I know where it is now. I know where it points to.
Her name. Sophia?—
Sophia Sinclair.
I can grab on to it now. Her name. Wrap myself aroundit, like a drowning man with his face in the gutter and only one thing to hang on to.
She’s real. I know she is. I also know the yelling was real. My own voice tearing something in my throat with the force of it.Get out. Get away from me.Her face—not understanding, or understanding too well, I can’t tell which is worse. Those green eyes wide, the same ones that looked at me like I was worth saving, now reflecting the monster I’ve always been.
I remember why.
Not all of it. Just enough. She got close—she was always going to get close, that’s what she does, she doesn’t know how to stay away from something that’s hurting—and I looked at her, and for one fractured second she wasn’t standing there in one of my shirts with flour on her arm. She was bleeding. Red at the mouth, spreading dark through white cotton, and my hands?—
The room tilts, and I grab the edge of the bathroom sink. My legs hold, mostly. Weak, but the weapon in me catalogs the weakness, files it, prepares contingencies even now.
I look up, the fogged up mirror becoming clear. It’s like a lightning strike, a tear through reality, and for a split second I see Mary in the reflection. Empty eyes, gaping throat, and I press my eyes closed.
I know I didn’t kill her. Ian told me he saw the video footage, that it was Valeria. Deep down I knew, but my mind was so fucked—still is—but down there, the mind games she played, Samuel’s accusation, it all got wrapped up so tight in the rot and turned every memory wrong.
But knowing the truth doesn’t erase the things I’ve seen. The things my mind showed me. It’s still there. Standing inthe dark corner. Watching me. And I don’t think it’ll ever leave.
I’m barefoot, walking back into the bedroom. This room. This house. It still feels off. Too clean. Too safe. After that cell—concrete, chains, the constant stink of my own piss and fear—this place feels like a lie I’m waiting for someone to rip away.
The fabric of my shirt scrapes the back of my neck, reminding me I’m back in a body that belongs to me again. Sort of. The bruises on my arm say different. The track marks say different. Everything still feels borrowed.
When I look at the bedroom door, flashes hit me hard. Ian’s face. My fist connecting. The crack of bone. Craving had me twisted up so bad I was lunging for the hallway like a cornered dog, screaming at him to get the fuck out of the way, that I needed out, needed something, anything to make it stop. He wouldn’t move. Just took the hit, absorbed it, kept talking me down while I swung again.
Guilt twists sharp in my gut now, ugly and real, but I shake it off—or at least try to.
Locked.
Right. I asked for that.
“Reth?”
My heart stutters, a sharp kick against my ribs.
Sophia.
Her voice hits different—soft, worried, real in a way that cuts straight through the fog still clinging to my head. It makes my chest tighten and my gut drop at the same time.
“Are you okay?”
Fuck. Part of me wants to rip the door open and pull her against me until I can’t tell where I end and she begins. The smarter part locks up, because hearing her on the other sideof this wood reminds me exactly how dangerous I am right now.
I want her here. I’m fucking terrified of what I might do if she gets too close. The craving’s quieter, but it’s still there, whispering that one hit would make everything easier, and the last thing I need is her seeing me like this. Weak. Fucked up. Capable of putting hands on her the way I put them on Ian.
“Reth…please.”
The plea in her voice guts me.
I don’t answer right away. I stand there with my head against the door and my eyes closed, and I think about what’s on the other side of this door that I want so badly it physically hurts and that I’m also, simultaneously, more afraid of than anything Valeria ever did to me in that cell.
Because I know she’s real now. The fragments are starting to line up enough to tell me that much—the arms in the driveway, the voice through the door, the smell of her that doesn’t belong to anyone else. My Cherry-red. The only woman who ever made the killer want to be a man.
My true North.
But I can still see the other version. The one with blood on her mouth. The one I held the karambit over. I know it didn’t happen. Knowing that doesn’t make my body believe it. The weapon doesn’t trust hope. He trusts patterns. And the pattern with me is ruin.
