Kiss, Bite, Lick – Epilogue – Toxic Relationship. Getting out.

Three years later, and the silence in my apartment is no longer a void; it’s a victory. I’m on my couch, the one he used to commandeer like a throne, drinking chamomile tea. It tastes like peace. Boring, fucking peace, and I’ve never loved anything more.

My phone buzzes on the coffee table. His number, which I deleted but will never forget, flashes on the screen. *You up?*

My body doesn’t flinch. My heart doesn’t hammer. It’s just a notification, like a weather alert for a city I no longer live in. I remember the way those two words used to be a hook in my gut, pulling me back into his orbit, no matter how far I’d tried to swim. Now, the hook is just a piece of dull metal.

I pick up the phone. My thumb hovers over the screen. I can feel the ghost of his hands, the weight of his attention, the sting of his bite, the lie of his lick. Kiss. Bite. Lick. The holy trinity of my undoing. It was a perfect, vicious cycle, and I was the perfect, willing victim for so long because the pain felt more like passion than the quiet ever felt like love.

But that girl, the one who needed the storm to feel alive, she’s not here anymore. I am. And I’m tired.

I don’t open the message. I don’t block the number. I just set the phone down, screen-down, and walk away. 

The buzz comes again a minute later. *Sarah?*

I let it ring out in the quiet. The silence that follows is the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard. It’s the sound of a life that is finally, completely, my own.

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