“Yeah?”
“You’re safe for now. Don’t spiral. Don’t run.”
Too late.
My mind is already splintering.
The call clicks off.
Silence swallows me whole.
My hand falls to my side, phone hanging limp from my fingers. The room feels too bright, too open, too vulnerable. My heartbeat is a raw, bruised thing pounding against my ribs.
The silence that follows is worse than the ringing ever was.
I stand there in the mess of my notes, phone trembling in my hand, heart thundering, skin crawling with invisible eyes. There’s a taste in my mouth, it’s copper and metallic, and becoming stronger as my panic rises fast and hot.
He’s out.
Free.
Breathing the same air as me.
And all the noise in my head goes dead quiet.
The kind of quiet I learned to fear as a kid.
The kind that comes right before something breaks.
I swallow, barely able to feel my own body.
I need noise.
I need movement.
I need—
Ethan.
But I can’t move yet.
My world has cracked open, and all I can do is stand in the shards.
My legs move on autopilot.
Instead of going straight to the patio, I veer toward the coat rack by the door. The big cardigan—the oversized black one I hide in when I don’t want to be seen—hangs there like it’s been waiting for this exact moment.
My hands fumble with it.
I pull it on too fast, shoving my arms through the sleeves, wrapping it around myself like armor. It swallows me whole, down to mid-thigh.
But it’s not enough.
I scan the patio floor, vision swimming, until I spot the scrap of lace from last night—my thong half tucked under the leg of a chair. My face burns as I snatch it up, stepping into it quickly, clumsily, like the walls themselves are watching me.
I can’t be out here naked.
Not right now.
