They nod once.
Time to move.
I step out of the van behind her, exactly where I belong: not leading, not following, but guarding the space between breath and danger.
SURVIVAL CARVED AWAY EVERYTHING ORNAMENTAL
I Got Death In My Pocket - MGK
Nightshade
The door shuts behind us with a sound that lands too cleanly, too final, and I know immediately I won’t be opening it again until I decide to.
The corridor outside erupts almost at once – raised voices, boots shifting, someone swearing my name like it’s a summons – but I don’t turn around. I lock the door instead, the click loud and unmistakable in the small room, definitive enough that the noise fractures into argument.
Kayla doesn’t move. Neither do I. For a moment we just stand there, the world narrowed to the exact distance between our bodies, neither of us trusting it not to vanish if we blink.
She looks different. Not fragile – she has never been that – but pared down, sharpened, like survival carved away everythingornamental and left only what she needed to keep breathing. There’s a bruise blooming dark at her throat, half-hidden and badly disguised, another at her wrist she hasn’t bothered to cover at all. Her eyes are too bright, adrenaline-bright, the kind that crashes hard once the danger passes, and I catalogue every detail automatically, clinically, because if I don’t give my mind something precise to do it will start inventing ways I could still lose her.
I don’t touch her yet. That isn’t restraint. That’s control.
“Say something,” she says finally, voice sharp enough to cut. “You’re staring like I’m an autopsy.”
“I’m making sure you’re here,” I tell her. “That you didn’t vanish again the second the door closed.”
She snorts softly. “Dramatic.”
“I don’t do dramatic,” I say. “I do accurate.”
Outside, something slams into the door hard enough to rattle it, and Kayla flinches before she can stop herself, shoulders tightening, breath hitching for just a fraction of a second before she recovers. Too fast. Too practised. I step into her space then, close enough that the recycled hotel air gives way to the familiar heat of her skin, not caging her, not pinning her – just existing there, solid and unavoidable, until her attention snaps back to me.
“Look at me,” I say.
She does. Immediately.
“Don’t do that,” she says quietly. “That thing where you look like you’re deciding how badly this could still go.”
“I’m deciding how to stop it,” I reply.
Her mouth tightens. “You don’t get to control everything.”
“No,” I say. “But I get to control this room.”
She studies my face, searching for cracks. “You locked them out.”
“Yes.”
“They won’t like that.”
“They’ll survive.”
Silence stretches, thick and vibrating. Her gaze flicks briefly to the door, then back to me. “You’re shaking,” she says.
“So are you.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re upright,” I correct. “That’s not the same thing.”
