I didn’t speak.
Just waited.
Let her get it out the way she needed to.
She blinked again. Slow, like it took effort, and another tear slid down her cheek.
“But when he walked in…” Her breath caught. “My whole body left me.”
She looked at her hands like they belonged to someone else. Like she didn’t trust them anymore. Then her shoulders buckled forward and she folded again. This time toward me.
I caught her.
Pulled her into my lap before she could fall.
Her whole body fit against me like she was made for it, but there wasn’t an ounce of strength left in her. She shook in my arms like a leaf in a thunderstorm, and all I could do was hold her tighter. Wrap my arms around her like a shield. Breathe steady when she couldn’t.
“You didn’t freeze,” I murmured against her hair. “You survived.”
Her head moved once, barely. A small shake. A no.
She didn’t believe it.
Didn’t believe me.
I leaned back just enough to see her face. Her cheeks were soaked. Her bottom lip trembled. Her hands fisted in the front of my shirt like she was clinging to the only solid thing in the room.
So I gave her something to hold.
Every instinct in me screamed to stand up.
To pace.
To check the door again.
To grab my vest, my gun, my radio. Anything that meant I was doing something instead of watching her fall apart right in front of me.
That’s how I survived. Motion. Control. Action.
Standing still had never been my strength.
I felt it crawling under my skin now, that restless pressure, the need to move before something worse happened. My eyes kept cutting to the corners of the room, cataloging exits, listening for footsteps that didn’t belong. My hand flexed once at my side like it wanted to reach for a weapon that wasn’t there.
But Amanda wasn’t asking for that version of me.
She didn’t need a soldier.
She didn’t need a shield.
She needed someone who wasn’t going to disappear the second things got hard.
So I stayed right where I was.
On one knee. Close enough to feel her warmth. Close enough that if she swayed, she’d hit me before the floor. I kept my voice steady, my hands calm, even while everything inside me was wound tight and dangerous.
This wasn’t about fixing her.
This was about proving, without words, that I wasn’t going anywhere.
