God. I’d actually sent it.
I pressed the back of my wrist to my forehead and groaned, rolling onto my side. Charleston winter light spilled across my bedroom—pale, watery, soft enough to pretend it wasn’t December. The city never did cold the way other places did. The chill here was fleeting, a thin veneer over humidity and history.
Like me. A thin veneer. A performance. A version of myself that never cracked, never slipped, never admitted a thing.
My phone lit up on the nightstand, vibrating once. A calendar notification—committee meeting this afternoon. Nothing urgent. Nothing dangerous. Nothing remotely exciting.
Of course, not.
I closed my eyes again.
That letter shouldn’t have come from me. Not fromLia Quinn—Charleston’s favorite policy whisperer, the woman who knew how to spin a statistic into a sermon. The woman who told rooms full of donors to invest in conflict prevention, in education, in rehabilitation programs. The woman who looked danger in the eye and called it unacceptable.
A woman who built her reputation on being rational. Reliable. Safe.
Not the kind who asked to be hunted.
My stomach tightened. It wasn’t embarrassment. Not exactly. More like …
A pulse.
Low. Insistent. Hot enough to make me shift under the sheets.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I muttered to myself, kicking them off.
But that heat didn’t go anywhere. If anything, saying it out loud only made the sensation sharpen—like naming it fed it.
I got out of bed and padded across the hardwood, my feet cold, my body too warm. December in Charleston was never consistent. Warm one day, brisk the next. Today seemed determined not to choose. The air was cool against my skin, but the sun creeping through my balcony doors hinted at warmth later.
I slid them open and stepped outside.
My condo sat on a quiet street near the water. Most mornings carried the scent of tide and old wood, the faint metallic tang of Charleston’s past woven into everything. I’d chosen this spot because it looked peaceful on the outside. Prestigious. Adult.
But I hadn’t chosen it for me.
I’d chosen it for who I was supposed to be.
The breeze lifted my hair, brushing it across my cheek, and I closed my eyes.
I could still feel the letter in my fingertips—the way I hovered over the Send button, breathing too fast; the shame that rose in my throat like heat; the flash of something darker when I pushed it anyway.
I didn’t expect them to reply.
I didn’t expect them to send anyone.
Not to me.
Not to the woman who built her whole career on stopping men like the one I described.
I exhaled through my nose, long and slow. A shudder traveled down my spine.
Why did that make it worse?
Why did the impossibility of it make my body more aware of itself?
I crossed my arms over my chest, not because I was cold, but because the air felt like fingertips. Too real. Too close.
I walked back inside before my imagination ran any further.
