Matt was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was careful. "You ever wonder if maybe you're not as healed as you think you are?"
"I know I'm not healed. Healing's not linear. Nathan says—"
"I know what Nathan says." He held up a hand. "I'm not trying to badmouth him. I'm just saying... you went through something most people can't imagine. Three months of therapy and a good relationship aren't going to erase that. Maybe you need to talk to someone who specializes in this stuff. A professional."
"Nathan's helping me."
"Nathan's not objective." He met my eyes steadily. "He loves you. And people who love you don't always see things clearly."
I wanted to argue, but the strange pill in my medicine cabinet flashed through my mind. The nightmare. The phantom collar. The kneeling. Four things in two days that I couldn't explain, and every time I tried to talk to Nathan about them, his answers felt a little too neat. A little too rehearsed.
"What if I told you I found something strange?" I said quietly. "Something that doesn't fit with what I've been told about my recovery?"
Matt's expression didn't change. "I'd say you should trust your instincts. They've kept you alive this long."
I thought about that for the rest of the afternoon. Thought about it through my shift, through the evening crowd, through the walk home in the dark. By the time I reached the apartment, I'd made a decision.
I wouldn't throw away the pill. Not yet. I'd keep it, and I'd figure out what it was, and if it turned out to be nothing—if my paranoia was just another symptom of trauma, another ghost Gabriel had left behind—then I'd let it go.
But if it was something else... if there was a reason my body kept doing things my mind didn't understand...
I'd find out.
Nathan was home when I got back, already cooking dinner. He'd made pasta—my favorite, the one with the lemon cream sauce that he'd learned to perfect. The apartment smelled like garlic and safety, and when he kissed me hello, I let myself forget about pills and nightmares and phantom collars.
"Good shift?" he asked.
"Uneventful." I wrapped my arms around him from behind, pressing my cheek against his back. "I missed you."
"I missed you too." He covered my hands with his own. "Everything okay? You seem... quiet."
"I'm fine. Just tired."
He turned in my arms, studying my face with those green eyes that saw too much. "You'd tell me if something was wrong, right? If the nightmares were getting worse, or if you were having... episodes?"
Episodes. The word he used for the flashbacks, the dissociative moments, the times when my conditioning surfaced despite everything we'd done to bury it.
"Of course," I said, and the lie came easier than it should have. "You're my partner. I tell you everything."
Something flickered in his expression—relief, maybe, or something sharper. "Good. That's good. I just want you to be okay."
"I am." I kissed him, soft and sweet. "I'm better than okay. I'm happy."
And I was. That was the terrible thing. Even with the doubts, even with the cracks forming in the foundation of my new life, I was happier than I'd ever been. Nathan had given me that. Nathan had saved me. Nathan was the only person in the world who'd ever looked at my broken pieces and called them beautiful.
I wasn't going to let Gabriel's ghost take that away.
3
The Music Box
The package arrived on a morning that smelled like rain and exhaust fumes, carried to our doorstep by a courier who didn't ask for a signature and didn't meet my eyes. I found it while Nathan was still in the shower—a small box wrapped in brown paper, no return address, my name written across the front in handwriting I didn't recognize.
Bunny.
Just that. No last name. No apartment number. Just the name Gabriel had given me, the name that had survived everything: the conditioning, the escape, the careful reconstruction of my identity. The name Nathan usedwith tenderness rather than ownership. The name I was still learning to wear without flinching.
I should have waited for him. Should have called him from the shower and let him open it, let him assess the threat, let him do what he'd always done—protect me from the things that lurked in the shadows of my past.
