Chapter 25
I unlocked the door to my house and the smell hit me first. Not bad, not dirty—just stale, like air that hadn’t been moved in a while.
The blinds were still slanted the way I’d left them. The rug held the faint dent of a bag I’d dropped and never picked up. My shoes by the door looked abandoned, waiting for feet that hadn’t come home.
I kicked them aside and stepped in. The quiet pressed on me. I hadn’t realized how much the river loft hummed, how Atticus filled a room even when he was silent. Here, there was nothing. No water sliding past. No heavier footstep. No warm hand finding the small of my back like it belonged there.
The stillness should have been comfort. Instead, it felt like walking into a stranger’s life.
My plants drooped. Brown tips. Cracked soil.
A glass in the sink had turned its water cloudy.
Upstairs, the bed was unmade, sheets knotted at the bottom like someone had tried to swim out of them.
I tried to remember the last night I had slept here.
It had to be before his loft. Before every hour was either in his arms or waiting for him to appear.
Days had blurred. I had lived inside his orbit so fully my own house had stopped existing.
I sat on the edge of the sofa and pressed my palms to my eyes. What was I doing?
The Nesting Place ran smoother than it ever had.
Mei at the desk. Gianna handling orders.
Reese covering births when I couldn’t. But that wasn’t the point.
It was my shop. My hands had built it. Late nights.
Overdrafts. Prayers that the rent check would clear.
And I had left it to run on autopilot because a man with money and a cleaver tattoo told me to.
I trusted him. Trust didn’t stop the gnawing truth. I was disappearing into his world.
Determined to breathe, I tugged the curtains back, and cracked the window. Fresh air spilled in. Honeysuckle and asphalt. The small and safe I had picked on purpose. I inhaled until my lungs ached.
I needed space.
Not from him, exactly, though part of me knew that was the truest truth.
Space from the way my body answered his before my brain caught up.
Space from the danger I had watched him wield like a tool and a weapon.
Space from the knock at his door that ended with blood on his knuckles and my pulse caught in my throat.
The thought formed slow, then sharp. I had to leave Charleston. Just for a little while.
My mind went first to Mom, and my back prickled. Moving under her roof would turn me inside out. She would know too much without me saying a word.
Then to Stephen. He was barely keeping himself together. Whatever “bug” he had was carving hollows under his eyes. He didn’t need me underfoot while he fought whatever that was.
That left Dad.
Richard Rogers had left Charleston a few years ago, right after the twins graduated from high school.
He and Mom had kept the marriage together for us.
They’d made the holidays look whole. They’d showed up at football games and choir nights.
They’d kept Sunday dinner like a sacrament.
Then they’d looked up at the idea of an empty house and faced it, honest. There hadn’t been enough left in common to hold them in the same place.
It wasn’t ugly. No slammed doors. No scorched earth. Two people who had given what they could and decided to step apart before resentment took root. They still came to birthdays. They still sat shoulder to shoulder at Thanksgiving. Divorce had untied them. It hadn’t unraveled us.
Dad had moved to St. Augustine to be near his parents.
My grandparents were in their late seventies and slowing down.
He bought a small cottage two blocks from the beach.
He fixed gutters with his father. He fished at dawn.
He came back to Charleston when he could, but his center of gravity shifted south.
I had always been close to him. He was steady. He taught me to drive a stick in the church parking lot and how to check a tire’s tread with a penny. He’s not dramatic. He loves the quiet way men like him love. By handing you a packed cooler and a flashlight before you know you’ll need both.
If I told him I needed a break, he would open the door. He wouldn’t ask for explanations I couldn’t give.
The thought landed in my chest like a stone and a buoy at once. Heavy, and it held me up.
I could go to St. Augustine for a week. Maybe two. Long enough to find myself again. Or, at least, remember what my own skin felt like when it wasn’t covered in Atticus’s fingerprints.
Fear arrived right behind the plan.
Atticus.
He wouldn’t like it. He’d hear running and not pausing. He would remind me of the money he’d poured into my shop. The net he’d tied so I wouldn’t drown. He had said it came without strings, but I wasn’t so sure that would hold true in practice. Not if I was choosing to walk away from it. From him.
I dropped my face into a pillow and groaned.
How do you tell a man like him that needing time is not rejection? How do you make space when his presence fills every corner of your life?
My phone buzzed on the nightstand. My stomach jumped. Not him.
Alana: You alive?
I stared. She had no idea how loaded the question was.
Barely, I typed, then erased it. Yeah. Home today. Just tired.
The dots appeared, then vanished. She let it sit.
I looked around. Laundry piles. Books stacked on the dresser. A basket with birth charts I hadn’t filed. My life looked like it was already paused. Like I had hit a button without noticing.
I’m not the woman who hits pause. I’m the woman who juggles. Who keeps the balls in the air. Who smiles through exhaustion because people need me.
Except lately, I hadn’t been.
I had been the woman who let a man with calloused hands and blood on his knuckles tell me when to eat and sleep and open my thighs. And I liked it. That was the part that scared me most.
