“What thing?”
“You make it sound so simple.” She starts unpacking the groceries with quick, angry movements. Pasta on the counter. Apples beside it. The dented tin of tomatoes lands with more force than it needs. “He touched me, so you reacted. End of story. Noble hero. Big, strong man. Everyone claps. Credits roll.”
“He fucking grabbed you.”
“And you lunged directly for his throat.”
My jaw tightens. “That’s not what I said.”
“No, but that’s what you think.”
“You have no idea what I think.”
She turns then, and fuck, the expression on her face almost cuts me open. It is something worse than anger. Something that has been with her since the pavement and has taken shape over the journey upstairs.
“I know exactly what you think, Zane. I watched it happen.” Her voice is quiet now, more devastating than the loud version ever was. “Your face changed. Your body changed. You went somewhere else entirely and I was standing right there, watching you become the man from that alley again.”
The words land hard.
The room goes quiet around them. That particular kind of quiet that arrives when something true has just been said and both people in the room know it, yet neither knows what to do with it yet.
I feel them in my throat. In my hands. In the old scars under my skin that have never fully stopped knowing what they cost.
“That’s not fair,” I say.
Her eyes flash. “No. None of this is fair.”
I drag a hand over my jaw and turn away for half a second because looking at her right now is dangerous, when she is angry and hurting like this.
“I saw him touching you,” I say, lower this time. “I saw your face.”
“Oh my god, stop saying that. I know what you saw.”
“No, you don’t.” I turn my gaze back to her. “You think I saw some prick and wanted a fight. I didn’t. I saw you cornered on that pavement, your groceries scattered on the ground, his hand locked on your arm, and I could not fucking breathe.”
Her mouth tightens.
“That was not me chasing a fight, Sky.”
“Then what was it?”
Fear.
The word sits there, ugly and honest, taking up more space than it deserves in this small, warm kitchen.
I don’t want to give it to her, hand her another weak thing, and watch her decide what to do with it.
When I don’t say anything, she does.
“And you almost threw your life away again because of it.” Her voice is careful. Controlled. The kind of control that costs something. “It seems like just when we start to—.”
She stops. Starts again. “I am left standing there, watching you risk everything again for me, when I never asked you to.”
Her voice rises now, the control slipping at the edges. “You went to prison, Zane.”
“I remember.”
“I lost you, Zane,” she says.
