting her or the version of himself that feared losing her to the world.
She swung her legs off the bed and glanced at herself in the mirror: skin pale, eyes wide, lips pressed thin. This wasn't the Bella everyone knew. It seems like she has lost herself. She was no longer the inaccessible girl with the flawless skin and smile that turned heads. This girl looked drained.
Their love began like a campus fairytale: her second year, books spilling from her hands when he bumped into her.
Chris, the boy everyone wanted, who could charm a room with half a glance, had stuttered that day. He admired that she didn't melt at his attention and carried herself like the sun. For the first time, his Playboy confidence failed him.
The glances wouldn't stop. Then his hand brushed hers — too close, too warm. Words stumbled out, not perfect, but enough to break the silence. "Uh—sorry… I didn't mean to—" Chris's voice cracked.
He looked like a boy caught stealing glances, not a man. And Bella almost smiled. That was how the talking began.
For four years, they were the couple everyone envied. Laughter filled the cafeteria. Their kisses warmed cold lecture nights. Study dates ended in whispered promises. He became her best friend, the only man she had ever introduced to her mother. Even her mother—stern, sharp-eyed, and impossible to impress—had loved him.
He was there when she was grieving, when her mother's body failed piece by piece in that cold hospital room.
He held her through the sleepless nights, when her world was falling apart. His presence was her anchor then.
So when did it change?
At what point did the hand that once held hers become the leash? When did the laughter fade into long, heavy silences?
Bella traced a finger over the cold sheets where he had slept. The memory of the man she once adored clung to her like perfume that had long lost its scent.
She whispered to the empty room, "How did we get here?"
No answer came. The fridge hummed. The city breathed outside their window. And the truth pressed against her chest: the home she thought she had found was now a garden of thorns.
Somewhere out there, she had met someone who made her remember what it felt like to shiver again.
And Chris knew. God, he knew.