48. Esperr
ESPERR
Istare at the sign. That little chalkboard Jessi puts out every morning with the daily special written in her handwriting that leans too far to the right.
It’s the same sign that’s always been there, and the coffee shop is the same, so there’s no reason for me to be sitting in the truck, dreading walking through that door.
I blow out a breath, biting the inside of my cheek.
“You don’t have to go in,” Zyran starts.
“I do.”
“Esperr—”
“I do,” I snap, hating that irritation curling around inside me. “I’m… I’m not letting him take this from me too.”
Zyran doesn’t say anything to that, and I appreciate it because there’s nothing to say.
I’m not sure what’s come over me in the last two days; maybe it’s the fact that I’ve been around his family, that I’ve had this feeling that I’m safe.
I mean this job, the coffee shop, that stupid chalkboard sign—it’s mine, and I’m not going to sit outside it in a truck because I’m scared.
Michael doesn’t get to win, not this time.
I unbuckle and reach for the door handle, with Zyran reaching over to stop me.
“I’ll be here when you get off, okay?”
I look at him for a second.
“I’m just going to go to your apartment and grab the rest of your stuff, okay? I’ll be back.”
I let out a breath that I hadn’t realized I was holding. The idea that Zyran will be close by brings a peace of mind that I didn’t know I needed, but hearing him say it, I find myself nodding.
“I love you,” Zyran tells me.
I smile, looking at him for a second before I lean forward and kiss him, letting that be my answer because right now it’s the only thing I can give him.
Climbing out of the truck, I walk towards the door and knock twice, waiting for Eli to come open it for me. While I stand there, I do my best not to think about why I haven’t been able to say it back, not right now, not standing on this sidewalk and having to go through an entire shift.
But I already know why.
The last time I said those words out loud, I was twenty, and my father was looking at me across the basement, and I whispered those words because I didn’t know if I was ever going to get another chance.
And I didn’t.
I haven’t been able to say it since. Not to Oliver, not to anyone. And those words just sit in my chest like something too fragile to move.
Zyran understands. Or at least I hoped he would.
Thankfully, Eli comes around the corner then and unlocks the door, letting me slip inside.
“Morning,” he mutters, shutting the door and locking it.
“Morning,” I say back, moving towards the counter.
Taking my jacket off, I shove it into the cubby before I glance out the window just as Zyran slowly drives off. I take another breath and begin moving on autopilot, checking inventory, rearranging cups, and grabbing more espresso beans.
I feel Eli watching me as I move through the front.
And while I’ve felt it before, this quality of attention sits differently than just someone being in the same room.
I’ve always chalked it up to something uncomfortable but manageable, the kind of thing you brush off because the alternative is making it a bigger deal than it is.
For some reason, today I can’t brush it off.
“Boyfriend drop you off again?”
I glance up from the grinder for a split second. “Hmm.”
He’s quiet for a moment and then leans against the wall. “He seems protective.”
Something prickles at the back of my neck, but I shove it down.
“He is.”
Turning around, I start moving the syrup around, seeing which ones are almost out, and making a mental note to grab our most popular ones.
Just when I think he’s gone back to the kitchen, Eli clears his throat. “You seem distracted today.”
“I’m just trying to get things organized before we open.”
“Sure.” He sets his empty cup down on the counter next to me. “Can I get another one?”
I bite my cheek and take the cup without meeting his eyes and start making it. I’m not sure why he couldn’t just make it himself since he’s clearly done it, but I shut my mouth and just do it. Maybe then he’ll go away.
“You know,” he starts quietly. And I feel him lean forward slightly against the counter, close enough that it crosses a line that’s hard to name but easy enough to feel. “You never told me why your parents named you Esperr.”
My hands don’t stop moving, continuing to wipe down the counter, but I can feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand. Keep your hands busy and your face neutral; breathe. I remind myself.
He said my parents, and while that’s perfectly normal to ask, it felt oddly specific, almost deliberate.
“It’s just a name,” I mutter.
“Unusual though.” He tilts his head slightly, like the way someone does when they already know the answer and are just watching you squirm. “Not a lot of Esperr’s walking around.”
“I guess my parents liked standing out.” I move his coffee towards him, refusing to hand it to him outright.
“Hmm,” he hums, picking it up before taking a sip and then setting it down. I can feel his eyes on me even when I’m not looking at him. “Were they creative people?”
The cold starts in my chest and moves outward slowly until it has an iron grip on me, and I feel myself starting to shake.
He’s not fishing; it’s like he already knows.
I take a deep breath and then look at him, really look, past the face that I’ve been serving coffee to for a year and a half.
Something happens in my brain that I can’t stop—my eyes find his, and the rest of his face falls away because faces can be changed and voices can be changed and mannerisms can be learned. But eyes, those never change.
And I know those eyes.
I’ve spent years trying to forget those years.
My mouth goes dry, and everything in me screams to run, to scream bloody murder and to?—
“Excuse me,” I say, my voice somehow steady, though that’s not how I feel at all inside. Every single thing my mother ever taught me about not showing fear holds itself. “I need to check on Jessi.”
He smiles, and though it’s not the same, it is in a way.
