SEND ME BACK?
The moment he sees it, his whole face changes, and he reaches for me so fast I flinch. Not because he moves wrong. Because I do.
The flyer crackles in my grip as I pull back, clutching it against my stomach. Panic threatens to overwhelm me. The room feels too small to hold me and that piece of paper and the life staring back at me from it.
Rafe stops himself before he crowds me. He drops to his knees instead, one hand braced on the floorboards, the other open between us.
“No.” The word comes out rough. Immediate. “No, Briar. I’m not sending you anywhere.”
My eyes burn. I shake my head anyway because men say one thing while meaning another. They soften you up before they move you where they want you. They make it sound kind.
I shove the flyer toward him with a shaking hand. Take it back. Take it away. If I do not hold it, maybe it cannot change anything.
He does not take it.
His shoulders lock. He looks wrecked in a way I do not understand. Not angry. Not relieved. Hurt.
“I didn’t tell you because I wanted you gone,” he says. “I told you because it’s yours to know.”
Mine to know?
That word hits wrong. Too tender for something that hurts this much.
He shifts closer by inches, slow enough that I could pull away. “Your mama and your sister have been looking for you. They deserve to know you’re alive.” His voice drops lower. “And you deserve the choice of what comes next.”
Choice.
My chest jerks around a breath that does not fit in my lungs.
I grab the pencil again. My fingers tremble so badly the first mark tears across the page instead of shaping a letter. I start over beneath it.
GO NOW?
The words blur before I finish them. My eyes are full. My hand cramps.
Rafe sees the question and closes his eyes for one hard second, pain lining his expression.
When he opens them, there is nothing soft or slippery in his face. Only truth.
“I don’t want you to go.” Each word lands plain. Heavy. Sounding like they cost him something. “I want you here with me.”
My whole body stills.
He swallows. Looks down once, then back at me. “But I won’t keep you by hiding the world from you. I won’t do what he did. I won’t make your life smaller so I can feel safer in it. They’re torn up inside. They deserve to know you’re okay, no matter what you decide later.”
The flyer slips in my hands.
I stare at him, ruined by the shape of that. Not only that he wants me. That he would still let me walk away. That he would rather risk losing me than cage me.
He drags a hand over his beard. “I was scared. Scared you’d see there’s something better down there and realize I was only the place you landed while you healed. That your future could be bigger and better than me.”
The words hit so deep I can’t move.
He thinks I could leave because he is not enough. That thought hurts more than anything on the page.
Tears slide down my cheeks before I feel them. I lower myself to the floor across from him and write one word with a hand that will not stop shaking.
STAY?
