Outside, I felt the shift in the air—the quiet pressing against the glass. I looked.
And there she was. Voss. Arms crossed.Smiling.
Soaked in smugness like it was perfume.
And Harlan… he just looked tired.
“You can’t make a scene like this in the station,” he said.
The words froze me. Rage to ice in a second.
There it was.
“You’re more worried about optics than you are about her.”
“That’s not true.”
I stepped back as if he’d struck me. My throat burned. My chest ached.
Because God help me, I wanted to believe him. I wanted to believe the man who kissed me softly in the dark, who held me when I woke shaking, who made tacos with me in the kitchen like we were normal. Who made me feel safe when I thought I would never feel safe again.
But I’d been here before.
I’d been told I was too much, too loud, hysterical.
I’d been told to be smaller so a man could breathe easier.
And now the doubt pressed in, a suffocating weight.
“You want to help?” My voice cracked, but I forced the words out. “Then stop trying to talk me down every time I scream loud enough to be fucking heard.”
“I’m trying to protect you.”
I pointed toward the hallway, to where Voss was still watching. “You think she’s the threat to me?”
He didn’t look. Didn’t need to. We both knew.
And suddenly the exhaustion in his face wasn’t just his, it was mine too. My hope was bleeding out.
“I’m not sure anymore, Harlan. Are you really trying to protect me… or are you trying to keep me quiet? Keep me in that neat little organized bubble you like to live in?”
My hand hit the doorknob. He didn’t stop me.
I turned once, voice raw. “Tell me you’re not part of the problem. Tell me I wasn’t wrong about you.”
The flicker in his face, guilt, shame, doubt, told me everything I needed to know.
I didn’t wait for an answer.
I walked out, head high, fire licking back up my spine.
The bullpen fell into silence as I passed. Every eye tracked me. Some pitied. Some judged. Some dismissed.
And Voss...
She smiled at me.
And I smiled back. Sharp. Feral.
