For a moment, Erin felt her anger waver. She could see the genuine fear in Lena's eyes. She could understand the terrible weight of caring about someone whose job involved real danger. But understanding didn't change what had happened, what Lena had done.
"I'm scared too," Erin said softly. "I'm scared of being with someone who doesn't respect me enough to let me make my own choices. I'm scared of loving someone who sees me as careless instead of competent."
"I don't—" Lena started, then stopped. Something in her expression shifted, like she was finally hearing what Erin was actually saying. "I do see you as competent. You're brilliant at what you do."
"But you also think I'm reckless."
Silence, long enough to be an answer.
"You can't have it both ways, Lena." Erin reached out to grab the doorknob, and she could feel herself shaking—with anger, with hurt, with the effort of not breaking down completely. "You can't tell me I'm brilliant and then go to my boss because you think I can't assess my own safety."
"Erin, please?—"
"I told you Friday what I needed from you. I needed you to trust me, to respect my judgment, to let me do my job without trying to protect me from it." Each word felt like carving another wound into what they'd created together. "Instead, you went behind my back and confirmed every fear I have about how people perceive me in this position."
"I can change?—"
"Can you?" The question stopped Lena cold. "Can you watch me walk into a dangerous scene and not try to stop me? Can you trust that I know what I'm doing, even when you're scared? Can you respect my expertise even when it conflicts with your need to keep me safe?"
Lena opened her mouth, then closed it. Erin could see her struggling, trying to find an answer that would save this, but they both knew the truth.
"That's what I thought," Erin said quietly.
She opened the door, and the cool morning air slapped her face. Behind her, she heard Lena say her name—desperate, pleading—but she didn't turn around.
"I can't be with someone who doesn't respect me," Erin said without looking back. "And you've made it very clear that you don't."
She walked to her truck with her spine straight and her vision blurring, and this time when Lena called her name, her voice already sounded like it was coming from very far away.
She knew that some things, once broken, couldn't be put back together. And some people, once they showed you exactly how they saw you, had to be believed.
Erin made it three blocks before she had to pull over.
Her hands were shaking too hard to grip the steering wheel safely, and the tears she'd held back during the fight were threatening to blur her vision completely. She parked in front of a small neighborhood park where kids were playing on swings while their parents watched from benches, the picture of Sunday morning normalcy that felt like it belonged to a different universe.
She turned off the engine and let the silence wash over her. No more angry voices, no more desperate explanations, no more words that cut like knives. Just the distant sound of children laughing and birds cawing from the trees.
Her phone buzzed in the cup holder. Lena's name flashed on the screen. Erin didn't even read the preview. She turned the phone face down and focused on breathing until her hands stopped trembling.
When she felt steady enough to drive, she started the truck and headed home, taking the long way through residential streets where the biggest drama was probably someone's sprinkler hitting their neighbor's driveway. Normal people living normal lives.
The drive gave her too much time to think. Every red light felt like an invitation to replay the conversation and dissect each moment where things had gone from bad to worse to irreparable. She found herself gripping the steering wheel again, her knuckles white against the black leather, and forced herself to loosen her grip. She pressed the gas pedal a little harder than necessary.
By the time she pulled into her apartment complex, her jaw ached from clenching it, and she could feel the beginning of a headache building behind her eyes. She sat in her truck for a moment, looking up at her second-floor windows, trying to remember what it felt like to come home to a space that was entirely hers, that didn't carry traces of someone else's presence.
Her apartment felt smaller when she walked in, like the walls had shifted inward while she was gone. The case files were still scattered across the kitchen table, coffee stains marking the spot where her morning had started with hope and ended with devastation.
Erin gathered the papers on autopilot, stacking them neatly despite the coffee damage. Some of the photos were ruined, evidence reports smeared into illegibility, but she straightened them anyway. Chaos to order, even if it was meaningless.
Her phone buzzed again. Then again.
She pulled it out and saw five missed texts from Lena, the preview lines visible even though she hadn't opened them:
Please call me…
I know you're angry but we need to...
That's not what I meant about...
