All Chapters of Denial before Surrender: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Saturday night smelled like sugar and engine oil. That was my first thought when I pulled into the muddy field beside the travelling carnival and killed the engine. The whole place had been set up on the edge of town where the council usually hosted markets and seasonal fairs, but under floodlights and music and the constant mechanical groan of rides, it looked transformed into something louder and stranger. Strings of coloured bulbs looped between poles. The Ferris wheel turned slow and bright against the dark sky. Somewhere deeper in the grounds, a ride shrieked with the exact pitch of either terror or joy.Clair unbuckled beside me and checked her reflection in the mirror before she opened the door.“You look fine,” I said.She glanced at me. “I always look fine.”“That’s true.”“Good save.”I smiled faintly and got out.The cold hit first, then the noise. Teenagers clustered near the gates with overpriced drinks and

The rest of the night felt wrong. That was the simplest way to put it. The haunted house spat us back out into the cold carnival air with all its noise and lights and sugar sick chaos, and Clair immediately started complaining about how bad it had been, how one of the actors had smelled like cigarettes, how the mirror room had been “cheap in an insulting way.” I nodded in the right places. Answered when she paused long enough to need a response. Walked beside her with one hand in my pocket and the other holding hers like I still belonged entirely in my own body. I didn’t. Every few minutes, my mind replayed the same impossible sequence. Tyler stepping out of the dark. My own stupid jealousy. His hand on my jaw. The fact that I had kissed him first that time. That detail kept cutting deepest. Because it meant I couldn’t keep building this whole mess around what Tyler had done to me, or what he wanted, or what kind of person he was. It mea

I took my father’s threat seriously. Not because I wanted to, but I had to. By Wednesday, I’d built myself a schedule so rigid it looked like the planning grid for a military operation. Library after school Monday through Thursday. Practice tests on weekends. Flash cards for economics. Revised chapter notes for business studies. No parties, no unnecessary trips out, no wasting time pretending I could afford to drift. It almost worked. Almost.The problem was that trying to regain control of my grades didn’t magically fix the rest of me. I could sit in class and take perfect notes. I could answer questions and hand in assignments and keep my expression neutral when teachers looked at me a little too closely, like they’d noticed the dip and were waiting to see whether I climbed back out of it.But the second Tyler crossed my line of sight, all that careful control still went unsteady. He wasn’t helping. Not by doing anything obvious. That would’ve been easier. It's e

By Friday, I had made the mistake of thinking I understood how bad things were. That was on me. I had my grades pulling back into line, or at least wobbling in the right direction. Leonard had stopped looking at me like I was one badly formatted spreadsheet away from collapse. Tara had gone from calling me haunted to calling me “annoyingly mysterious.". Even Clair had been easier with me for a couple of days. Less sharp, less suspicious and more openly affectionate in the hallways like she was reclaiming territory she thought had started slipping. It should have felt like relief.Instead it felt like standing on thin ice and hearing cracks under the surface every time Tyler came too close.Which was often enough to be a problem. He’d brushed his hand against my back near the lockers that morning when a crowd of juniors jammed the corridor, and my body had reacted so stupidly fast that I’d had to pretend I was coughing just to cover the hitch in my breathing. Later,

I should have left the closet. I was acutely aware of how small the closet was. There was barely enough room to stand without our chests brushing. Shelves pressed in on both sides, cardboard boxes stacked high overhead, and hanging clothes dragged across my shoulders every time I breathed too deep. The door had barely clicked shut before Tyler had me backed against the wall, one hand planted beside my head, the other already sliding low on my hip like he owned the space between us.And fuck, he did. I was already breathing hard, pulse hammering in my throat. Not from the stairs, or from the party downstairs. From him. From the week of constant teasing, the locker room brushes, the library table stares, the way he’d smirk like he could see straight through every lie I told myself about Clair. From the fight still burning under my skin and the sudden, humiliating certainty that I’d followed him up here anyway.Tyler looked down at me, blue eyes dark in the thin strip