Page 172 of Filled

Dakota opens the door, and she looks like grief incarnate. Red-rimmed eyes. Skin gone pale under the gym tan. She’s drowning in one of Cruz’s hoodies, sleeves swallowing her hands, and when she sees me she doesn’t say a word. She walks into my chest and holds on.

We stand in her doorway for a long time. Her heartbeat against my ribs. Mine against her ear.

“He’s not dead,” she says into my shirt. “Why does it feel like he’s dead?”

“Because he cut himself out of us. And it doesn’t matter that he did it for the right reasons. The devastation’s the same.”

We end up on her couch, tangled together in a way that has nothing to do with desire and everything to do with comfort. Her head on my chest, my fingers moving through her hair, her breath hitching every few minutes like her body keeps forgetting how the rhythm works.

“It’s my fault,” she says. “Gerald came to the gym because of me. He put eyes on all of us. Whoever took those photos?—”

“Was holding the camera. Not you.”

“You sound like Cruz.”

“Cruz is right sometimes. Don’t tell him I said that.”

She almost laughs. It dies halfway out of her. “Everywhere I go, I bring the wreckage with me.”

I want to argue. I have all of Cruz’s words from that night memorized, everything about blame and responsibility and the choices other people make. But my heart drags on the delivery because I’m drowning in my own version of the same guilt. I’m the one who begged for visibility. That kiss is in those photographs. I wanted it.

And someone turned it into a weapon.

“We’re a real pair,” I tell her. “Sitting here fighting over whose fault it is, like the guilt’s a trophy.”

“Split custody?” she asks.

“Deal.”

The afternoon dissolves. We don’t talk much. We exist next to each other, two bodies and two heartbeats and the shared knowledge of exactly how much we’ve lost. At some point her breathing evens out against my chest, and I lie there staring at her ceiling, thinking about that last night at Cruz’s. The five of us. Laughing. Naive as children.

I drift.

The click of a lock wakes me.

Not Dakota’s key—I’d know the sound of a key. This is slower. Wrong. Metal working against metal in the dark, then the whisper of a door easing open, then footsteps in the apartment that belong to neither of us.

I’m on my feet before my brain finishes the math, body running on twelve years of training, planting myself between the hallway and the couch where Dakota is stirring. The apartment sits in half-dark, streetlight bleeding through the blinds, and for two full seconds I see nothing. Just hear the footsteps crossing the living room. Unhurried. Confident.

Then he steps into the light, and my blood turns to ice water.

Gerald Fitch stands in Dakota’s apartment holding a knife.

Not a kitchen knife. A hunting blade, long and dark, the kind built for opening things up. And his face—God, his face. This isn’t the concerned stepfather who performed for Victor at the front desk. The mask is gone.

Dakota makes a sound behind me, half gasp, half whimper, and I hear her scramble off the couch.

“Well.” Gerald’s voice comes out level. Almost pleasant. That calm is worse than anger. “There’s always one of you with her now, isn’t there. I’ve been watching the building for days. Figured tonight she’d finally be alone.” His head tilts. “Guess I was wrong.”

“Get out.” My voice holds steadier than my hands. “Right now.”

“You must be one of the boyfriends.” The knife turns in his grip, catching the light. “I saw the photographs, you know. My PI took them. All of you, together like animals.” His eyes slide past me to Dakota. “Your mother would be ashamed, Dakota. Running off. Spreading lies about me to strangers. Whoring yourself out to a whole gym.”

Behind me, Dakota’s breathing goes sharp and shallow. I know that sound. She’s not here anymore—she’s fourteen, she’s in a bedroom in Florida, she’s listening to footsteps in the hall at 2 AM.

“I tried patience.” Gerald takes a step. I match it backward, keeping myself squared between them. “Gave her time to come to her senses. But she’s left me no choice. She belongs to me. Always has. If she won’t come home willingly, then I’ll take her home the only way that’s left.”

I mentally check my options. Phone’s in my pocket—I can’t reach it without giving him an opening. No weapon in reach. The door’s behind him. He’s got forty pounds on me and a blade andfifteen years of obsession pushing him forward, and the smart play is to stall, to talk, to get Dakota moving toward the window or the bedroom or anywhere that isn’t here.