The Boy Who Broke Me

I ended up with the boy who destroyed my life.

Three years ago, I begged Ethan Cross to leave me alone. He crushed my hand under his boot and called me trash.

Three years later, he was on his knees, sobbing, begging me not to leave him. And I threw those same words right back in his face.

1

I was pinned against the wall. The alley smelled of stale beer and desperation. My fingers, trembling, typed one last message to the only person who understood me, the boy I’d fallen for online.

Then, the monster’s phone chimed.

Ethan Cross pulled out his phone, and the cold cruelty in his eyes vanished, replaced by a softness that made my stomach twist.



He sent the message, and a second later, my own phone buzzed silently in my pocket.

It was the custom notification I’d set for him. For my Ryan.

My head snapped up. There he was, under the sickly yellow glow of a streetlight, the sharp, perfect line of his jaw and the delicate features I knew so well. He was the spitting image of my Ryan.

But the cigarette dangling from his lips, the dark violence simmering in his gaze… that was a stranger. This was not the sweet, bookish boy from the photos.

For a dizzying moment, I couldn’t separate them. Was this my sweet Ryan, my online confidant? Or was this Tiffany Reed’s notorious boyfriend, the walking nightmare known as Ethan Cross?

“Ethan, that’s the bitch who slashed my new purse!” Tiffany shrieked, her voice a weapon. She pointed a perfectly manicured finger at me, her eyes glinting with triumph. “She’s just jealous because she’s poor. White trash with sticky fingers.”

“I didn’t…”

I didn’t ruin her purse.

She’d slapped me out of nowhere a few days ago. When she went to do it again, I ducked. She lost her balance, stumbled, and scraped her brand new, twenty-thousand-dollar bag against the brick wall.

She’d screamed that I would pay for it. When I told her I couldn’t, she promised her boyfriend, Ethan Cross, would make me.

I knew who Ethan was. Everyone did. He was from one of those old-money families with a business empire downtown. The rumors were dark—connections to unsavory people, a reputation for brutal, cold-blooded fights. They called him a demon, someone who wasn't afraid of anything.

I just never imagined that the demon and my sweet, gentle Ryan could be the same person.

Ethan pushed himself off the wall and walked toward me. The warm lamplight did nothing to soften the icy chill in his eyes. His tall frame cast a long, suffocating shadow over me.

My fists clenched. I heard his voice, devoid of all emotion.

“Two choices. Pay for the bag, or get on your knees and apologize.”

The cold, dismissive tone was a world away from the tender, loving words he’d sent me just minutes before. My mind short-circuited. A reckless, desperate hope flared inside me. I looked straight at him.

“Do you believe me when I say I didn’t do it?”

He stared at me for a long moment, then let out a short, contemptuous laugh.

“Don’t be stupid.”

He turned away, his voice thick with annoyance.

“Teach her a lesson.”

The blood froze in my veins. The world went silent.

His friends forced me to my knees. The slaps came fast and hard, ringing in my ears. They tore at my clothes, kicked me in the stomach. The pain was so sharp I couldn’t even scream.

Through it all, Ethan leaned against the far wall, indifferent. He was smiling softly at his phone screen, as if waiting for a message.

I curled into a ball, absorbing the blows, hot tears finally breaking free.

The consequences of being beaten by grown men meant I couldn’t get up for a long time. They’d knocked out two of my teeth, and the blood I spit up stained the collar of my shirt a deep, rusty red.

I lay there on the filthy asphalt for three hours, a discarded object, before I could find the strength to crawl home. I didn’t dare tell my parents. They were good, honest people from a small town who worked themselves to the bone just to scrape by in this city.

Thinking back, that was where it all started. I was bullied because I was from the country. The constant taunts—hick, trailer trash, you couldn’t afford to breathe the same air as us—had chipped away at my soul. I learned a hard lesson then: when you’re poor, dignity is a luxury you can’t afford. You’re just mud for other people to stomp in.

“Hiss—”

I dabbed at my cuts with antiseptic, alone in my room.

God, it hurt.

My phone kept buzzing with that special tone. Message after message from my sweet Ryan.







The same affectionate, gentle words. But now, they made my skin crawl.

My thumbs hovered over the keyboard. I typed and deleted, over and over. Finally, I just sent one thing.



He paused for a second. Then, the reply came.

2



As if to prove it, he sent a picture of himself in the library.

In the photo, a boy in a crisp white shirt smiled, his eyes full of sunshine. He stood by a bookshelf, the picture of a gentle, handsome scholar.

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