I'd thought that was the end.
I was wrong.
The unease wouldn't leave.
Why was he there?
The question circled, relentless.
He didn't buy anything. Didn't even pretend interest in the shelves. Didn't touch a single spine or ask for recommendations. He didn't browse. Didn't flirt—not really. Not the way men usually did, all performance and expectation.
He observed.
That was what wouldn't leave me. That calm, focused attention. The way his gaze had tracked my movements like I was something to be studied. Catalogued. Learned.
He hadn't come to be entertained. He'd come to look.
At me.
At the store.
At the cracks I thought I'd hidden well enough.
I grabbed my coat before I could talk myself out of it.
Soup from the diner. Still-warm container heavy in my passenger seat. The lemon bars from the bakery two streets over—my father's favorite, the ones he pretended not to want before eating three. Not because I had answers. Not because anything had changed since this afternoon. Because the silence in my apartment pressed too close. Because every shadow felt occupied. Because alone with my thoughts meant circling the same tightening spiral: debt, collapse, that smile.
Gideon's smile.
I couldn't shake it.
The drive stretched longer than usual. Traffic lights caught me at every intersection, red bleeding into the windshield like an accusation. My hands gripped the wheel too tight. Knuckles pale. Fingers aching.
Rain started halfway there—light, misting, the kind that didn't clean anything, just made the world look smeared and uncertain.
My stomach twisted.
Not hunger. Not nausea.
Something worse. The physical manifestation of dread that had no name yet. The body knowing before the mind admitted.
Something's coming.
The hospital parking lot yawned dark and mostly empty. I circled twice before choosing a spot under a working light. Old habit. Safety theater. Like parking beneath fluorescent white would protect me from whatever shadowed the edges of my life now.
The soup sloshed when I grabbed it. Too full. I'd poured extra, needing the gesture to matter more than it could.
The lemon bars sat in their wax-paper wrapping, cheerful yellow against my palm.
Inadequate offerings.
But what else did I have? What else could I bring him except food he wouldn't finish and presence he'd insist he didn't need?
Inside, the hospital smelled like antiseptic and exhaustion. Fluorescent lights hummed their mechanical lullaby. Nurses moved past without seeing me—another worried daughter among dozens, unremarkable in my fear.
I signed in. Took the elevator. Watched the numbers climb.
Floor three.
