Page 99 of Grim

“Just… stay close,” she whispered.

Grim’s shoulders eased, just barely. “Yeah. I can do that.”

Sophia stood there for a long moment after Grim stepped back, her breath still uneven, her pulse still thudding in her throat. The house felt too quiet, too still, like the walls were listening. Her skin buzzed with leftover adrenaline, every nerve ending raw and exposed.

She wrapped her arms around herself, not for warmth but to keep from shaking apart.

Grim didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Didn’t try again.

He just watched her with that steady, unblinking focus, the kind that made her feel seen and held without a single touch. It should’ve comforted her. Instead, it made her chest ache.

She needed to feel clean. She needed to wash the last of that place off her skin. She needed… something.

“I’m going to shower,” she whispered, though her voice barely carried.

Grim nodded once. “I’ll be right here.”

He didn’t ask if she needed help. He didn’t offer. He didn’t push.

He just gave her the choice.

Sophia turned toward the hallway, her legs still unsteady, her hand brushing the wall as she walked. The familiar creak of the floorboard under her feet made her flinch again, not as violently as before, but enough that she felt it in her bones.

The bathroom door felt heavier than it should’ve. The light switch clicked too loudly. The steam from the shower curled into the air like a ghost.

She closed the door halfway, not all the way; she couldn’t. The idea of being shut in, even for a moment, made her stomach twist.

She heard Grim shift outside, settling onto the floor with his back against the wall. Not guarding. Not hovering.

Just… there.

Her throat tightened.

She wasn’t alone. She wasn’t trapped. She wasn’t in the dark.

But her body didn’t know that yet.

Sophia stepped into the bathroom, the steam warming her skin, fogging the mirror, softening the edges of the room. She turned the water hotter than usual, hoping the heat would melt the tension out of her muscles, hoping it would wash away the memory of cold concrete and colder hands.

She stepped under the spray.

It lasted thirty seconds.

The moment the water hit her skin, warm, gentle, harmless, her breath seized. Her chest tightened, sharp and sudden, like someone had wrapped a fist around her lungs. The steam thickened the air, turning the small bathroom into a fogged-in box. The walls felt too close. The ceiling too low. The air too heavy.

The sound of water hitting tile morphed into something else entirely.

Footsteps. Dripping pipes. Concrete. Cold metal. The scrape of a hinge. The echo of a door slamming shut.

Her hands shook so violently she dropped the soap. It hit the floor with a sharp slap that echoed too loudly, too much like—

SLAM.

Her knees buckled.

Her breath came in short, panicked bursts, each one thinner than the last. Her vision blurred, the steam twisting into shapes she didn’t want to see. Her skin crawled, every inch of her body remembering hands that weren’t Grim’s, voices that weren’t safe, darkness that didn’t end.

She grabbed the towel, wrapping it around herself with shaking hands, stumbling out of the bathroom before the walls could close in.