I’d watched it happen before.
And I’d done nothing.
“What did you say to him?” I asked, my voice carefully controlled.
She looked down at her coffee. “I asked if anyone knew where his mother was, because she’d missed a lesson. Then I told him I wasn’t on the menu, but he would be if he didn’t get his hands off me.”
Despite everything—the anger, the memories clawing at the back of my mind, the bone-deep recognition of what she’d been through—I felt my lips twitch.
“That’s what went viral?”
“Just the first part. Out of context.” She shrugged, but I could see the weight of it pressing down on her shoulders. “I drove four hours to get away from it. I was heading to my brother’s cabin, but I couldn’t see in the storm. Then I hit your mailbox, and now I’m here, and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry for all of this?—”
“Stop apologizing.”
She blinked at me.
“You haven’t done anything wrong.” I held her gaze, willing her to understand. “Some asshole put his hands on you. You defended yourself. That’s not something to apologize for. Not to me. Not to anyone.”
Her eyes went glassy with fresh tears, and she looked away quickly, blinking them back.
“You don’t know that,” she said softly. “You don’t know me. For all you know, I’m exactly what the comments say I am.”
“I know you drove through a snowstorm dressed for summer because you didn’t have time to change clothes before fleeing your own life. I know you hit my mailbox and could have kept driving, but instead you walked through a snowstorm to confess because you’re not the kind of person who runs away from her mistakes.” I leaned forward, elbows on my knees. “I know you have a bruise on your arm that makes me want to find the man who put it there and break every bone in his hand. And I know you’re sitting on my couch apologizing for existing when you should be furious at a world that’s treating you like shit for standing up for yourself.”
She stared at me. The tears spilled over now, tracking down her cheeks, but she didn’t look away.
“The roads are impassable,” I continued, forcing my voice to stay even. “That storm isn’t letting up for at least a couple of days, maybe more. You’re stuck here whether you like it or not, and I’m not sending you back out into that. So drink your coffee,get warm, and stop apologizing. You can take the bed. I’ll sleep on the couch.”
For a long moment, she didn’t say anything. She just looked at me with those tear-bright eyes like she was trying to figure out if I was real.
Then she asked, very quietly, “Why are you being so nice to me?”
Because you showed up at my door like a second chance I didn’t deserve.
Because something about you makes me feel like I’m waking up after three years of sleepwalking.
Because I took one look at you and knew—with a certainty I can’t explain and don’t want to examine—that you’re going to change everything.
I didn’t say any of that.
“Because you needed someone to be,” I said instead. “Now drink your damn coffee.”
She laughed then—a broken sound, but real, and it made me want to pull her into my arms and never let her go.
Maybe solitude wasn’t what I wanted, after all.
3
CHARISMA
Idrank the damn coffee.
It was hot and strong and exactly what I needed, warming me from the inside out while the blanket handled the outside. T.J. sat across from me in his armchair, watching me like he was afraid I might shatter if he looked away. That wasn’t entirely unreasonable, given the state I’d shown up in.
"Your brother," he said after a while. "Does he know you're coming?"
"Sort of. I tried to call, but it went to voicemail, so I left a message saying I was on my way and needed a place to crash. Then I lost signal before he could call me back." I laughed, but it came out hollow. "He's probably worried sick by now."
