At least for a little while.
The ranch was silent when my phone buzzed at 2 AM.
I'd been asleep, or something close to it. Drifting in that half-conscious space where dreams blurred with reality and every sound seemed amplified. The vibration sliced through the quiet, and I was awake at once, heart slamming, hand groping for the nightstand.
Unknown number. No caller ID.
I knew who it was before I answered. Knew, and answered anyway, some part of me still the sixteen-year-old who flinchedat his footsteps in the hallway, who'd learned that ignoring Todd only made things worse.
“Hello?” My voice came out low and cautious, barely more than a test.
Silence on the other end. Then breathing, slow and deliberate. And underneath it, the faint clink of ice in a glass.
"Riley." Todd’s voice oozed through the line—thick, slurred, soaked in alcohol and something darker. Satisfaction. The kind that came from believing he’d already won."Did you really think I wouldn't figure it out?"
My blood went cold. Not metaphorical—actual cold, flooding my limbs, stealing heat from my hands. The room tilted and, for a split second, I wasn’t in my bed anymore.
I was back in the kitchen. Linoleum biting into my knees. My mother’s breath caught between sobs she wouldn’t finish. His shadow moving first, the hit coming after—always after—like punctuation. The smell of whiskey and metal. The rule I learned early: don’t cry too loud. Don’t move too fast. Don’t give him anything he could enjoy.
The memory snapped shut as fast as it opened.
I swallowed, forcing air into lungs that had forgotten the rhythm, the phone slick in my grip as if it might slip free.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” My voice came out steady, flatter than I felt, the way you speak when you’re trying not to give anything away.
"Don't play dumb with me." A laugh, harsh and humorless. "I know what you're doing. The marriage, the ranch, the whole happy family act. It's fake. All of it."
My breath locked halfway in. My chest tightened until it hurt, ribs pressing inward like they were trying to collapse. The room seemed to contract, walls inching closer, the ceiling lowering, air thinning with every second I stood there frozen. My legswent weak, useless, the old instinct screaming don’t move, don’t provoke, don’t let him hear you breathe.
There was nowhere to run. Not from his voice. Not from the fear that had learned my body better than I ever had.
"You're drunk," I forced the words out evenly, clamping down on the tremor before it could surface. "You don't know anything."
"I know enough." Another clink of ice. A long swallow. "I've been watching, Riley. Paying attention. And something about this whole thing doesn't add up. You don't look at him like a woman looks at a man she loves. You look at him like a business partner."
The tremor finally reached my hand. I pressed it hard against my thigh, knuckles whitening, trying to pin it in place. My pulse thudded there, loud and traitorous, as if my body were answering him before I could.
"You're seeing what you want to see."My words stayed level and controlled—the way they always did when I was bracing for impact.
"Am I?" He laughed again. "Maybe. Or maybe I'm seeing the truth. And sooner or later, I'm going to prove it."
"Mia isn't yours." The words came out sharp, hard. "She was never yours."
"I'm going to prove it, Riley." His voice dropped, turning cold and flat. “I'm going to prove your marriage is a fraud."
The line went dead—abrupt, final.
I stood there in the dark, phone clenched in my hand, fear crawling up my spine like something alive. The house was too quiet. The shadows in the corners seemed to be watching, waiting.
But Todd had always been good at that.
At watching instead of rushing. At finding the soft places no one else noticed. He didn’t want Mia because he lovedher. He wanted control. Money. The satisfaction of reclaiming something he believed had been stolen from him when I escaped at eighteen. He fought in ways that looked reasonable on paper and rotten in real life—late-night calls, legal motions, smiles in court, threats whispered where no one could hear them. He knew how to hurt without leaving marks, how to bend the system until it did the damage for him.
And the worst part was this: he was patient.
If he dug long enough. If he found the right person to talk to. If he convinced the court that our marriage was exactly what it had started as?—
He wouldn’t stop.
