He Used My Pain to Make Her a Star

The scent of roasted rosemary and garlic filled Ryder’s Beverly Hills penthouse, a domestic illusion I had meticulously crafted to keep the ghosts at bay. It had been exactly fifteen years since the night my childhood shattered, since the blood seeped into the grout of my parents’ hallway. I needed Ryder tonight. Not Dr. Sullivan, the renowned trauma psychiatrist who had pulled me from the wreckage of my own mind, but Ryder, the man who slept beside me.

My phone buzzed on the granite counter. A FaceTime call. Ryder’s face appeared on the screen, shadowed by the fluorescent lights of what looked like his clinic office.

"Serena, I need you to anchor yourself," his voice flowed through the speaker, a calibrated, velvety baritone designed to lower heart rates. "There’s a Code Blue at the clinic. A patient in acute crisis. I’m going to have to stay overnight."

My fingers tightened around the edge of the counter. "It's November fourteenth, Ryder. You promised you’d be here. You know what tonight is."

"I know, sweetheart. And I validate how incredibly difficult this anniversary is for you," he said, the therapeutic cadence slipping into his tone like a reflex. "But you have the tools to self-soothe. My ethical obligation to a patient in immediate danger has to take precedence."

I swallowed the hard knot of abandonment in my throat. "I'm a patient in danger, Ryder. I'm drowning here."

"You aren't a patient anymore, Serena. You’re my partner. And my partner knows that I save lives." He sighed, a subtle shift of his shoulders. As he reached forward to end the call, his left hand came into the frame. His thumb and forefinger anxiously twisted the dial of his silver Patek Philippe watch—a nervous tic he only exhibited when he was cornered. "Take your medication. I'll be home by dawn."

The screen went black. The silence of the penthouse pressed against my eardrums. My hand drifted up, my fingertips pressing into the hollow of my throat—a phantom reflex from a teenager trying not to breathe in a dark space. With my other hand, I gripped the gold locket resting against my collarbone, feeling the engraved edges of my parents' memorial.

To drown out the deafening quiet, I collapsed onto the velvet sofa and opened Instagram. Mindless scrolling. Anything to stop the memories of splintering wood and screaming.

A live stream from a pop-culture news outlet auto-played. The glaring strobe of paparazzi flashbulbs illuminated a red carpet in Hollywood. The interviewer was babbling about the highly anticipated premiere of a thriller, but my eyes locked onto the background.

Out of focus, then sharply in focus, stood Ryder.

He wasn't in his clinic scrubs. He was wearing a bespoke Tom Ford tuxedo. And clinging to his arm, laughing with her head thrown back, was Hannah Bishop. His childhood friend. The A-list screenwriter who had never learned the definition of a boundary. Her manicured fingers were interlaced with his.

A cold sweat broke across my neck. He lied.

*She forced him,* my mind immediately scrambled to rationalize, the trauma-bonded reflex kicking in. *She threatened to hurt herself again. She manipulated him into being her emotional crutch for her big night.*

I didn't think. I just grabbed my keys. I had to get him out of there.

The drive to Hollywood Boulevard was a blur of neon and rain-slicked asphalt. By the time I slipped past the distracted security at the back entrance of the Chinese Theatre, the lobby was empty. The premiere had already started.

I pushed through the heavy velvet doors, stepping into the cavernous, pitch-black theater. The surround sound vibrated through the floorboards. I stood in the back aisle, my eyes adjusting to the massive screen.

The title card faded out: *The Closet*.

A wide shot of a house appeared. My breath hitched. It was a replica of a 1990s suburban hallway. The camera panned slowly, intimately, down the corridor.

*Creak.*

The sound of the floorboards on screen echoed the exact pitch of the loose board outside my childhood bedroom. The camera pushed into a bedroom, focusing on a wall. Faded yellow floral wallpaper. Hydrangeas.

My hand flew to my throat. I couldn't breathe.

On screen, a teenage girl was shoved violently into a louvered closet door. The bottom wooden slat was missing.

"Get in there and shut up!" the mother on screen hissed, her face contorted in a vicious, drug-fueled rage. She grabbed the terrified girl by the hair, using her body to block the door. "If he comes in, you take the hit, you little brat. Just leave me my stash!"

The theater audience gasped in collective horror at the abusive mother. Then, the "killer" entered—framed in soft, tragic lighting, weeping as he raised the weapon, a misunderstood antihero forced into violence by the monstrous woman.

Bile rose hot and acidic in the back of my throat. I stumbled backward, my shoulders hitting the theater wall.

My mother hadn't used me as a shield. She had thrown me into the closet to save me, pressing her own fragile back against the wood as the intruder hacked through it. She died whispering my name.

I stared at the screen, the cinematic blood pooling on the fake hardwood. No police report had ever detailed the missing slat on the closet door. No newspaper had ever mentioned the yellow hydrangea wallpaper.

I had only ever whispered those agonizing, sensory details in one place on earth.

Lying on the leather couch in Dr. Ryder Sullivan’s office.