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Adrien somehow knew from miles away. Which… makes me realize he’s probably watching me somehow.

“I’ll eat everything.”

“Good.”

“Anything else?” I ask.

“Yes.”

I groan and let my head thump back against the headrest. “Of course there is.”

He doesn’t even blink. “If anything makes you uncomfortable—”

“I call you.”

“If somebody follows you—”

“I go somewhere public and call you.”

“If somebody touches you—”

“I tell them to stop, get away, and call you.”

“If you feel sick?”

“Call you.”

“If you’re overwhelmed?”

“Call you.”

“If you need to come home?”

“I call you.”

His gaze softens, the hard lines around his eyes and mouth easing into something tender.

That one matters more than the others.

I know because his hand reaches over the center console and settles on my thigh, his thumb moving slowly against the fabric.

“No questions asked,” he reminds me.

My irritation dissolves like sugar in hot tea. “I know.”

“I mean it.” His thumb stills, pressing just slightly.

“I know, Daddy.”

“You don’t ever have to stay somewhere because you think leaving will disappoint me.”

That has taken four months to sink in. Maybe longer. I spent so much of my life believing endurance was the price of being allowed to remain somewhere that the idea of simply saying, “I want to go home,” still feels bizarre, like trying to write with my left hand.

The first week of classes, I nearly had a panic attack during a crowded orientation event in the student union. Too many bodies crammed under fluorescent lights that buzzed like trapped flies. Too much noise echoing off cinderblock walls. Some guy behind me kept bumping my backpack with his knee. My chest started tightening, my breath coming in shallow little sips. I lasted twenty-three minutes before I texted Adrien to ask if he could come get me.

He responded immediately that he was already outside.

No lecture. No disappointment. He took me home, made grilled cheese on the cast iron, cut the crusts off because he knows I like it that way, put my pajamas in the dryer for five minutes so they were warm when I changed, and let me spend the rest of the afternoon curled against him on the couch with my pacifier and Rabbit while he worked quietly on his laptop, one hand resting in my hair.