Thalia bit her lip.
Hard. Hard enough that she tasted blood.
Her hands—trembling, shaking, still smeared with mascara she'd wiped from her cheek—pressed flat against his chest, and she 'pushed.' Not hard enough to move him. Not nearly. But enough that the gesture meant something.
He didn't budge.
She pushed again—both palms, fingers splayed, nails dragging through the front of his shirt—and this time it was less a push and more a 'shove', and she shoved with every last embarrassed, wrecked, humiliated scrap of dignity she had left.
He stepped back. Not because she moved him. Because he allowed it.
She hated that more than anything.
"'You—'" Her voice cracked down the center. She yanked the torn front of her dress up over her chest—the straps were gone, just fabric hanging uselessly—and she pinched it between her fingers and held it like a life jacket. "You 'bastard!'"
And she ran.
Not carefully. Not quietly.
