The hormone swings are impossible to predict—one minute I am dead calm, the next I want to throw a plate at the wall.
I breathe through the rage, let it simmer and settle, and then walk it off in the garden, boots crunching in the fresh gravel that someone has laid while I wasn't looking.
By afternoon, I am exhausted and planning a long nap when there's a knock at the door.
When I open it, Ruairí is already stepping back to give me space.
There is a softness at the corner of his mouth that suggests restraint rather than coldness.
He looks tired, as he often does now.
"I'd like a word," he says, and I step aside.
He enters and moves to the window, glances out at the hedges, then back at me.
"You've been restless," he says.
I nod.
"I'd like to go out tomorrow. Not to the city. Just somewhere with air. Trees. Something that doesn't smell like chlorine and steel."
He studies me for a long moment, and I do not flinch.
I keep my hands loosely clasped in front of me, as though I am asking politely, though both of us know that this is more than a request.
I am beginning to fracture.
I need a reprieve before I do something reckless.
"Where?" he asks.
"I don't know the name. But there's a hill outside of town, past the farms, near the bend in the river. I went there once as a child. It was quiet."
He turns the idea over in his head like a coin, testing its weight.
"Lena will go with you."
"I assumed," I say.
"And no detours. You're to stay on the main road. No switching vehicles. No sudden changes."
"I'm not trying to run."
His eyes settle on me then, steady and unblinking.
"I know."
There is a pause, delicate as thread.
"Thank you," I say, and I mean it.
He nods, once.
Then he reaches out—not fully, not quite a touch, just the brief sweep of his fingers along the sleeve of my cardigan, the way someone might touch a flame to see if it burns.
I do not move.
He leaves without another word.
