“It’s important,” she replies, eyes fixed on the window. “Personal. I won’t be long.”
I don’t believe her. Not for a second.
But I turn anyway.
The bunker isn’t far, and if she’s planning something, I’ll know soon enough.
The truth of why I’m taking her back there is simpler and harder to admit. I don’t want to take her back to her father’s house. I don’t want her back behind walls I can’t see through.
I want her exactly where she doesn’t belong.
With me.
SEVENTEEN
Coco
The Cabildo: A courthouse and jail, housing prisoners who sometimes found its walls safer than the chaotic streets outside. With the city plagued by duels, disease, and treachery, imprisonment offered a grim predictability that contrasted with the dangers of freedom. This paradox highlights the complexity of survival in early New Orleans.
It’s been barelya full forty-eight hours since I left this place, but stepping back inside feels like crossing into another lifetime.
The door closes behind us, the sound echoing through the empty space.
Before, that noise was a final punctuation, whether it was when I first arrived or when Ridge came and went.
Now it lands differently. It’s not softer, exactly. Just altered. Like the room itself recognizes the difference between being brought and kept here and walking in on my own.
The shift is not just the bunker.
It’s me.
I don’t recognize the woman who stands here now, but I know I’m not the one who arrived a week ago. That version of me feels distant, flattened, like someone I watched instead of lived as.
Telling Ridge I forgot something here was a lie. There’s nothing I need to retrieve, nothing I left behind.
Except him.
When I saw him tonight, something inside me snapped tight and would not let go. The way we left things last night was abrupt, unfinished, like a sentence cut off mid-thought. I should have been relieved when he took me home. Free should have been enough.
It wasn’t.
He brought me home and shut the world around me without raising his voice, without asking what I wanted, already deciding where I would be and when. Jackson Square was the first place that felt neutral, open enough that no one could quietly reposition me without my consent.
I’m fucking sick of men telling me where I have to be and what I can and can’t do.
All day, a restless pressure has lived under my skin, like something essential was missing. Not safety. Not comfort.
Him.
I wanted to come back on my own because I needed to know whether what I felt last night was real or just panic wrapped in adrenaline. His mouth. His hands. The restraint he chose when he could have taken more.
Walking away wasn’t freedom. It felt like a mistake.
Ridge stays close as we move deeper into the bunker, his boots steady against the cement. He does not crowdme, but he does not give space either. The air between us is tight, every sound sharpened by the quiet.
I glance over my shoulder and catch him watching me.
Unreadable. Controlled. Always.
