Chapter 9
Lucia
Three weeks is long enoughfor your body to stop running on adrenaline. Long enough for terror to soften around the edges, like bruises fading from purple to yellow green. They’re still there, still tender, but easier to hide if you keep your sleeves down and your voice steady.
It’s also long enough for the truth to find you.
I’m wiping down table six when the nausea hits. Not the sharp, immediate kind that comes with panic. Not the violent flip of my stomach that used to happen when Marco’s keys hit the counter too hard, or when the air in a room shifted and my body knew before my mind did.
This is different. This is slow. It rises in my throat like heat, quiet and persistent, like My body is trying to ground itself without asking permission.
My hand pauses mid-wipe. The rag hangs there. The laminated surface blurs for half a second.
“Lu?” Jenna calls from behind the counter. “You okay?”
I drag my face into something harmless. Something neutral. Something people don’t look at too long.
“Yeah,” I lie. “Just hungry.”
Hungry is the safest lie in the world. People accept it without asking questions. Hungry means you’re normal. Hungry means you’re not falling apart in public.
I swallow hard, breathe through my nose like I can push the nausea back down by force, and keep moving. The diner smells like grease and syrup and coffee that’s been burning on the warmer too long. Comforting, if you let it. The kind of place where people complain about the weather and tip poorly and act like the biggest tragedy in their day is a runny egg.
I’m still learning how to exist in spaces like this. Still learning that a slammed door can just be a slammed door. Still learning that my shoulders don’t have to live up by my ears.
I hate that I’m learning all of this under fluorescent lights with strangers watching me refill their cups. My uniform collar itches. My hair is pinned up the way the manager likes. My smile is practiced, pleasant, noncommittal. A smile that saysI won’t inconvenience you with my humanity.
Outside the window, the city keeps moving. Midday traffic. People in clean coats, carrying grocery bags like they’ve never had to decide whether leaving would kill them.
I drop checks. Refill coffees. Nod at jokes I barely hear.
And underneath it all, my body keeps whispering,Not right. Not right. Not right.
By the time my shift ends, my feet ache and my stomach feels hollow in a way that isn’t hunger at all.
I walk home fast. Not because I’m late. Because my brain has started connecting dots, and once it starts, it doesn’t stop. It never stops.
My efficiency apartment is on the third floor of a narrow brick building that smells like old laundry and someone’s garlic dinner. The hallway light buzzes faintly. My key sticks in the lock like it’s resisting me.
Inside is small enough to feel manageable. Small enough to feel like I can keep control of it. Kitchenette. Bed. Tiny table. A secondhand couch that squeaks when I sit on it. One window that looks out over an alley, and a fire escape I’ve checked twice even though I don’t need it.
Habits don’t disappear just because the threat does.
I drop my bag. Kick off my shoes. And stand there, staring at nothing, while my mind does what it always does when it’s afraid.
It runs the numbers. My period is late. Not by a day. By enough that I’ve stopped checking casually and started checking obsessively. Like staring at the calendar on my phone will force time to correct itself. Like I can shame my body into behaving.
My fingers don’t feel like mine as I grab my phone and open the calendar app. Scroll. Back. Back. Back.
I count in weeks the way you count down seconds before something hits. Three weeks. Twenty-three days. And suddenly, my throat tightens, because my body remembers what my mind has been refusing to name.
The hotel. Warm sheets. Warm hands. His mouth at my throat, unhurried. His voice low and steady. Not taking, not demanding, waiting for me to choose.
Me, choosing. Me, saying yes like I deserved to want something that didn’t hurt.
I close my eyes. Try to breathe. My mind reaches automatically for the monster I know.
Marco.
