“He used to do this.” The words came unbidden. “Show up in places I thought were safe. My gym. My favorite coffee shop.”She stared at her hands. “I’d turn around and he’d just… be there.”
David listened without interrupting.
“I got good at leaving. At always knowing where the exits were.” She swallowed. “I thought I’d stopped doing that.”
“Trauma doesn’t follow a timeline,” David said. “It doesn’t care how far you’ve come.”
She looked at him. At the steadiness in his gaze. The absence of judgment. The sorrow buried beneath.
“You knew,” she said. Not a question.
“I notice things,” he replied. “Doesn’t mean I need to fix them.”
Something cracked open in her chest. Not breaking. Opening.
“I’m terrified,” she whispered. “Of what he’ll do. Of what I’ll lose. Who I’ll become if I let myself believe this is real, and then it all falls apart.”
“I know.”
“And I don’t know if I can…” Her voice caught. “I don’t know if I can stay. After. Even if I want to.”
David leaned forward, elbows on his knees, but he didn’t reach for her. “Then we take it one day at a time. One hour if that’s what you need.”
Tears welled up again, hot and unwelcome. But she didn’t fight them this time.
“I’m so tired, David.”
“I know,” he said again. “Come here.”
She went to him, curling into his lap like something wounded seeking shelter. His arms came around her—solid, warm, asking nothing.
“Sleep if you can,” he murmured. “I’ll keep watch.”
She didn’t sleep.
But she stayed.
And for now, that was enough.
The suitcase remained hidden in the closet. Her escape route was still mapped in the back of her mind. The mental clock was still ticking down toward the moment she’d have to decide whether safety was real or another beautiful lie she’d told herself.
But David’s heartbeat was steady beneath her ear. His breathing was rhythmic and sure.
And in the space between one breath and the next, Lena let herself imagine—for a moment—what it might be like to stay.
Not because she had to.
But because she wanted to.
The thought terrified her more than Chester ever had.
Dawn arrived,bleeding pale gold through the curtains. Lena had dozed in fits—twenty minutes here, ten there—her body exhausted, but her mind refused to let go. David hadn’t moved except to shift his weight, keeping her cradled against him, his own breathing deep and even.
She extracted herself carefully, her muscles stiff and protesting. He stirred but didn’t wake, and she was grateful for it. She needed a few minutes with her thoughts before facing him in daylight, before seeing whatever questions might wait in his eyes.
The bathroom mirror was unforgiving. She took a quick shower, scrubbing at the mascara smudged beneath her eyes, and tried to assemble herself into something that looked lesslike a woman barely holding on and more like a professional manager.
When she emerged, David was awake, watching her with that focused attention that missed nothing.
