Page 114 of Into Pitch

The word used to scare me too, but all I find now is a startling clarification.

I have dissected every other emotion I’ve ever experienced down to motive and mechanism.

Love is no different. It’s not mystical and it’s certainly not soft. It’s an attachment response rooted in exclusivity, reinforced by vulnerability, and deepened by shared violence and survival.

Sadie didn’t just survive my world, she so willingly stepped into.

And then she ran.

I lean back, groaning as I stare at the ceiling and replay the moment her breathing changed. The instant her body recoiled before she could just slow down and talk this through with me. I hated seeing the switch flip inside of her, the way the past crawled its way forward to drag her under. Fight-or-flight overriding want.

I don’t think she was rejecting me, but she was escaping this pattern she thinks I’m trying to back her into.

Sure, I’m not going to actually let her go anywhere. But she doesn’t need to know that.

She’s wrong to think that leaving is her only form of survival. Leaving in stasis is the same loop she’s been trapped in since she was seventeen. She thinks she’s choosing herself, but all she’s doing is choosing the absence of threat over the presence of truth.

And I won’t allow that.

Not now that I know what this is.

I look to the window at the edge of the bed and let my thoughts sharpen, slotting into place like pieces of a familiar puzzle. I can’t rush this or spiral, so I will plan.

She will go back to her routines, I’m sure. The bar. The bus. Imogen. She will tell herself she did the right thing. She will avoid thinking about me the way she always avoids the things that crack her open, but her body won’t forget.

Her body already knows me.

I smile faintly at that.

Love, for me, is not just possession. Or at least it can’t be so simply defined. She has become the axis in which everything rotates around. My work. My patience. My restraint. Every decision from this moment is filtered through one question:

How do I bring her back to me?

I can’t chase her recklessly. That would only confirm her fear. I can’t corner her or force her hand either. She needs to come to the conclusion herself to choose me the way she chose blood on her hands without flinching.

She needs to understand that loving me doesn’t erase her autonomy. It only redefines it.

I retrieve my phone and thumb open the calendar. Her absence won’t disrupt my schedule, it’ll just alter its focus. A new timeline emerges as I open sessions and defer some of the plans I had before.

This is okay, I tell myself.

I can give her space.

Let her miss me and let the silence do its work. The absence will eventually begin to itch. I’m sure she’ll try to distract herself by replacing me, and prove to herself that she’s fine with this.

She won’t succeed.

No one else will ever know her the way I do. They won’t see the violence and tenderness braided together and not try to separate them.

I don’t need to convince her to love me. I need to show her that she already does, and that running won’t save her from that very simple truth.

I don’t go home, because that’s not where I want to be with all these thoughts in my head.

I instead let Alex’s car hit the curb hard enough to pop up onto it, yank the door open, and streak across the street to Imogen’s shop. The bell screaming at me when I shove it open and find her behind the counter.

She looks up and goes solid.

For half a second, she just gawks at me like I’m a ghost.