“You’re here,” he said, “because you’re unfinished.”
I didn’t understand. Not yet. But my stomach knew what it meant before my brain did. The shift. The power. The pressure.
He hadn’t brought me home to comfort me. He’d brought me back to finish what I’d interrupted. To show me what it meant to stay. And what it cost to return.
“You don’t get the same rules anymore.”
His voice was quiet. Almost calm. Like he was reading something off a card he’d memorized days ago. Like this wasn’t personal. But it was. Every word felt personal.
I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. He leaned back in the chair and looked at me like he was deciding whether to throw me out or feed me.
“I gave you choices,” he said. “You wasted them.”
My throat tightened.
He didn’t wait.
“No more second chances. No more protection. No more comfort.”
He said the last word like it disgusted him.
I wanted to argue. To say he didn’t have to do this. But I knew better. And I knew him. So I just sat there, my hands knotted in my lap, the shame curling tighter around my spine.
“You want to stay here?” he asked.
I nodded, barely.
“Then you’ll follow the rules.”
My spine straightened. Not out of defiance. Out of instinct.
His voice was calm, but the tension beneath it pressed like a blade to the side of my throat. Wolfe never yelled. He didn’t need to.
“You don’t leave the apartment unless I tell you to,” he said.
His tone never changed.
“You don’t enter my room. You don’t touch what isn’t offered. You don’t speak unless it matters.”
I swallowed hard.
He didn’t stop. “You don’t use my name without permission.”
That one made my chest cave in a little.
“Why?” I asked, before I could stop it.
He raised a brow. Not cruel. Just curious.
“You want to keep it?” he asked. “Then earn it.”
I dropped my eyes. My hands trembled in my lap. This wasn’t a conversation. It was a sentence being read aloud. And I couldn’t breathe through it.
“I’m not asking for much,” he added. “Just the truth. The whole of you. Nothing less.”
The words hit like soft violence.
“I don’t know who I am anymore,” I whispered.
