I pulled it back.
I was being ridiculous. I was a grown woman in her own bed, and I was lying completely still, trying not to breathe too loudly in case I woke him, which was, objectively, ridiculous. I’d known this man my entire life.
He shifted slightly in his sleep, just a small unconscious adjustment, and the back of his hand brushed mine where it lay on the blanket, and I stared at the ceiling and thought, with great clarity and considerable dismay, that I was in a tremendous amount of trouble.
I slipped out of bed carefully, not wanting to wake him, and padded to the small kitchen. The trailer creaked softly under my feet. Outside, Riverside Pines was still mostly quiet. I filled my electric kettle to fix a cup of tea because I was still out of freaking coffee.
I should have been tired. I should have been wrung out after everything—Matt sitting in the parking lot like a guard dog, the message from the unknown number, the conversation with Levi that had finally stopped being polite and started being honest. Instead, I felt oddly still. Like something I had been dreading for a long time had finally been allowed to rest.
The mug warmed my hands while I stared out the window, watching the early light pool over gravel and pine needles.
I’d left my phone charging on the counter, and when the screen lit with a notification, I picked it up, trying to chase away the feeling of dread that hovered over me.
A text from Matt. He’d sent it at 4:47 a.m., which meant he hadn’t slept.
Matt: Check your email. I forwarded something. Don’t freak out.
I opened the email.
It was a screenshot—grainy, timestamped, the angle slightly off, the way security footage always looks when it’s capturing something it wasn’t specifically pointed at. The Stop & Go’s exterior camera was angled toward the lot. Matt had circled something in red.
A silver sedan was parked at the far edge of the frame. The plate partially visible.
But he’d also attached a second image—a zoomed-in still from a different frame, a few minutes earlier. The driver stepped out. Not looking at the camera. Profile only, chin down, one hand in a jacket pocket.
I recognized the jacket before I recognized him. Then it was the way he stood with his weight shifted to one side, the set of his shoulders—all of it landing in the same split second, the way things did when your body knew something before your mind caught up. It was Travis. But that was not his car.
I stood at the window for a long time, mug warm between my palms, the early light going gold through the pines, and the river running steady beyond the trees. I’d been careful not to think of his name. Not the night of the podcast, not when the comment came, not when Matt had dismissed the idea. I’d filed it under possible and left it there, because naming it felt like the kind of thing you couldn’t take back.
So it was him. He was somehow involved in this mess.
I set the phone face down on the counter and stood at the window for a long time, mug warm between my palms, the early light going gold through the pines, and the river running steady beyond the trees.
The anger came up so fast it almost took my breath away. Not the careful, managed kind I’d been carrying around for months, tucking it down every time it surfaced, being reasonable, being measured, being the person who handled things without making a scene. This was something rawer than that. Something that had been sitting in the dark, waiting for a name to attach itself to.
He’d been watching me. Watching my trailer, my campground, my life. He’d been standing in the dark by the river in the middle of the night like he had any right to exist in my world. He’d put his hands into my podcast and deleted it. I knew it was him even though I couldn’t prove it.
And underneath all of it, the thing that made my vision go briefly white at the edges, was that he’d done it quietly. Deliberately. Like he’d thought it through. As if he’d sat somewhere and decided that if he couldn’t have access to me one way, he’d find another, and that the most effective approach was to make sure I never felt safe enough to forget him.
I put the mug down hard enough that the tea sloshed over the rim.
I’d left him. I’d done everything right. I’d said the things that needed saying, drawn every line, walked away clean, and rebuilt myself from the ground up. And he was still here. Still operating under the breathtaking assumption that what he wanted had anything to do with what I’d chosen, as if my leaving had just been a temporary inconvenience he was waiting out rather than a decision I’d made with every single part of myself. The entitlement of it. The sheer, staggering entitlement.
I pressed both palms flat against the counter and stood there breathing, because if I didn’t stand still for a moment, I was going to do something that I couldn’t take back, and I needed to think. I needed to be smart. I needed to be the kind of person who called Matt and not the kind of person who grabbed her baseball bat and did something permanent.
One minute.I just needed one minute before I decided what came next. From the other room, Levi shifted in his sleep—a small sound, barely anything. The trailer creaked once, settled. I turned back to the window. Watched the river.
Matt would want to move carefully. I knew that. I also knew that whatever came next, I wasn’t going to be the girl standing alone in the dark, talking into a mic, hoping no one important was listening.
I picked the phone back up and typed:
Me: I saw it. It’s Travis. What do we do?
I hit send before I could talk myself out of it.
His reply came within a minute.
Matt: You do nothing. I’ll handle everything.
