The bristles jabbed into my gums. Pain lanced through me. Blood seeped out, its metallic taste mingling with mint, but I didn't stop. Couldn't stop. Water ran down my chin, pink with blood and foam, dripping into the white porcelain basin like scattered petals—red as winter plum blossoms, beautiful and hopeless.
I raised my head and met my own eyes in the mirror.
Hair tangled. Eyes swollen and rimmed with red. Lips colorless except for the blood at the corners. My gaze—empty. Hollow. Dead.
I looked like something that had crawled out of a grave.
Nothing remained of the woman I used to be.
Unbidden, memories surfaced—distant, sweet, deliberately buried. I'd locked them away, too afraid to touch them, but now they crashed over me like a relentless tide, pulling me under.
Max and I had been in love once. Once, he'd held me in the palm of his hand like something precious.