Font Size:
We work late into the night. Not don and guest. Partners. Equals.
By the time we make it back to the bedroom, the house has settled into its armed quiet. Nico is asleep. The threat is still there, humming under everything like a live current, but it doesn’t own me anymore.
Turo locks the door behind us. Not to cage me. To choose me. He pulls me into his arms, solid, unyielding, real, and for the first time since my phone buzzed, my body remembers how to breathe.
“We’ll end this,” he says.
I believe him.
Because this time, I’m not standing behind him.
This time, I’m standing with him.
