1. JAMIE #2
He unfolds from the driver's seat—and that's the only word for it, unfolds, because he just keeps coming.
Taller than I remembered. Broader. The uniform does things I'm not prepared to process right now: shoulders that span what feels like half the truck's width, chest straining the fabric, sleeves rolled up over forearms that could probably bench-press me without breaking a sweat.
My brain hiccups. Stalls out completely.
I met him once. Last year, courthouse wedding, forty-five minutes of polite small talk while my mother signed papers that would make this man my stepfather for exactly six months before she decided marriage wasn't for her after all.
I remember thinking he was tall. I remember shaking his hand—his palm swallowed mine whole—and mumbling something about nice to meet you.
I did not account for this.
Dark hair. Blue eyes that find mine across the parking lot and hold. A jaw that looks like it was carved with a straight edge and a grudge. He moves toward me with the unhurried confidence of someone who's never had to worry about taking up space, and my mouth goes dry.
This is wrong. This reaction is wrong on multiple levels, starting with the fact that he's forty-one to my twenty and ending with the fact that he's technically my stepfather even if the marriage lasted less time than most people's New Year's resolutions.
Also, I just got rescued from a predator. My body should not be doing the thing it's currently doing, which is noticing the way his uniform fits across his chest and wondering—very briefly, very inappropriately—what those hands would feel like on?—
Stop.
I shove the thought down so hard it might hit the earth's core.
Then I see Greg.
He's standing near the dorm entrance. Twenty feet away, arms crossed, watching. His beady eyes narrow as Jackson gets closer.
Jackson sees him too, and he must have seen the way I stare at Greg. His gaze cuts sideways, locks on, and something in his expression goes very still. He lifts an eyebrow at me, a silent question, and I nod once.
Yes, that's the guy.
Jackson walks past Greg. Doesn't stop. Doesn't slow. But as he passes, his voice drops—low enough that only the three of us hear it.
"I'll get you someday, you piece of shit. You won't get away with this."
Greg's face goes white. Then red. Then he's puffing up, voice pitching loud enough to carry across the parking lot.
"Are you threatening me? Right in my school? I should press charges!"
Jackson doesn't respond. Doesn't even look back. Just keeps walking toward me, and the corner of his mouth tips up. Not a smile. Something sharper. Colder. The expression of a man who means exactly what he said and isn't worried about the timeline.
He reaches me. Picks up my bag with one hand.
His other hand settles on my lower back.
The touch is warm. Steady. His palm covers the entire small of my back, fingers splayed, and I exhale. A real breath—the first one I've taken in days that doesn't catch halfway.
Greg touched me there. Weeks ago, passing behind my station, his hand landing possessive and wrong. My body locked up, froze, tried to disappear inside itself.
Jackson's hand is in the same place. My body leans into it.
We walk to the truck. He opens the passenger door, and I climb in. The door closes behind me, solid and final.
Greg is on the other side of the glass now. Getting smaller.
The truck cab smells clean. Not cologne—just the plain scent of laundry detergent and leather seats and something unnameable that registers as safe in the back of my brain.
Jackson slides into the driver's seat. Starts the engine. We pull out of the lot, and I watch the school shrink in the side mirror until it disappears behind a strip mall.
"You okay?"
His voice is low. Unhurried. Like we have all the time in the world for this conversation, even though we've known each other for a cumulative total of maybe an hour across my entire life.
I look out the window. Trees scroll past, then houses, then a stoplight where we pause before turning onto a wider street.
"I am now."
Silence settles between us. Not awkward—just quiet. He drives with one hand on the wheel, the other resting on the console between us. No radio. No small talk. Just the hum of tires on asphalt and the occasional click of the turn signal.
I watch his hands on the wheel. Big enough that his fingers wrap three-quarters of the way around. Capable. Steady. No tension in them, no white-knuckled grip. Just control.
"I've got a spare bedroom. It's yours."
The words land gentle, but they're not a question.
"No—I can't just move into your apartment. I'll figure something out. I just needed you to pick me up." I mean it. Already running numbers in my head: what's in my account, whether a weekly motel rate is feasible, how long I can stretch my savings if I eat ramen and nothing else.
"That guy looked at you like you were his next meal and he's starving. I'm not letting him get anywhere near you."
It's not aggressive. Not heated. Just final. A statement of fact, like gravity exists and water's wet and Greg Dickson doesn't get to touch me again.
The protest I was building dies in my throat. Because he's right. And I'm tired. And for once—maybe the first time in two years—someone else is handling it.
The apartment is clean. Sparse. Two chairs at a small kitchen table, a couch facing a TV, nothing on the walls. This is a man who lives alone and hasn't bothered to pretend otherwise.
My pastry-brain catalogs the kitchen first—basic but functional, decent pots and pans visible through the glass cabinet doors, enough counter space to work with.
"Make yourself at home," Jackson says, setting my bag down just inside the bedroom door. "Kitchen's fair game. Bathroom's across the hall. Your bedroom is the one with the open door."
I nod. Try to smile. Try to look like a normal person who's graciously accepting help, not a disaster masquerading as a human being.
Then the pain hits.
It's been building for hours. I skipped my pump window because I refused to stay at that school one second longer, even if it meant suffering later. Clenched my jaw in the truck, breathed through it, told myself I'd handle it once we got here.
My body is done waiting.
The pressure doubles me over. Sharp, radiating, like someone's inflating my breasts from the inside and forgot to install a release valve.
The skin stretches too tight, hypersensitive to the fabric of my bra, and moving makes it worse—each breath a spike, each shift of my shoulders a fresh wave of agony.
"What's wrong?"
"Where's the bathroom?"
He points. I move—not running, because I will not run in front of him, but fast enough that my vision blurs at the edges.
The bathroom door closes behind me. Lock clicks.
I peel off my shirt. Look down.
The engorgement is bad. Worse than I thought. My breasts are swollen, hard, hot to the touch. Veins visible beneath the skin like some kind of roadmap to hell. Touching them sends pain shooting through my chest.
The pump is in my bag. In the living room. If I walk back out there half-dressed and leaking, I have to explain this to a man I barely know, and the humiliation of that might actually kill me.
I try manually expressing. Cup my hands underneath, press, angle, try to find the right pressure. Milk comes in drops. Pathetic, slow drops when I need a flow.
My hands are too small. Can't get the right leverage, can't cover enough surface area. I adjust my grip, try again. More drops. Not enough.
Tears start. Silent ones that I swipe away with my shoulder because my hands are occupied. The fluorescent light overhead is too bright, and everything about this is wrong. Standing topless in my stepfather's bathroom, crying, trying to milk myself like livestock.
I keep trying. Milk drips into the sink. The pain doesn't ease.
I press harder. Readjust my angle. My fingers slip on damp skin, wrists aching from the awkward position, and the tears keep coming because I can't stop them any more than I can stop the milk that won't flow fast enough.