Sugar

by Mia Ballard

T he plan to kill Dean unfurled in my mind like a dark bloom in the midst of an otherwise idle Tuesday evening, the kind where the air tastes like spent fuel and the sky bleeds orange, stubbornly holding onto the last dregs of daylight.

“Ironic, isn’t it?” I whispered, leaning over him, my voice soft but deadly. “You manipulated me, broke me, and now look at you—broken, bleeding, finally feeling a fraction of the pain you left me with.”