Chapter 4 #2
I tightened my grip, willing the trembling to stop through sheer force of the stubbornness that had gotten me through a marine biology PhD, two grant collapses, and six years of Callan Ward.
It mostly worked.
I forced my shoulders back, lifted the cup to my lips, and kept my face neutral. Around me, the breakroom continued its ordinary morning business—the coffee maker gurgling, someone’s microwave counting down, the low whir of the ventilation system doing its thankless job.
Everything is normal. Everything is fine.
Except that the woman’s scream was still there, living somewhere at the back of my brain where I couldn’t reach it. And the cold thing that had taken up residence in my chest hadn’t moved, hadn’t warmed, hadn’t been reasoned with by any of the very reasonable things I’d just said.
“It’s fake,” I told Jason.
I pressed my palm flat against the ceramic and let the warmth travel up through my hand.
I needed everything to be steady: my hands, my voice, my face, the careful, rational architecture of my understanding of the world.
Because if it wasn’t—
I didn’t finish the thought.
I was getting good at that today.
* * *
“It’s fake,” I said again, more to myself this time.
The words dissolved the moment they left my mouth. I took another sip of coffee and stared at the wall—at nothing—while the breakroom bustled around me. The microwave clock blinked 12:00. Normal things. Mundane, ordinary, real things.
I focused on them like anchors.
Because the alternative was still there, lurking just beyond the door I’d slammed on it—patient, silent, waiting for the moment my grip loosened. And I could sense it, like something standing behind you in a dark hallway.
My hand tightened around the cup.
Fake.
Staged lighting. Clever editing. What spread across the internet like a fever and burned itself out in forty-eight hours, forgotten before the next grotesque thing crawled up to take its place.
That’s all it was.
That’s all it was.
I almost believed it.
* * *
Somehow, blessedly, I made it through the rest of the day without Crank-Ass saying a single word to me.
Not one passive-aggressive sigh. Not one comment about protocol. Not even a disappointed head shake in my direction.
It threw me off, honestly. Like walking down stairs in the dark and missing a step—that lurching, stomach-dropping moment before your foot hits solid ground.
I saw him, of course. You couldn’t really avoid Callan in a building this size, no matter how much you wanted to.
He moved through the back corridors the way he always did, checking gauges, adjusting valves, existing with that quiet and territorial energy that made every room seem slightly smaller than it actually was.
But he never stopped me. Never looked at me long enough for it to become anything.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was avoiding me.
Fine. More than fine.
The rest of my day folded itself into work, and I let it.
Routine checks. The tasks that asked nothing of you except your hands and minimum attention, and I gave them both gratefully.
The video clawed at the edges of my thoughts a few times—surfacing without warning.
There were always other things to take its place, always another reading to take and another number to log.
By the time the closing announcements drifted softly through the building and the overhead lights dimmed to their low evening setting, I’d convinced myself I was fine.
Almost.
I grabbed my bag from my locker and put on my jacket, the familiar weight of exhaustion settling in.
The aquarium at night was different. Quieter deliberately, almost earned.
The tanks glowed softly in the dimness, casting their slow, blue-green light across empty hallways that had been loud and crowded with visitors just hours before.
Fish drifted in their slow, endless circles, utterly unbothered.
No deadlines. No difficult coworkers. No videos that burrowed into the back of your brain and refused to leave.
Lucky bastards.
I pushed through the side door and the night air hit me—cool and damp, carrying a smell of fresh earth that only comes after rain. The parking lot was nearly empty now, just a handful of cars scattered under the overhead lights, their reflections in the puddles left behind on the pavement.
I stood there for a moment, not quite ready to move. Not for any real reason, just tired in the way that goes deeper than sleep can fix, the kind that sits behind your eyes. The kind that makes the drive home almost like one more thing you have to get through before you’re allowed to stop.
I exhaled slowly, watching my breath curl and disappear in the cold air.
Then I found my keys, and I walked to my car.
I slid into the driver’s seat and shut the door; the silence was immediate.
For a moment, I just sat there.
My fingers hovered over the ignition, then retreated to my lap.
Part of me wanted to start the car and drive somewhere—anywhere—that wasn’t home.
The other part knew exactly what waited for me there: the conversation I’d been rehearsing for weeks.
The one that might end everything. Maybe I should wait another day.
Maybe tomorrow I’d be braver, more certain.
No…I’d decided. Tonight.
Peter and I had been together for almost four years.
Four years.
And somewhere along the way, we’d stopped being real and started being convenient—predictable, safe in the worst possible way—though sometimes, in the quiet moments when his hand would find mine during a movie, or when I’d catch him watching me with that old softness in his expression, I’d wonder if I was making a mistake.
If the problem wasn’t him at all, but me.
To be fair to Peter, sex for me had never really been the emotional experience other people described.
I’d never experienced that connection that women talked about—that closeness that was supposed to make you feel less alone.
I’d lie awake sometimes, staring at the ceiling while he slept beside me, wondering if something was wrong with me, if I were missing that fundamental thing that everyone else had simply been born with.
The years passed, and that emotion didn’t go away.
It grew. And with Peter, it had stopped being emptiness and started being closer to erasure.
When he touched me now, it had nothing to do with us.
It was about him, as if it had always been about him.
I rested my forehead against the steering wheel and closed my eyes.
I knew what I wanted. I wasn’t confused about that, at least. I wanted intensity.
I wanted to feel wanted badly enough that it showed, physically, unmistakably.
I wanted rough hands and the focus that made you the only thing in the room.
I wanted to be claimed—not used. There’s a difference, and it mattered, and Peter had never understood that.
What we had now wasn’t any of that.
His needs. His timing. His release.
One-sided. Detached. Mechanical, it made me feel worse afterward than before, like I’d given so much and gotten nothing back except the reminder that I didn’t really factor into the equation.
I was done with it.
Done pretending it didn’t bother me.
Done pretending I didn’t deserve better.
I lifted my head and started the car.
Tonight, we were going to talk. Really talk. No deflecting, no letting him change the subject, no telling myself it wasn’t worth the fight.
Because I couldn’t keep living like this—half present, half satisfied, half seen.
I was so tired of only being half of anything.