Ten.
The railing is under my hands. The night is in my mouth. Nothing has changed.
My vision tunnels. Sound drops in and out. I hear frogs in the marsh, the distant hum of a boat, the house breathing behind me. Everything feels far away and too close, both at once.
My fingers go numb on the rail.
Footsteps on the steps. Slow. Measured.
“Phoenix.”
Atticus. Not a question. A statement, like he is checking a box in his head. Alive. Located. Panicking.
He stops two steps below and doesn’t come up. I feel the urge in his body. The way he wants to close the space. He locks it down.
“Do you want me to go away?” he asks.
I want to say yes. I want to say no. I want to scream that everyone leaves anyway, so what does it matter.
“No,” I say. It scrapes out of me. “But don’t touch me. Not right now.”
“Okay,” he says, simple. No wounded tone. No disappointment. Just okay.
We stand like that.
Me gripping the rail like it’s the only thing holding me on the planet. Him behind me, hands loose at his sides, the man who can crack any system on earth and can’t hack my nervous system out of a spiral without permission.
The air moves over my skin. My body doesn’t care. My chest is a fist. My lungs are a locked program.
“Phoenix,” he says after a beat, voice quieter. “Tell me what your brain is saying.”
“I feel like I’m eighteen again,” I hear myself say. “High school hallway. The day I realized the texts weren’t ever going to go away, not really. The way my stomach fell through me and never came back. I left that night because I couldn’t stand the idea of seeing Conrad and not being allowed to love him and not knowing why.”
I close my eyes. It’s all there. The ache. The certainty that leaving Conrad was the only way to survive what staying would’ve done to me. I loved them all then, and knowing I wasn’t good enough then… and definitely not now is enough to destroy me.
“I feel it now,” I say, quiet, honest. “Exactly the same way. Like the only thing that will stop the noise in my head is motion. Ican’t sit here and be one card in a losing poker hand. I can’t be the center of a story I didn’t write.”
Atticus doesn’t argue. He knows better. “Where would you go?” he asks.
“I don’t know yet,” I admit. “But I can’t have just part of you. Part of this. I can’t be handled like evidence while you decide if I’m allowed the piece I want.”
“You’re allowed whatever you want,” he says at once.
“Am I?” I look down at him. “If it’s true? If that paper comes back with matching boxes, am I allowed what I want? Or is everything I thought I’d have for the rest of my life being ripped away from me like it’s nothing? Like I’m nothing.”
He opens his mouth. Closes it. He’s honest enough not to pretend there’s a version of the answer that makes us all saints.
“I don’t know,” he says. It hurts. But the honesty helps.
Behind us, the screen door creaks. Maverick sticks his head out, reads the air in a second, and keeps it light by force. “Lab courier has our spit,” he says. “We’re officially gross and waiting for results now.”
“Thanks,” I say, without turning.
Storm’s voice from the doorway, low. “If you’re leaving, you’re not leaving alone.”
“I didn’t say I was leaving,” I shoot back.
“You didn’t have to,” he says. “I know your face.”
