"Especially Mr. Hoppy." He squeezed me gently. "That rabbit has seen things. He's part of our story now."
Our story. I liked the sound of that. Liked that we had a story, twisted and beautiful and ours.
"Tell me about after," I said. "After the five weeks. Where do we go? What do we do?"
"Where do you want to go?"
"I don't know. Somewhere... else. Somewhere that's not here but not my old life either."
"I have a house," he offered. "In the mountains. Isolated but not institutional. Space to be ourselves without observation or judgment."
"You'd leave the facility? Your work?"
"I'd take a sabbatical. Write papers on my findings. Consult remotely." He paused. "Figure out how to have a life with the woman who started as subject 47 and became everything."
"That sounds..."
"Terrifying? Impossible? Necessary?"
"Perfect," I admitted. "It sounds perfect."
"Then that's what we'll do." He said it like it was simple. Like rewriting two lives was as easy as making a decision. "Five more weeks here, then a house in the mountains where you can be Bunny without pink walls. Where I can be Gabriel instead of Doctor. Where we can be whatever we're becoming."
"What if we don't know how to be normal?"
"Then we'll be abnormal." He shrugged, the movement shifting me against him. "Normal is overrated anyway. I'd rather be real."
Real. The word that had started this whole confrontation. But lying there, full of him and milk and feelings too big to name, I understood that we'd found it. Not the real I'd been demanding—some false freedom beyond these walls—but the real that mattered.
The real where I could be small and protected and his.
The real where he could be controlling and obsessive and mine.
The real where love looked like dominance and submission and baby bottles and tears that meant joy instead of shame.
"Okay," I said simply.
"Okay?"
"Okay to all of it. To five more weeks. To a house in the mountains. To whatever comes after." I pressed a kiss to his chest, right over his heart. "To being yours in all the ways that matter."
"And I'll be yours," he promised. "In all the ways you'll let me."
"Deal."
We lay there as afternoon faded to evening, two people who'd broken each other open and found something worth keeping inside. The baby bottles sat empty on the nightstand, evidence of how far we'd fallen from normal. How far we'd risen above it.
"Bunny?"
"Mmm?"
"No more tantrums about going outside. The world will be there when we're ready for it."
"And when will that be?"
"When you stop being afraid you'll lose yourself out there. When you trust that who you are now is who you're meant to be." He tilted my chin up for a kiss. "When you believe that Bunny is enough, with or without pink walls to contain her."
"That might take a while."
