When he finally loosens his hold, he cups my face in both hands, brushing his thumbs over my cheeks. His eyes search mine.
I write:
NO LEAVE?
His mouth tightens. His hand comes up, then stops halfway to my face, waiting for me to let him finish the distance. I don’t move. I can’t. My chest is too tight. My body already knows something bad is coming, even if my mind is still trying to catch up.
“I’m not leaving,” he says, voice low and rough. “And I’m not asking you to leave either.”
My fingers loosen from his shirt, but only a little.
He reaches into his coat as I track every movement. When he pulls out a folded piece of paper, panic flashes through me so fast my vision blurs. Paper means rules. Paper means orders. Paper means proof of facts I do not want to know.
Rafe unfolds it carefully and turns it toward me.
My face stares back at me. My stomach drops so fast I think I might be sick.
I stop breathing.
Not this face. Not the one I know now. Not hollow cheeks and scared eyes and a mouth that forgot how to work. This is the girl from before. Bright eyes. Long hair. Full cheeks. A smile thatdoesn’t know anything about dark rooms or straps or the sound a leash makes when it snaps taut.
Not the girl who belongs to Rafe now.
My hand lifts before I think better of it. My fingertips brush the edge of the paper, then the shape of my own cheek in the picture. The word at the top blurs until I blink hard enough to force it clear.
MISSING
The room tilts.
Heat rushes up my throat, then drops straight through me. My ears ring. My hand shakes so badly the paper rustles.
Rafe shifts closer. “I found it in town. At the post office.”
I look at him, then at the page.
A line of smaller words swims beneath the picture. Reward. Information. Family. Looking.
Family.
My mother’s face flickers through me. My sister on the porch steps. The smell of coffee in the kitchen before dawn. The old yellow curtains over the sink. Things I have not let myself touch in so long they feel like someone else’s memories.
They never came for me. They neverlookedfor me.
Maybe I was wrong.
“They never stopped searching for you,” Rafe says. “Your people have been missing you this whole time.”
Something breaks loose inside my chest. Not relief. Not exactly. It feels too sharp for that. Too big. My body doesn’t know whether to reach for the paper or throw it across the room.
I clutch it harder instead.
He found them.
He found where I came from.
He found the place I belonged before him.
My throat closes so fast it hurts. I grab for the pencil with clumsy fingers and scrape the words out crooked and dark.
