That's not normal. I know it's not normal. But nothing about my life has been normal since that check arrived in my mailbox, since I cashed it and flew to California and fell into Phoenix Crawford's orbit.
He's controlling. He put a tracking app on my phone. He blocked the door when I tried to leave. He hovered and watched and suffocated me until I couldn't breathe.
But he's also tender. The way he touches my face when he thinks I'm sleeping. The way he brings me coffee exactly the way I like it without being asked. The way he reads over my shoulder when I'm writing and asks questions about my characters like they're real people he wants to understand.
He's dangerous. He has darkness inside him that scares me sometimes, a capacity for violence that most people never see.
But he's also devoted. Completely, obsessively, terrifyingly devoted. He would give up everything he has just to keep me safe. He would destroy anyone who tried to hurt me. I know this not because he's said it but because I watched him prove it.
Can I really walk away from that?
The question haunts me as the hours crawl by. I watch the shadows lengthen and then slowly fade as the first pale light of dawn seeps through the curtains. My eyes are dry and grittyfrom lack of sleep, and my body aches with exhaustion, but my mind won't stop spinning.
Finally, around six, I hear movement in the kitchen. The creak of the old floorboards. The clink of a coffee mug. My mother is awake.
I lie there for another twenty minutes, gathering my courage, trying to find the words for a conversation I don't want to have. Then I push back the quilt, pull on the sweater I brought from Phoenix's house, and walk down the hallway toward the kitchen.
Mom is standing at the counter with her back to me, her hands wrapped around a mug of coffee. She's wearing the same clothes she had on last night, wrinkled now from sleep or lack of it. Her shoulders are tense, her posture rigid. She doesn't turn around when I enter.
"Have you made your decision?"
Her voice is flat. Empty. Like she already knows the answer and is just waiting for me to confirm it.
I take a deep breath. The kitchen smells like coffee and something burning, toast left too long in the toaster. The refrigerator hums in the corner, a familiar sound that takes me back to a thousand mornings just like this one, sitting at this table, eating breakfast with my mother before school.
"Mom." My voice cracks. "I love you. More than anything."
She doesn't move. Doesn't turn around. "But?"
The word hangs in the air between us, heavy with everything we're not saying.
"But I love him too." The tears are coming now, sliding down my cheeks, dripping off my chin. "And I can't just walk away. I can't pretend he doesn't exist, that what we have doesn't matter. I tried. I spent five days trying to imagine my life without him, and I can't do it."
Finally, she turns. Her eyes are red-rimmed, her face pale and drawn. She looks older than she did a week ago, like our fight has aged her in ways that time alone never could.
"So you've chosen."
"I've chosen to try." I take a step toward her, desperate to make her understand. "I'm not choosing him over you. I'm choosing to give us a chance, to see if what we have is real. That doesn't mean I'm abandoning you. That doesn't mean I don't love you."
"It means exactly that." Her voice is quiet now, barely above a whisper. "You're walking into the same trap that swallowed Olive whole, and you're doing it with your eyes wide open. How am I supposed to watch that happen? How am I supposed to pretend it's okay?"
"It's not a trap. Phoenix isn't Nicholas."
"You don't know that." A single tear slides down her cheek, catching the morning light. "You don't know what he'll become. What you'll become."
"You're right." I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. "I don't know. But I have to find out. I have to give this a chance, or I'll spend the rest of my life wondering what if."
Everything is quiet. I watch my mother's face cycle through emotions. Anger. Grief. Resignation. And finally, something that looks almost like defeat.
"Then I guess we have nothing more to say to each other."
"Mom, please." I reach for her, but she steps back, putting the kitchen island between us. "Don't do this. Don't make me choose between you."
"I'm not making you do anything." Her voice is cold now, controlled. "You've already chosen. You made that clear."
"I chose to try. That's all. Can't you just give me time? Give him a chance? You haven't even met him."
"I don't need to meet him. I've seen what his family does to women. I've watched my best friend disappear piece by piece until there was nothing left but a shell." She shakes her head slowly. "I won't watch that happen to my daughter."
