I passed it. Like a ghost skimming past the heat of its old life. I returned to the box room. Slipped under the same blanket. Same bed. Same silence.
I sat there, knees pulled to my chest, hoodie damp against my skin. The light still on. The water bottle still unopened. I didn’t lie down. Didn’t close my eyes.
I just sat there. Waiting. Not for forgiveness. Not for sleep. For something I didn’t have a name for.
Or someone I shouldn’t still want.
But did.
Anyway.
5
CLOE
I woke before the sun.The blanket was tangled around my legs. My neck ached from sleeping too still. My back ached from sleeping at all. The apartment was silent. The kind of quiet that feels like being watched.
I sat up slowly. Every bruise protested. The hoodie clung to my back like a secret I hadn’t earned. I stood. I didn’t know why. There was nowhere to go. Nothing to do. But I moved anyway.
The kitchen was dim, lit only by the blue glow under the cabinets. The clock on the oven said 5:12. I filled a kettle. Slowly. Turned it on. I wasn’t hungry. I just didn’t know how to be still in this house anymore.
I cracked two eggs into the pan. The shell split wrong and one yolk bled out across the burner. I didn’t clean it up. Just watched it sizzle. The oil hissed. Too hot. I didn’t lower the flame. Didn’t care.
The eggs burned before I could flip them. The pan smoked. I dumped them straight into the sink and ran the water until the steam blinded me.
There was a time Wolfe made me eggs. Three in the morning. My thighs still red from his hands. My lips still swollen from how he took my mouth without asking. He cracked them clean, like aman who didn’t believe in mess. No wasted motion. No clumsy yolk.
He made me sit on the counter in his shirt—bare legs swinging while the pan hissed behind him. His hand never left me. A touch on my thigh. A thumb along my wrist. His body between me and the edge of the counter like he was the wall and the world all at once.
You get food when I say you do,he told me once—not cruel. Not cold.
Justfinal.
And then he kissed my throat.
I remembered the plate. The way he fed me the first bite like it was his name I was tasting. Now? Now I stood in his kitchen. Barefoot. Hollow. Starving. And I didn’t know if I was allowed to eat.
The air smelled like clean linen and coffee beans. Neutral. Sterile. Like grief dressed in expensive clothes.
I reached for a mug from the cabinet—my hand shook so hard it knocked two others. I froze. Waited. No sound from the hall. No voice telling me to be quiet. No footsteps coming to see what I’d broken. Just silence again. The kind that made you ache.
When the water boiled, I poured it over the teabag with shaking hands. Held the coffee cup to my chest like it might settle the tremble in my bones. But I couldn’t lift it to drink. Not yet.
I sat at the island. The chair was cold. The mug burned against my palms. I stared at the dark hallway and wondered if I should knock. Should ask if I was still welcome. But I already knew the answer. Because this wasn’t welcome. This was consequence.
The tea went cold while I sat there. Then I stood. Put the cup in the sink. And breathed like it hurt. Because everything stilldid. And normal was never going to come back. I thought I was alone. Until I wasn’t.
I stepped into the living room, barefoot, hoodie still damp at the cuffs, and stopped cold. Wolfe was already there. Sitting at the kitchen table. Phone in his hand. Sleeves rolled. Hair perfect in that way that looked unplanned but wasn’t.
He didn’t look up. Didn’t say anything. But I felt it. That crackle in the air. Like lightning had been stored in the walls.
He was reading something on the screen. Completely still. One thumb moving slowly. Precisely. Like everything he touched mattered more than what breathed around him.
I opened my mouth. Nothing came out. I stood there too long like an idiot then sat. The chair across from him groaned slightly beneath my weight. The sound felt obscene in the silence.
I looked at him.
Really looked.
