It's lived inside me for ten years.
Since I was sixteen and he looked at me across Gracie's living room and something in me recognized something in him.
Something dark. Something hungry. Something that should have sent me running.
Instead, I lay awake at night and thought about him.
Wondered what his hands would feel like on my skin.
Imagined his voice in my ear, telling me all the things he wanted to do to me.
I was a child. He was a man. And I wanted him anyway.
That's why I ran. Not because I was afraid of him.
Because I was afraid of myself.
Eight years. I put eight years and an ocean between us.
I buried myself in combat, in duty, in anything that would burn him out of my system.
And one conversation, one touch, and it all comes flooding back.
I'm furious.
Not at him—at myself. For feeling this. For wanting someone who looks at me like I'm something to be consumed.
Around midnight, I give up on sleep and open my laptop.
The rejection email from the apartment complex sits in my inbox.
I've read it a dozen times. Generic corporate verbiage about documentation issues.
But my instincts won't shut up, and I'm done pretending everything is fine.
Twenty minutes and three searches later, I have the leasing agent's personal cell. Diana Marsh. Forty-three, divorced, two kids.
I call her.
"Hello?" Sleep-thick voice. Confused.
"Diana." I sit up, phone pressed to my ear. "This is Liberty Cole. The apartment on Riverside Drive. I need the truth."
A long pause. Rustling sheets. "Ms. Cole, it's midnight?—"
"I know what time it is. You've been avoiding my calls for days now. Tell me what happened to my application."
Silence.
"Diana." I make my voice soft. Desperate. The voice I used on informants when I needed them to crack. "Please. I'm out of options here."
She sighs. Long and shaky.
"I could lose my job."
"I won't tell anyone."
Another pause. Then, barely a whisper:
