"I know. But you didn't have to answer."
He looks at me finally, really looks, and there's vulnerability in his eyes that he usually keeps locked down tight. "I want you to know me. The real stuff. Not just the easy parts."
Something in my stomach flips. "I want that too."
We sit there in the almost-dark, in the heat that's finally starting to ease as night falls. The AC rattles. Outside, the desert's going quiet, that shift from day to night that happens fast out here.
"I'm glad you kept trying," I say quietly. "I'm glad Finn made you try."
"Me too." He reaches over, takes my hand. His palm is warm and rough with calluses, fingers threading through mine like they belong there. "Otherwise I wouldn't be here. Wouldn't have met you."
My throat's so tight I can barely speak. "Yeah. That would've sucked."
His mouth twitches. Almost-smile. We stay like that—hands linked, the space between us smaller with every breath, building something honest and real out of all our broken pieces.
An hour later we're in the kitchen making dinner—and by "making dinner" I mean I'm boiling pasta while Holt opens a jar of sauce because we're both exhausted and cooking actual food is beyond our capabilities. I'm stirring pasta with one hand, drinking water with the other, trying not to melt into a puddle.
"You want garlic bread?" I ask.
"We have garlic bread?"
"We have bread. And butter. And probably garlic powder somewhere." I open the cabinet, rummage through spices that look older than I am. "Found it!"
"Then yes. I want garlic bread."
I'm buttering bread—making the worst garlic bread in human history, just butter and garlic powder on plain white bread—when the words come out without planning.
"Evan isolated me from my friends." The butter knife scrapes across bread. "One by one. Said they were bad influences. That they didn't care about me like he did. That they were jealous of what we had."
Holt goes still behind me..
I keep buttering, need something to do with my hands. "And I believed him. Cut people off. Stopped going out. Made myself smaller and smaller until there was nothing left except him."
The butter's not spreading evenly but I keep working at it. Concentrate on the bread like it's the most important thing in the world.
"By the end, I couldn't make a single decision without asking him first. What to eat. What to watch. Whether I could go to the grocery store alone." My hands are shaking slightly. I clench them into fists. "He convinced me I was stupid. That Icouldn't be trusted to make my own decisions. That without him I'd just fuck up my life and end up hurt or used or god knows what."
Holt's moved closer. Not crowding, just there. Solid and present and not running.
"And by the end, I believed that too. Thought I needed him. Thought I couldn't function alone." A laugh that's not quite humor. "But I left."
"You did."
"Ran away like some ridiculous movie. Ended up here with nothing except the clothes on my back and a desperate hope that anywhere was better than there."
"And?" His voice is quiet, prompting.
"And I was right." I finally look up, meet his eyes. "Because here—with you, with Finn, with this place—I learned what I'm actually capable of. What I can do when someone's not constantly telling me I can't."
"You're capable of a lot."
"I'm starting to see that." I set the butter knife down. "I handled that customer today. Didn't panic. Didn't need to be rescued. Just did it."
"You did."
"And it felt good. Really good." I turn to face him fully. "Like proving to myself that I'm not who he said I was. I'm not stupid or helpless or incapable of functioning without a man to guide me."
I can see him holding himself back from saying something, probably something violent about what he'd like to do to Evan.
