Good.
“He says he cares,” I said. “But how do you feel when you’re with him? Safe? Heard? Or like you’re walking on broken glass barefoot every time he walks into a room?”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.
The silence that followed wasn’t the heavy kind anymore.
It was the kind that came after truth.
"He hasn't crossed a line," she said.
“Until yesterday,” I said before I could stop myself. It came out flat. Factual. The truth. She shook her head, like she could physically toss the emotion off her shoulders. “Look, it doesn’t matter,” she muttered. “I’m not—” her voice cracked slightly, but she pushed through. “I’m not going back to him. I’m not that stupid.”
I didn’t say anything. Just waited.
She looked out the window again, more to avoid me than anything else. “I don’t know where I’ll go after this. After thirty days—twenty-nine now, I guess.” A small, bitter laugh slipped out. “But I’ll go somewhere. Just not back.”
She was trying to sound strong. Resolved. But I heard the tremor beneath it.
She opened her mouth again, preparing the defense I could already see forming behind her eyes. The same one she probably gave herself a hundred times when things got bad—when he yelled, or threw something, or said something that made her question if it really counted as too far.
“And about yesterday, we don’t know—” she started.
“We do,” I said, cutting her off—not harsh, just solid. Unmovable.
She blinked, surprised. I kept going.
“You’re not a child. And you’re not perfect. You made a mistake. You acknowledged it.” I met her eyes then, made sure she felt every word. “I require nothing else from you.”
She stared at me.
Something in her expression cracked—not dramatically, not loudly. Just enough.
Her eyes shimmered. She looked down, and when she spoke, it was barely a breath.
“…Thanks.”
And for once, she didn’t follow it with a joke.
She looked so small just then. Still. Quiet. That fire of hers dimmed, but it was not out.
I reached over gently and tilted her chin up with two fingers—not forceful, just enough so she’d meet my eyes again. “Let’s go home, hmm?”
That word—home—hung in the air longer than I meant it to.
A pause.
Then she blinked, and a faint smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “You mean your sterile, moody minimalist lair?”
“Correct,” I said, deadpan. “Where feelings go to die and the Wi-Fi is strong.”
She snorted—real, messy, unexpected. The sound made something in my chest unclench.
“So what’s the plan when we get there?” she asked, settling back into her seat. “More life coaching? An emotionally repressed TED Talk?”
“I was thinking silence and leftovers,” I replied. “Or I could critique your spoon technique again. You stir like you’re chasing demons.”
She rolled her eyes, but I saw the light coming back into her.
