CHAPTER 18 #2
She gestured around wildly, and her hand knocked against the coffee table. Pain flared in her knuckles, but she barely felt it.
“Half a year of counting trees and memorizing wood grain and tracking the angle of sunlight and losing my goddamn mind?”
Dax’s expression shifted. That careful neutrality sliding into place like a mask. The cop face. The one that said he thought she was being unreasonable.
“It’s not ideal,” he said, his voice maddeningly calm, “but—”
“Not ideal.” Quinn laughed, and the sound was sharp. Jagged. “That’s what you’re calling this? Not ideal?”
She moved toward him, and her whole body was trembling now. Not just her hands. All of her. Like she was vibrating apart at the molecular level.
“I know it’s hard—” Dax started.
“Do you?” Quinn cut him off. “Do you really? Because you get to leave. You go to work every day. See people. Do your job. Have a life. Have conversations that aren’t about how long I have to stay locked up.
Have thoughts that aren’t about four walls and forty-three trees and knots in the fucking wood paneling! ”
Her voice cracked on the last word.
Dax’s jaw tightened. “I’m trying to keep you safe.”
“I don’t feel safe,” she hissed.
The words came out before Quinn could stop them. Before she could think about what they meant or how they’d land.
But once they were out, she couldn’t take them back.
And she didn’t want to.
“I don’t feel safe,” she said again, quieter now but somehow more intense. “I feel buried. I feel like I’m already dead and just waiting for it to be official.”
Dax’s eyes widened slightly. Hurt flashing across his face before he could hide it.
“You’re being dramatic,” he said.
And there it was.
The thing that made Quinn’s hands curl into fists.
The dismissal. The condescension. The implication that her feelings—her very real, very valid terror and claustrophobia and slow-building hysteria—were just histrionics.
Just drama.
Just Quinn being difficult.
Something cold settled in Quinn’s chest. Something hard and sharp-edged.
“Dramatic,” she repeated, her voice deadly quiet.
Dax seemed to realize his mistake. “I didn’t mean—” He set down the can of soup he’d been holding, his movements careful. Too careful. “Quinn, I know this is difficult. But it’s temporary. Once the trial—”
“Six months isn’t temporary.” Quinn’s voice was still quiet, but it cut like a blade. “And you know what? It doesn’t even matter. Because if Wheeler really wants me dead, he’s going to find a way. Ankle monitor or not. Trial or not. Me being locked in this cabin doesn’t change that.”
“It makes it harder for him—”
“Does it?” Quinn felt something building in her chest. Something huge and unstoppable. “Or does it just make me an easier target when he finally does make his move? Because I’m in the middle of nowhere. No neighbors. No witnesses. One road in and out. If Wheeler sends someone here, I’m trapped.”
She could see it suddenly. See it with horrible clarity. Wheeler’s people finding this cabin. Coming up that gravel driveway. And her inside with nowhere to run. Nowhere to go.
“I’m here—” Dax started.
“You’re not here!”
The words exploded out of Quinn, loud enough to make Dax flinch.
“You’re here for an hour, maybe two, and then you leave for your shift. Eight hours. Ten hours. Twelve hours sometimes. And I’m alone. Completely alone.”
Her breath was coming in gasps now. Short. Sharp. Not enough air.
“At least at Gran’s house, there are neighbors. Street traffic. People who would notice if something went wrong. People who would hear if I screamed.”
“The cabin is secure—”
“The cabin is a cage.”
The words hung between them.
Dax’s face went carefully blank. “That’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it?” Quinn moved closer, tilting her head back to look up at him. “Tell me, Dax, when was the last time you asked me what I wanted? What I needed? When was the last time we made a decision together instead of you just telling me how it’s going to be?”
She could see his jaw working. See the way his hands clenched at his sides.
“This isn’t about control—”
“It’s entirely about control!” Quinn’s voice rose again, filling the small cabin.
“You’re so terrified of losing me that you’ve turned into exactly the man I met that first day in the police station.
The cop who thinks he knows best. Who thinks authority and force can solve everything.
Who says ‘watch me’ like it’s a threat instead of a partnership! ”
Dax flinched. Actually flinched, as if she’d struck him.
“I’m not that person anymore,” he said, but his voice was uncertain.
“Aren’t you?” Quinn felt tears burning in her eyes, but she blinked them back. Refused to let them fall. “Because that’s all I’ve seen for the past week. Orders. Decisions made without me. My life controlled down to when I eat and sleep and speak to another human being.”
Her voice dropped to something quieter but somehow more devastating. “Do you know what I did today, Dax?”
He didn’t answer. Just stared at her with those dark eyes that used to make her feel safe but now just made her feel seen in all the wrong ways.
Seen as something to be protected. Managed. Controlled.
Not seen as a person. An equal. A partner.
“I woke up at 6:47 AM,” Quinn said, her voice eerily calm now.
“I know the exact time because I’d been lying there awake since 6:45, watching the numbers change on the clock.
I got up. Made coffee—one cup because that’s all I had left and I’m rationing it.
I ate breakfast. Two scrambled eggs and one piece of toast. The same breakfast I’ve eaten for seven days straight. ”
She took a breath. Dax’s face was pale now.
“Then I watched the morning news. Saw the same segment about Wheeler three times because they keep replaying it. Heard them call me ‘troubled’ and ‘obsessed.’ Heard Wheeler’s lawyer say I’m mentally unstable.”
Another breath. Shorter this time.
“Then I tried to write. Opened my laptop—the laptop you so generously provided—and stared at a blank screen for forty-five minutes because I can’t write without sources. Can’t fact-check without internet. Can’t do interviews without a phone that works.”
Dax opened his mouth, but Quinn held up a hand.
“I’m not done.”
He closed his mouth.
“After I gave up on writing, I made lunch. Another egg. Because that’s what we have.
Then I watched the afternoon news. Same Wheeler segment.
Then I counted the trees I can see from the living room window.
Forty-three. Want to know how I know? Because I counted them three times to make sure I didn’t miss any. ”
Her voice was shaking now but she kept going.
“Then I stared at that knot in the wood paneling over there. The one that looks like a screaming face. Stared at it for approximately an hour, maybe more, until I heard your truck pull up and knew—knew with absolute certainty—that I couldn’t do this for one more day.”
Quinn’s chest was heaving. “Let alone six more months.”
The silence stretched between them, thick and suffocating.
Finally, Dax spoke, his voice rough. “I’m protecting you—”
“No.” Quinn shook her head. “You’re protecting yourself. From the pain of losing someone else. And you’re willing to destroy what we have—destroy me—to do it.”
His face went white. “That’s not true.”
“Then prove it.” Quinn held his gaze, refusing to look away. “Let me leave. Let me go back to Gran’s house. Let me make my own choices about my own safety.”
“No.”
The word was automatic. Immediate. Decisive.
And in that single syllable, Quinn heard everything she needed to know.
He wasn’t going to change. Wasn’t going to bend. Wasn’t going to treat her like an equal who deserved agency over her own life.
He was going to keep her here, keep her safe, keep her controlled.
Even if it killed her in every way that mattered.
“I’m leaving,” Quinn said quietly. Then she walked to her room to start packing.