I pick up the pen.
I don't write in the notebook. I pull three sheets of loose paper from the drawer instead. The good paper—the cream-colored stuff Margot bought me when I told her I wanted to try writing letters by hand, back when she thought I meant letters to professors or thank-you notes or whatever normal people write on good paper.
I'm not writing thank-you notes.
Not even remotely close.
The first letter is to Atlas.
My hand shakes on the first line. I press harder. The ink bleeds a little at the corners of the letters but I keep going because if I stop I won't start again.
Atlas—
You told me at the pond that you love me. You said it like a fact—
I stop. Wipe my eyes with the back of my wrist. The tears are already coming and I haven't even gotten to the hard part yet.
If I do this—if I walk into a police station and put my name on a report—everything changes. The case opens. Kline falls.Maybe. Probably. But the truth doesn't come in pieces. It comes in a flood. What I am. What was done to me. Who I'vebeen sharing a bed with. Margot will find out. Richard will find out. The world will find out.
And Margot will do exactly what Zero said she'd do. She'll pull me out. She'll burn it down. She'll do it with love and she'll do it believing she's saving me and I will lose them.
I will lose them.
The pen shakes. I keep writing.
—I held your face and I couldn't say it back and I need you to know that wasn't because I don't feel it. I feel it so much it scares me. I have been scared of it every day since Henrik's, since the duck, since you tied my tie in the foyer.
I love you.
The words blur. I blink and two tears land on the paper—small dark circles spreading into the cream, warping the fibers. I don't blot them. Let him see them. Let him know what it cost.
I'm done running.
I put the pen down. Press both hands flat on the desk. Breathe.
This is the price. This is what it costs to be the person who stands up instead of the person who hides. I save nine people and I lose three. I clear the Graves name and I destroy the only family I've ever had. I free myself from Talbot and I hand myself over to a system that will put every detail of my body and my bonds and my life into a file that anyone can read.
I stand up. Pull off Bane's shirt. It smells like cedar and him and I press it against my face for three seconds—three, I give myself three—and then I put it on the bed.
I pull on jeans. A real shirt. My jacket. Not pajamas. Not borrowed clothes. The clothes of a person who's going somewhere and isn't coming back to bed.
I sit back down at the desk. The second sheet of paper is waiting. The pen is where I left it.
I pick it back up.
The second letter is to Bane.
Bane—
I love you.
God, I fucking love you.
Just that. Just my heart poured out for him. I stare at the words. They look small on the cream paper. They look like nothing. They're everything I should have said in the library when he handed me the most terrifying sentence anyone has ever spoken to me and I ran. I literally ran out of the room.
I should have said it that night. You deserved better than my back disappearing down a hallway.
My vision blurs again. I'm crying properly now—not sobbing, not dramatic, just leaking. Steady tears tracking down my cheeks and falling onto the paper and my hands and the desk. I keep writing through it because the alternative is stopping and if I stop I'll crawl back into Bane's bed and find him and press my face into his chest and never leave.
