Elladiss Winter

“How short?”
Now or never. And Dara was tired of staying silent.
Dara wet his lips. “When I was fifteen, I started getting drunk early. I’d open my first bottle around three in the afternoon. It meant I was wasted by the time he got home.”
Leo’s gaze caught his in the mirror, his hands frozen with scissors still in grasp. Dara looked back at him.
“Well. Eventually, he got sick of waiting for me to sober up. So one night he grabbed me by the hair”—Dara tugged at that lock twisted round his finger, tugged until it hurt—“and he dragged me into the bathroom, and he held my head under in a sink of cold water until I couldn’t breathe. Until I was choking. He only let go after I stopped fighting, that moment right before I would’ve passed out.” Dara lifted one shoulder, dropped it down. “But I guess it worked. I wasn’t drunk anymore.”
Leo was still staring at him. He didn’t say anything. Dara’s lips curled in a bitter smile.
“Cut it short enough he couldn’t do that again.”
― Victoria Lee, The Fever King