I pulled a suitcase from the closet and dropped it on the bed. The sound startled me. Final. Loud.
I packed slowly. Jeans. Tees. A soft sweater for ocean wind. A swimsuit. Running shoes. Practical clothes. No lingerie. My hand hovered over the ivory set he’d picked. I pulled back. That belonged to him, and I couldn’t bring it to my father’s house.
The more I packed, the lighter my chest felt.
I paused and watered the plants. The leaves lifted like they’d been waiting for an apology. I tossed the cloudy water and washed the glass. I gathered the birth charts and slid them into a file crate. The small acts stitched me back to myself.
By the time the zipper met itself at the top of the suitcase, fear crept back in.
What if he came by tonight? What if he called and I didn’t answer? What if he walked into The Nesting Place tomorrow and Mei said, “She’s gone to Florida,” and I wasn’t there to explain?
He could be furious. When he was furious, the air bent.
I paced the room, hands tight at my sides.
What was the alternative? Stay until I couldn’t tell my heartbeat from his? Wait until I looked in the mirror and saw only his reflection?
No. I needed this.
I called the shop first. Mei picked up on the first ring, voice calm like a lake.
“Hey, it’s me,” I said.
“Hey, boss,” she said, and I wanted to hug her through the line. “Everything’s good. You sound … far away.”
“I’m here,” I said. “But I’m going to Florida for a few days.”
A beat. “Good.”
“You don’t even know why.”
“I don’t need to,” she said. “When do you leave?”
“Today. Or tomorrow, if I chicken out.”
“You won’t chicken out,” she said. “Do you want me to tell customers anything if they ask?”
“Tell them I’m with family,” I said. True. “And that I’m reachable by text if a crisis hits.”
“I’ll cover,” she said. “Go breathe.”
I swallowed. “Thank you.”
I texted Reese. Taking a short break. Can you keep covering if anything pops? Shop has the schedule.
She sent three hearts and a thumbs up and a Go ”
I wrote Stephen a message and stared at it.
Going to see Dad for a few days. Don’t freak out.
I added a second line. How are you feeling?
I didn’t hit send. If I told him before I told Atticus, it would turn into a whole thing.
I saved it in drafts. It felt like cheating on honesty, and I let it sit, anyway.
I called Dad.
He picked up on the second ring. “Hey, kiddo.”
“Hey,” I said. “Can I come down for a little while?”
“Of course,” he said like I had asked him if water was wet. “You want the back room or the front?”
“The back,” I said, picturing the small window that looked out on the oak with the noisy squirrel.
“Sheets are clean,” he said. “I can put fresh lemons in the basket if you want lemonade. Your granddad will insist on taking you to Matanzas Fish House the first night. He’s been talking about their key lime pie for three days.”
I laughed, surprised by the sound. “That sounds perfect.”
He didn’t ask why. He didn’t ask when I would arrive. He said, “Text me when you hit the bridge,” and, “Drive safe,” and, “I love you,” in that order.
“I love you, too,” I said. The ache in my chest loosened another notch.
I set the phone down and looked around my house. The suitcase was ready.
I went downstairs and did small things. Took out the trash. Wiped the counter. Tucked the spare key under the blue planter. Checked the locks twice. It felt like packing up a version of myself and promising to return.
I should tell Atticus. I should send a text now, while my courage held. I typed. I need a few days. Going to my dad’s. I’m safe. I watched the blinking cursor like it could give me a sign. I didn’t hit send.
Coward. Self-protective. Both.
On my way to the door, I stopped at the hall table.
There was a framed photo there of all of us on the beach the summer before the twins left for college.
Mom and Dad stood shoulder to shoulder, her hand hooked into his elbow.
Stephen had his arms around the twins from behind, their faces lit with that cocky energy of boys who were about to fly the nest. Darla stood beside me, her hair whipped across her cheek by the wind, laughing at something no one else had caught.
I had my hand thrown up like I had just gotten away with something.
We were all squinting into the sun. It was a good picture.
I traced the edge of the frame. Dad’s parents had been in St. Augustine when they’d taken that picture.
Healthy then. Slowing now. I could already feel the weight of my grandmother’s hug, thin and strong.
I could hear my grandfather’s laugh, the one that crinkled his whole face. The thought steadied me.
At the door, I hesitated, just for a moment. My suitcase waited. My phone sat in my palm like a live thing. I pictured Atticus’s name lighting the screen. I pictured the shape my mouth would make when I told him. I pictured the shape his mouth would make when he heard it.
Enough.
I wheeled the suitcase out to the car, then loaded the trunk and got in. For a long minute, I didn’t move. My pulse beat so loud it drowned the hum of the air conditioner.
“I need this,” I said out loud, because sometimes you have to hear it.
The words didn’t erase the fear. They steadied my hands enough to put the car in drive.
I merged onto the highway and watched the city unspool in the rearview. My house was behind me. The shop would open without me. The river would keep moving.
Maybe Atticus would be angry. Maybe he would understand. Maybe he would do both.
The road stretched long and straight. I rolled the window down a few inches and let the warm air slap my cheek. Finally, my breath started to even out.