The word feels bigger than the cabin. He leans closer, eyes on mine.
“Yes,” he says. “You don’t have to decide anything right now. You can stay here as long as you want while you think about things. You’re safe with me. Always.”
And the way he says it breaks something open in me.
I stare at the flyer in my lap until the girl in the picture stops looking like a stranger and starts looking like someone I buried with my own hands. My thumb moves over the corner where the paper is creased. There’s a smudge near the bottom where somebody touched it before the ink dried. My eyes catch on a tiny detail in the photo I almost missed.
The freckle by my mouth.
My sister always said it looked like a drop of coffee. She used to tap it with her finger when she wanted to annoy me. Nobody outside the house would have cared if it showed in the picture. Nobody but family would have picked this one.
They kept looking.
The thought hurts worse than if they had stopped.
Rafe stays where he is, close enough that I can feel the heat of him, far enough that I do not feel cornered. He lets me hold the silence until it settles around us instead of crushing me under it.
“When you feel ready,” he says, voice quiet and steady, “I’ll take you to see them.”
I close my eyes.
My mother’s porch. My sister’s hands. Their faces when they see what’s left of me.
The thought turns my stomach. They will know. Maybe not every detail, but enough. They will see the scars. Hear the silence. Watch me flinch. I do not know how to stand in front of people who loved me before and let them meet this version instead.
My fingers tighten on the page.
I look up at Rafe. He is watching me like I am the only thing in the room that matters as he patiently waits for the truth.
He says, “You don’t have to decide anything but what you want.”
Want.
The word still feels too large. Too dangerous.
I grip the pencil. My hand shakes, but less this time. I write slowly so the letters come out clear.
YOU PROTECT?
Rafe does not even blink before he answers.
“Yes.”
The word lands hard and sure, and the tension inside me loosens. Not all the way. Enough.
I write again, pressing harder.
YOU STAY?
His face changes then. Not relief. Not victory. Something quieter. Something that makes my chest ache.
“I’ll be with you the whole time,” he says. “You want to leave, we leave. You want to stay five minutes, we stay five minutes. You want me beside you every second, that’s where I’ll be.”
My throat tightens around a sound that almost becomes his name. Not yet. But close.
I fold the flyer carefully instead of crushing it. That feels important. Like if I can do this one thing gently, the rest of me might survive it too.
Then I crawl across the space between us and place the folded paper against his chest.
