Chapter 170: My Little Sunshine

“Someone… anyone… please let me out of here.”

Avery’s voice cracked on the last word as she slammed her fists against the door again and again. The skin on her knuckles split open after the tenth hit, but she didn’t stop. She couldn’t stop. Blood smeared the wood in thin streaks every time her hands connected.

No matter how loud she screamed or how hard she hit the door, there was no response. The hallway outside remained completely silent, as if the room had been sealed off from the rest of the world.

“PLEASE!” she screamed, the sound raw and desperate, echoing back at her in the dark room. “Let me out! Leitana! Somebody! I’m in here!”

Her legs gave out. She slid down the door and collapsed onto the wooden floor, knees hitting hard, but she barely felt the pain. She pulled her knees to her chest, arms wrapping tightly around them, rocking slightly as her eyes darted frantically from one dark corner of the room to the other.

It was too dark, the single dim lamp on the far table barely pushed back the shadows. The room felt like it was shrinking and walls were closing in.

The darkness pressed in from every corner like a living thing, squeezing the air out of her lungs.

She couldn’t breathe right.

Each inhale came shorter, sharper, like her chest was being crushed by invisible hands. Her heart hammered so hard it hurt, a frantic, painful thud against her ribs.

“Ugh…” she groaned, clutching at her chest, nails digging into her shirt. “I can’t… I can’t…”

Tears poured down her face in hot, endless streams. She shook violently, the panic attack rolling over her like a wave she couldn’t swim out of.

This wasn’t new.

It sent her straight back.

She was thirteen again.

She had failed a math test. Not even a big one just a simple quiz. But Charles had seen the 62% written in red at the top. He had stared at it for a long time, then looked at her with that cold, disappointed stare that always made her stomach drop.

“You’re embarrassing me,” he had said quietly.

Then the hitting started.

Not with a belt or with anything that would leave obvious marks for outsiders to see. Just his open hand, hard and precise, across her face, her arms, her back. Each slap punctuated with the same words:

“Stupid. Useless. Disgrace.”

When he was done, he dragged her by the arm to the small storage closet under the stairs. The one that smelled of dust and old cleaning supplies. The one with no light.

He shoved her inside.

“You stay here until you learn.”

The door slammed shut.

The lock clicked.

She was thirteen, small, scared and alone in the pitch black.

She cried for hours that first night. “Mom… Mom, please…please! Let me out! I’m sorry! I’ll do better! Dad!” But her mother never came. The maids slid a plate of food and a bucket through the tiny gap at the bottom once a day. That was all.

Sometimes Charles left her there for a few hours.

Sometimes a full day.

The longest was three days.

She had wet herself on the second day because she was too afraid to use the bucket properly in the dark. She had cried until her throat was raw, banging on the door until her fists bled, screaming for anyone to let her out.

She had curled up in that tiny, suffocating space and whispered to herself over and over, “It’s not real… the walls aren’t moving… it’s not real…”

But they felt like they were.

Just like now.

When Charles finally opened the door on the third day, she had been so dehydrated and exhausted she could barely stand. He had looked down at her with cold disgust.

“Next time you’ll pass the test.”

That was all he said.

Avery squeezed her eyes shut in the present, trying to breathe through the memory, but it only made it worse. The walls of the room felt exactly like that closet, closing in, suffocating, endless.

“It’s not real… it’s not real…” she whispered brokenly, but her mind didn’t believe her. The room was getting smaller. The walls were moving closer. The darkness was pressing on her chest.

“I can’t breathe… I can’t breathe…” she gasped, rocking harder, tears dripping onto her knees. “Please… someone… I’m sorry… I’m so sorry…”

She was going to die here.

She was going to die alone in the dark and no one was coming.

Then, soft and gentle, a voice cut through the panic.

“You’re going to be fine, A.”

Avery’s head snapped up, through blurry, tear-filled eyes and saw him.

Leroy.

Standing a few feet away, smiling that gentle, crooked smile she had fallen in love with. He looked exactly like she remembered, warm brown eyes, soft curls, the little scar on his eyebrow from when he was a kid.

Avery gasped, crying harder. “Leroy…?”

He walked closer and knelt in front of her. Even though she knew deep down she knew he wasn’t really there, she reached for him anyway. Her hands passed through nothing, but in her mind he felt solid, warm and real.

“I know you’re scared,” he said softly, thumbs brushing her tears away. “But it’s alright. Breathe with me, baby. In… slow… and out. You can do this, just like I taught you.”

She shook her head frantically, tears dripping off her chin. “No… no I can’t… I can’t breathe… the walls… they’re closing… Leroy, please… don’t leave me here…”

“Shhh, I’ve got you. Feel my hands? Feel how steady they are? You’re not in that closet anymore. You’re safe. I’m right here.”

She sobbed harder, rubbing her wet cheek against his palm like a child seeking comfort. “I miss you so much… I miss you every day… I’m so sorry I got you killed… it’s my fault…if I never…got involved with you…”

“Shhh,” he soothed, leaning closer until their foreheads touched. “None of that. You hear me? None of that. You were the best thing that ever happened to me. The only good thing.”

She whimpered, rocking forward as if she could bury herself in his chest.

“So Just breathe. In through your nose… hold it… out through your mouth. That’s my girl. Again.”

She tried. The air still felt thin, but his voice anchored her. He started humming, the same low, gentle melody he used to sing to her on nights when Charles’s yelling had kept her awake. A simple old lullaby his mother used to sing to him and his siblings.

Soft and low, the same song he used to hum to her when she had nightmares after fights with Charles.

“You are my sunshine… my only sunshine… you make me happy when skies are grey…”

Avery’s sobs quieted into hiccupping cries as she clung to the hallucination, her hands fisting in the front of his shirt as she tried to breathe with the song. In on the high notes. Out on the low ones.

“You’ll never know, dear… how much I love you…”

“Please don’t take… my sunshine… away…”

Leroy kept singing, voice steady and warm, even though he wasn’t really there.

Avery stayed curled on the floor, tears soaking her shirt, heart still racing, but the walls stopped moving quite so fast. The darkness felt a tiny bit less suffocating.

She whispered between sobs, “Don’t leave me… please don’t leave me again…”

“I’m right here, A,” he whispered back. “I’m always right here.”

She cried until her throat was raw and her eyes burned.

And even though she was still trapped, still terrified, still alone in that dark room…

For a few precious minutes, she wasn’t.

Because in her mind, Leroy was holding her.

Singing to her.

Keeping the walls from crushing her completely.