All it takes is a uniform and a bored expression to become invisible.
I’ve always been good at that.
Third floor.
Second door on the right.
Her door.
My fingers itch.Not with violence — that’s too blunt, too messy — but with anticipation.
She came home tonight.
Finally.
I let her.
I watched her fight for it, watched her stand on that sidewalk with those three men orbiting her like moons around a planet that didn’t even know it was made of fire.I watched her lift her chin and say she’d sleep alone.
Every one of them went still.
I almost laughed.
They think they’re protecting her.
They think she belongs to them now.
Kael with his calm, commanding voice.
Finn with his pathetic, lovesick stares.
Atlas with his fists he calls hands.
Three of them.
One of her.
It should make me worried.
It doesn’t.
Because I know her.
I know that stubborn streak.I know that need to feel strong, to feel in control, to prove she’s not the shaking little thing she used to be when she’d cry into the bathroom tile because I didn’t like who she texted or how she breathed.
She always breaks the rules to prove she’s stronger than me.
It’s cute.
And predictable.
That’s why I let her go home.
She thinks tonight is her victory.
It’s mine.
I wait until her apartment is dark for twenty minutes.Until the building quiets.Until the street noise thins.Until the men who walked her home drive away — yes, I watched them — two cars, a rotation, laughable in its predictability.
