And my body.
Because the worst part isn’t what he did.
It’s that my body remembers it differently than my pride does.
I try to ignore the way everything still feels… off. Too sensitive. Like my nerves are turned too high, humming under my skin. I hate that a single memory can do that. Hate that it follows me from room to room, settles low and traitorous in my stomach.
I don’t know what I expected when he brought me here. Something harsher, maybe. Guards. Locked doors. A constant reminder that I wasn’t free.
Instead, there’s this.
No one posted outside my door. No rooms sealed shut—at least not that I’ve found. Just open space, dark wood, and endless walls of glass that make it feel like I’m standing on the edge of the city, one wrong step away from falling straight into it.
At first, I move carefully. Testing the limits of this place—and myself—like either might snap if I push too hard.
They don’t.
Asher doesn’t stop me. If anything, he seems content to let me roam, like I’ll wear myself out eventually. He spends most evenings here—sometimes reading across from me in the sitting room, or sometimes joining me for dinner like this is normal. Like this is a choice we’re both making.
Occasionally, we watch movies together on the massive screen in the theater room.
It’s never planned. Just something that happens after dinner, the lights dimmed low, and the city thrown back at us in reflected glass. He usually lets the news run for a minute or two first—headlines scrolling, and anchors talking too fast—before switching to whatever we’re pretending is distraction.
One night, he doesn’t turn it off in time.
The anchor’s voice cuts through the quiet, sharp, and rehearsed.
“—NYPD confirming tonight that a new street drug, laced with fentanyl, is responsible for at least seven deaths—”
My breath stalls.
I don’t look at Asher. I don’t move at all. The city outside the glass feels suddenly too close, like it’s pressing its face to the windows, watching.
Footage rolls. Red and blue lights. A stretcher half-covered by a sheet. The wordsmanhuntandsuspectcrawl across the bottom of the screen in blocky white letters.
Asher shifts beside me.
Not away.
Closer.
It’s subtle—the brush of his knee against mine, and the solid weight of his thigh anchoring me in place—but it steals my attention anyway. My body reacts before my brain can catch up, heat flaring low and traitorous even as dread curls tight in my chest.
The screen changes.
A composite sketch fades in.
I don’t recognize it at first. My mind skims past it, cataloging details the way it always does. The hair’s wrong. The jaw too sharp. The eyes not quite right.
Then the shape of the face settles.
My stomach drops.
It’s not me.
But it’s close enough that I stop breathing.
The sketch lingers. The anchor keeps talking—about tips, about sightings, and about how the public can help—but the words blur into static. All I can see is the suggestion ofmyself staring back at me from the screen. Generic. Replaceable. Close enough to be dangerous.
