“What the fuck were you thinking?”
She doesn’t answer. Of course she doesn’t—she’s out cold. Exhaustion, exposure, probably hasn’t eaten since she left. Two days out here after two weeks of actual rest. Her body forgot how to do this.
A man walks past the mouth of the alley. Looks right at us. Keeps walking.
I stare after him.
He saw her. Saw a girl on the ground in the cold and just… kept going. Like she was nothing.
Is this what it was like? For fifteen years?
A woman passes. Doesn’t even glance over. A kid on a bike. Nothing.
She’s invisible to them.
All those years. All those nights in places like this while people walked past like she didn’t exist. No wonder she doesn’t know what it looks like when someone actually gives a shit.
I pull off my jacket and wrap it around her. She doesn’t stir.
“I’ve got you,” I say. Stupid, because she can’t hear me. I say it anyway. “I’ve got you.”
I get one arm under her knees, the other behind her back, and lift. She weighs nothing. That’s wrong—she should weigh more, take up more space. But she’s light like she’s been hollowed out by years of not enough.
I start walking.
She shifts against my chest. Her head turns, pressing closer to my shoulder.
Fuck.
“You scared the shit out of me.” My voice is rough. “Two days. Two fucking days of not knowing if you were dead in a ditch somewhere.”
She doesn’t answer. Her breath is shallow against my neck.
“You don’t get to do that again. You hear me?”
Nothing. Just her weight in my arms and the faint warmth of her breathing.
I keep walking.
“I know you’re scared. I know this is…” I shake my head. “I don’t know what fifteen years of nothing looks like. I don’t know how you survived it. But I know what it felt like when you walked into that house. When you looked at me.”
Still nothing. But I keep talking anyway, because she can’t argue back and maybe that makes me a coward but I don’t care.
“You’re ours, Nova. Whether you like it or not. Running doesn’t change that.”
A man steps out of a doorway ahead. Sees me carrying her. His lip curls—disgust, annoyance, I don’t give a shit which—and he steps aside without a word.
I want to put my fist through his face.
I hold her tighter instead.
“I’m going to show you,” I tell her. Quieter now. “Every day until you believe it. This is where you belong.”
She shifts again. Her fingers curl into my shirt.
I stop walking.
Look down at her.
