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I’ve held it longer before.

At school, where the bathrooms between classes had lines, and I’d stand in them shifting my weight from foot to foot until the bell rang.

At home, when one of Mom’s boyfriends occupied the bathroom forever—music going, steam rolling out under the door—I’d sit in the hallway right outside with my legs crossed, counting the minutes.

In bed when I was little and too scared to walk down the hallway because Steven was awake, I’d lie there in the dark pressing my fists into my own stomach until morning.

I survived those.

I can survive this.

The problem is my body doesn’t seem particularly interested in the pep talk. Another painful spasm rolls through me, causing me to whimper and shove my free hand between my thighs, pressing uselessly against myself through the soft shorts.

“No, no, no,” I beg.

Not this. Anything but this.

I call for him again. His name comes out thin in the empty room. Then again. Louder this time, straining against the house’s quiet. My voice cracks the second time, splitting at the edges like wet paper. “Adrien, please!”

Tears gather, hot at the corners of my eyes. One slides off my nose and lands dark on the blanket.

I don’t even know whether they’re from pain or fear anymore.

Maybe…

“D-Daddy?” I call out, my whole body trembling—my hands first, then my arms, then my legs—small shakes I can’t stop no matter how hard I try. I try saying it again, louder. “Daddy?” But nothing happens.

I try breathing the way Adrien told me to in the bath, slow and deep, but it doesn’t help. Every slow breath just presses down harder on everything that already hurts.

The stabbing urgency in my bladder comes in waves every few seconds and leaves me sweating each time it passes through me and recedes without relief.

I can’t keep doing this.

But I can’t not do it either. There’s nowhere to go. There’s literally nowhere to go in this room except in this bed with its clean sheets.

I am nineteen. The number echoes in my head, a hollow fact that doesn’t match the raw, childish panic tightening my stomach. I will not wet myself in a stranger’s bed. Not this one. Not Adrien’s. Not after everything. Not after he called me good.

The thought almost breaks me.

What if I do?

What if he comes back and sees it?

A cold dread washes through my gut. I know what happens when adults see that. The memory arrives before I can stop it—wet sheets, my face shoved down into them, a hand at the back of my neck, holding me too tight and grinding my nose into the mess I made. His voice telling me dogs were easier to train. And Mom, just standing in the doorway, watching. Looking at me like she was tired of me.

The shame had been worse than the fear somehow, because there are some things you can convince yourself are accidents until someone else turns them into proof that there is something wrong with you.

My breath hitches.

Adrien wouldn’t do that.

Would he?

He said he would never hit me, said punishment would never look like what happened before.

But this isn’t punishment. This is me ruining things—the mattress, the new soft shorts he gave me, this whole bed. Being disgusting. Being difficult. Maybe enough to make him regret everything—

A fresh, seizing pain tears through me; I gasp, and then my body betrays me.