“There you are.” He smiled, and my stomach turned. “I’ve missed you.”
I grabbed the nearest thing to me and threw it.
The lamp caught him in the shoulder as he ducked, ceramic shattering against the doorframe, and his expression shifted. The mask cracked and the monster looked out.
“That wasn’t very smart.” He stepped through the broken ceramic, glass crunching under his shoes. “Really, sweetie, stop making me the bad guy. You know what happens when you fight.”
Yeah. I knew. I had the scars mapped across my body to prove exactly what happened.
But I wasn’t the same woman who’d learned those lessons. I had built a life without him. Months of sleeping alone and making my own choices and remembering who I was before he spent two years teaching me to be small.
That woman would have frozen. Would have gone limp and quiet and waited for it to be over.
This woman?This woman was fucking furious.
I grabbed the chair from the corner and swung it between us, keeping the bed as a barrier. Not much of a weapon, but enough to slow him down.
“You think that’s going to stop me?” He laughed, but he didn’t lunge. He was circling, looking for an opening, the way he always did. “Put it down, Mira. You’re embarrassing yourself.”
“Come any closer and I’ll break it over your head.”
“And then what? You think you can outrun me? Outfight me?” He shook his head, all false disappointment. “We both know how this ends. It always ends the same way. You fight, you lose, and then you apologize for making me do it.”
My phone was on the nightstand. Three feet away. If I could get to it, if I could just buy myself thirty seconds...
I threw the chair at him.
He cursed, arms coming up to block, and I lunged for the phone. My fingers closed around it just as he shoved the chair aside, and I was already dialing.
It rang once.
“Mira.” Solomon’s voice.
“He found me.” The words came out in a rush. “Hudson. He’s here. I need-”
Hudson grabbed the phone from my hand and hurled it against the wall. It shattered into pieces.
“Who the fuck did you call?” He advanced on me, and I grabbed the TV remote, the ice bucket, anything I could throw. “Those firefighters? You think they can help you? You think anyone can help you?”
I threw the ice bucket. He batted it aside.
“When I’m done with you-”
Then we both heard it.
An engine screaming closer, tires screeching against asphalt, car doors slamming.
Hudson’s head snapped toward the window. I watched the calculation happen behind his eyes. The way he weighed his options, measured the distance, did the math on whether he could finish what he started before they got here.
The answer must have been no, because there is a shift in his face. Hudson didn’t do fear but this was close to it, self-preservation.
“This isn’t over.”
He backed toward the window, finger pointed at me, and the promise in his voice was worse than anything his fists had ever done. “You hear me, Mira? This isn’t over. You can hide behind them all you want, but the second you’re alone, I’ll be there. And next time, no one’s coming to save you.”
Hudson grabbed the lamp from the floor, the base I’d thrown at him earlier, and smashed it through the window. Glass shattered outward, and he was through the frame before the last shards hit the ground, dropping into the parking lot below.
I stood there, shaking, a broken TV remote clutched in my hand, and tried to remember how to breathe.
