Mine.
“Scarlett…”
Her name cracks out of me.
“Wake up. Look at me. Look at what you did to me.”
But she doesn’t wake.
Her fingers twitch again—this time reaching out as if searching for something.
Searching for me.
I feel my control start to shred.
I reach toward her hand—just an inch, just a breath, just enough to?—
No.
I stop.
My thumb hovers over her knuckles, the smallest gap of air between us.
If I touch her now, the whole house will burn.
I exhale slow, through my teeth.
“I’ll come back,” I whisper to her sleeping form. “And next time, you won’t be dreaming.”
I stand slowly, silently, eyes locked on the rise and fall of her chest.
Her home is too quiet.
Her life is too tight.
Her fiancé sleeps too deeply.
She’s suffocating in all this safety.
She was never built for safe.
“I’m going to take you out of here,” I murmur, voice low and certain. “One breath at a time. One lie at a time. One touch at a time.”
I turn toward the door.
But before I slip out—I look back at the two of them one last time.
Noah wrapped around her like a shield she didn’t ask for.
Scarlett trapped in a life she built to survive me.
My voice is barely a breath, but it sharpens the air. “You’re not staying here.”
Quiet as a shadow, I vanish back into the hallway, down the stairs, and out into the night that’s been waiting four years for this moment.
Scarlett
Iwake like I’ve been drowning.
