Inside my head: worst of both.
I sip my coffee and let the heat ground me. A small smile pulls at my mouth because Ethan is usually the one up at dawn, fixing something, patrolling the yard, or doing whatever stoic men with trauma and too much discipline do to avoid thinking.
And me?
I wake up at noon. Rockstar hours. Rockstar chaos.
But after the last two nights… God. He was running on borrowed energy, and I took the last of it.
My cheeks warm. Not from shame — from the memory. From how he held me. How he said what he said.
Nobody’s ever confessed feelings to me without wanting something in return. Not a contract. Not publicity. Not access. Not sex. Not my persona.
But Ethan looked at me last night like he saw the broken parts and wanted them anyway.
Like he wantedme.
Not Lucky Pink.
Not the brand.
Me.
The thought terrifies me.
And also… lights something inside my chest. Something I haven’t felt in a long time. Hope, maybe. Or danger. Or both.
I take another slow sip and keep staring out at the lake — beautiful, calm, golden.
Safe.
And I think, for the first time in a long while:
Maybe I could be safe too.
I take another sip of the coffee. Just one.
Then something hits me — like a jolt behind the ribs, like someone flicked on a light in a room I forgot existed.
A line.
A melody.
A pulse.
I freeze with the mug halfway to my lips.
No. Not now. Not after everything. Not after weeks of feeling hollow and raw and gagged by silence.
But it’s here. It’shere, banging on the inside of my skull like it’s been trapped and clawing to get out.
I set the coffee down so fast it sloshes over the rim.
“Okay, okay—hold on—” I mutter to no one, already scrambling for the battered notebook Ethan picked up off the floor last night before he carried me upstairs. The one with water stains and ripped corners and pages full of half-thoughts and breakdowns.
My pen hits paper before I even sit down.
She needed to lose herself…
