I told her I would.
By ten-thirty, the guests were gone, and we were breaking down. I helped where I could, shifting tables, loading equipment, and running trash to the dumpsters out back. The physical work usually quieted my head. Tonight it wasn't working.
The cemetery visit had cracked something open in me, and watching Nadia handle a crisis that someone had deliberately created had widened the gap. I kept seeing the headstone. Kept thinking about how much I wanted to be the type of man who deserved to be in her corner. Kept circling back to the same question I couldn't answer.
I was in the alley behind the venue, flattening cardboard for the recycling bin, when it hit me.
The way it always hit when I wasn't braced for it. A tightening in my chest that started as tension and kept building. My hands found the alley wall without my permission. The cardboard dropped.
I knew what this was. I'd had these before, in the early months after getting out. Less often lately. Almost never until this week.
Three slow breaths. Four. Focus on what's real. The brick under my palms. The damp, cold smell of the alley. The sounds of cleanup from inside.
I was mostly steadied by the time the back door opened and Nadia stepped out.
She saw through it immediately.
"Daemon."
"I'm fine."
She came toward me slowly, the way you'd approach something you didn't want to startle. "You're not fine."
"Wanted some air."
"How long has this been happening?"
"It's an old habit. Nothing to worry about."
She stopped a few feet away. Not frightened. Not pitying. Watching me with those steady green eyes, fully present in a way that made it harder, not easier, to hold myself together.
"A panic attack isn't nothing," she said.
"I'm okay." I pushed off the wall. "Event's done, venue's happy. You handled it perfectly."
She folded her arms. "Don't redirect. What's happening with you?"
"Nothing's happening."
"Daemon." Her voice was quiet but clear. "Something's been off all week. Talk to me."
I picked up the fallen cardboard. Kept my hands busy.
"Today's a hard day," I said. Which was true. Which was also the least of it.
"Your mom?"
I looked at her.
"You go when things get hard," she said. "Back when you told me everything, that's what you said. I remembered."
She'd held onto that detail all this time. Of course she had. "Yeah," I said. "Needed her today more than most."
"So you went to see her?"
"This morning."
"Before you came to help me set up a two-hundred-and-fifty-person event."
