I pocket it.
When she comes back down with her detergent, she’ll never know something is missing. But I’ll know. I always know.
My heart starts to beat wrong—too loud, too fast, like my body is forgetting the rules I taught it. This is what she does when I’m near her too long. She makes me feel the shape of what I don’t get to have. What I don’t get to touch. What my life will never allow.
The resentment simmers, then burns, but not at her. At the fact that she exists in a world I can’t step into without breaking it.
I leave. I have to. There’s a fracture in me when I’m around her, a hairline crack in the discipline I’ve built my entire life around.
I feel it in the way my hands flex like they’re reaching for her without permission, in the way my jaw locks until my teeth ache, in the way my thoughts stop being fantasies and start becoming impulses—hot, stupid, ruinous.
Outside, the wind snaps at my face, cold enough to sting, sharp enough to drag me back into my body. Snow dusts the tops of cars and gathers on the lampposts in white clumps.
I walk without hurry, because if I run, I’ll come back, and I can’t afford that. Not tonight.
I think of Dean Murdoch and his neat cuffs and the way he moves like a man who’s never had to measure himself against consequences. I think of how easily men like him take ownership of something tender simply because they can. Men like him take freedom for granted, think with their dicks and fuck their way through life without appreciating what it is they’re using. Who it is they’re breaking.
My path through the neighborhood is muscle memory now—the deli that closes at ten, the florist that never throws broken stems away, the church whose side gate sticks in the cold. I’ve mapped this grid by her habits. A predator’s map isn’t lines on paper. It’s instinct and repetition.
There’s no telling how long I’ve been walking before I loop back to her building, ending where I started. Watching. Always watching. I’m calmer now. More controlled.
Her window is still bright. She sits with her knees tucked under a blanket in the chair by the plant she’s half-killed by overwatering. She reads, then doesn’t. She stares into the candle. When the wax gutters, she cups her hand around the flame and blows. The room darkens a degree. She stands andstretches, arms overhead, belly exposed for a breath under cotton—soft and vulnerable in a way that makes my hands ache.
When she turns off the lamp and the window goes black, I let the dark hold her shape for one more second while the ribbon in my pocket is a coiled promise.
Tomorrow I’ll be standing here in this exact spot…again.
3
SOPHIA
The sound wakes me in a way that feels wrong, like my body knows before my mind does. A click. Soft. Precise. Metal sliding against metal.
My eyes open to the dim light of the room. My wrists ache where the rope cut into them, the antiseptic still on the floor where he left it. Untouched.
The phantom motion of the car still rocks through my body. Unfamiliar walls. Too clean, too empty. Not mine. And somewhere beyond that door,hewaits.
My heart lurches, each beat pressing against my windpipe until I can barely swallow. I bolt upright, my gaze snapping to the door. That’s what it was—the click. He unlocked the door.
Every muscle in my body turns to stone as I strain to hear, waiting for the next sound. Footsteps. The door opening. For him to come in and remind me exactly how trapped I am. But nothing happens.
The quiet stretches. Adrenaline floods me anyway, like my body doesn’t know the difference between threat and absence. Mybreathing’s shallow, my chest tight, and I force myself to move before fear roots me to the mattress.
I slide off the bed, my bare feet barely making a sound on the floor. The room looks the same as it did last night—bare, arranged, like a stage set between performances. But the door stands out now, just enough to draw my eyes back to it.Unlocked.
Caution slows my steps as I move closer, half-expecting it to fly open the second I touch it. My fingertips meet the cold metal first, then my whole palm settles there. Still. Solid. A sharp inhale, a held breath—and I twist the handle, muscles tensing from my fingers all the way to my shoulders.
The door opens, and my heart skips a beat.
There’s no one on the other side. Just a hallway stretching into shadow. A draft of air sweeps over my skin, carrying the scent of something baking—cinnamon, butter, the caramelized edge of sugar. My stomach clenches, but adrenaline quickly smothers it.
I slide out, keeping close to the wall, my shoulder brushing it as I move. Every step feels too loud, every breath too fast. I expect him to appear at any moment, to materialize out of the shadows like he did last night, but the hallway stays empty.
At the top of the stairs, I stop. Below me, the front door comes into view, and it’s all I see, a vague sense of hope igniting somewhere in the pit of my stomach. Freedom is right there. So close.
I don’t think anymore. I run. My feet hit the stairs hard, fast, my grip sliding along the railing as I take them two at a time, my breath tearing out of me in sharp gasps. The front door looms closer, and when I reach it, I grab the handle and yank.
It doesn’t move.
