Future Me Warned Me Not To Love Him

The day I was dragged into a rain-slicked alley and beaten until my ribs screamed was my sister’s twenty-eighth birthday.

Two men in black hoodies and surgical masks tore my clothes and kicked me with a practiced, rhythmic cruelty. I curled into a ball, my fingers trembling as I reached for my phone to call Grant. He was my husband. He was supposed to be my sanctuary.

Suddenly, a shadow flickered in the periphery of my blurring vision. A woman stood there. She looked exactly like me, but her eyes were tired—weathered by a decade of grief I hadn't yet lived.