I shut the door behind me and leaned against it, heart thudding.
I’d thought writing the letter would exorcise the need. That saying it out loud to strangers would get it out of my body.
Instead, it opened something.
Something alive.
Something restless.
Something I couldn’t shove back into the dark.
And as the winter light slanted through the windows, soft but unforgiving, I let my head fall back against the wood and whispered the truth I was still too proud to admit:
I didn’t just want him to come.
I wanted to be changed when he did.
3
December didn’t end so much as ithappened to me.
It came in sequined invitations and “quick calls” that turned into hour-long strategy meetings. It came in lunches where I smiled until my cheeks ached, and in panel prep notes where I underlined the same sentence twice because my mind kept sliding sideways—back to a letter I shouldn’t have written.
Charleston dressed itself up for the holidays the way it always did: magnolia wreaths on iron gates, garlands tucked into balconies, strings of white lights threaded through palmetto fronds like the city was trying to make itself look innocent.
I knew better.
So did my body.
After the letter, I’d told myself it would pass. A lapse. A stress response. A private rebellion that would cool off once the routine reasserted itself.
But the routine didn’t erase it.
It sharpened it.
Because every time I sat across from a donor—every time I spoke about community intervention, de-escalation training,and violence prevention—it felt like I was holding two versions of myself in the same skin.
The Lia Quinn everyone knew.
And the woman who had asked to be tracked.
On December fifteenth, I stood on a stage at the Francis Marion, under chandeliers and soft applause, and delivered my keynote on measurable outcomes in violence reduction—how investment in after-school programs and credible messengers statistically reduced retaliatory shootings, how policycouldchange culture if people stopped treating cruelty like entertainment.
The room nodded. Smiled. Took notes.
Afterward, a woman in pearls pressed my hands between hers and said, “You’re such a force.”
I said the only polite thing I could. “Thank you.”
But inside, something in me whispered,I don’t want to be a force. I want to be caught. Held. Pinned.
I drove home afterward with the radio off, my throat tight, the car windows slightly cracked to keep the air cold enough to sting. It was the only thing that helped—temperature. Physical sensation. Something real.
The condo was too quiet when I walked in. Too pristine. Too controlled.
I hung my coat, set my keys down in the same bowl by the door, and stood there a moment longer than I needed to, staring at the lock like it could confess something.
No knock.