“She’s a little tied up.” The smile doesn’t reach his eyes.
And it never did. I know that now. I've been watching him smile at me across this counter for so long, and I've been reading it as ordinary, but it was never that; it was always this—patient and certain, waiting for the perfect moment.
I was never regular to him.
I was his obsession.
“Where is she?” I ask, keeping my voice flat. The reminder of my mothers’s voice in my head: ‘Don’t give them the fear; the fear is the only thing they really want from you.’
“She’s safe for now,” he says. “But that depends on you.”
He straightens up from the counter, and the easy casualness of him drops away, and what's underneath it is something I recognized from the basement three years ago.
“You changed your face.”
“I did.” He looks almost pleased that I noticed. “It took a while, but it was worth it.” He tilts his head, rolling it. “You’ve gotten better at hiding. I’ll give you that.”
“Three years,” I find myself whispering.
“Three years,” he agrees. “You’re faster than I expected.” Something moves through his expression, and I have the strong urge to smack it. “But not fast enough.”
I look at the door behind him, wondering how quick I can be to run there. Even if I have to throw myself at the glass. I just need to get away from him.
Michael—Eli—he steps sideways, not fast or in a threatening way, somehow. But it’s just enough to put himself between me and the exit, easy and unhurried, like he’s planned this.
I look at him and he looks back.
“You know what I thought about,” he starts, moving around the counter slowly. As he steps forward, I step back. “Every single day for three years?”
I don’t answer.
“You. Just you.”
I bite on my lower lip to stop myself from crying out.
“I think about the way you looked at me when you said no.” He tilts his head, fingers tracing over the counter. “Do you remember that?”
“I do,” I mutter.
“I don’t think you understood what you were saying no to.
” He takes another slow step toward me, and I stop moving, refusing to move anymore and give him that fear he wants.
“I could’ve given you everything. I would’ve.
” Something shifts in his expression, something that might’ve been genuine once and is now curling into something else entirely. “I just needed you to see that.”
“So what, you killed my parents!” I snapped.
He stops, jaw ticking.
“Your father was going to take you away from me,” he growls. The once casual tone drops. “I couldn’t let that happen.”
“He was protecting me!” I really need to shut my mouth.
“From me!” He shouts like it’s absurd, like the concept doesn’t compute. “He was protecting you from me, like I was something to be protected from.” His jaw tightens. “After everything.”
I look at him standing there in the fluorescent light, and I think about my father tied to that table, his eyes begging me to look away so I didn’t watch this monster torture him and kill him.
And while I’ve been angry the entire time, I also had this fear inside me, scared that he was going to find me.
But now all I feel is this rage.
It’s not burning the way I always imagined rage would be.
This is cold, bone-deep, and certain, like the kind that has been building for years—it’s in the nightmares and in every city I unpacked a bag in and told myself I was safe in when I wasn’t.
Every morning I ran because I needed to outrun something I couldn’t name out loud.
This is what I was outrunning.
Him.
And I hate him.
I have hated a lot of things in my life, but nothing like this—nothing with this weight. The kind that lives in my chest that almost feels like a second heartbeat. It’s steady and permanent, and it’s something I’ve carried for so long that it’s become part of who I am now.
He took my mother.
He took my father.
He took three years of my life and every city I could’ve stayed in and every relationship I kept at arm’s length because I was afraid of exactly this moment.
“Where’s Jessi?” I hissed.
He waves his hand like she’s an inconvenience.
“She’s not your concern right now.”
I hold my ground, refusing to back down. “She is absolutely my concern?—”
“Oh… Melody.”
Everything stops.
The rage, the focus, the careful and calculated calm that I’ve maintained since the moment I recognized his eyes. All of it just drops away, and I’m left standing there with nothing between me and that name.
Melody.
I haven’t heard that name in three years. Not since Oliver sat across from me in a diner in a city I don’t live in anymore and slid a new ID across the table and said you’re Esperr Davis now. Whoever Melody was, she’s gone; leave her in the past.
And I did.
I left her in that basement on the East Coast; I left her on the kitchen floor watching her mother fall, bleeding out.
I left her in every city I passed through on the way to becoming someone harder, someone faster, someone who packed a bag and kept it under floorboards and built walls so solid most people didn’t even know they were there.
Melody was the girl who had her family ripped away from her.
Esperr was the girl who survived it.
And hearing him say ‘Melody’ in that voice, like he has any right to it, like it belongs to him—it does something to me that I hate. My knees feel wrong; my chest caves slightly. Three years of Esperr Davis and one word from his mouth and suddenly I’m twenty again on the floor of a basement?—
“Don’t—don’t call me that.” I grit out through clenched teeth.
Michael—Eli—he smiles at the way my voice comes out. It’s quieter than I wanted it to be, and I hate that he heard it, that he heard the crack in it. For a fraction of a second, Melody surfaced before Esperr could pull her back—and he noticed.
“But why? That’s your name.”
“No, it’s not. It’s Esperr.”
“Melody, you can’t just change your name and think I’ll go away. You can’t run away from what you are. What we are.”
“There is no us!” I scream, unable to stop the outburst.
“There has always been us!” He yells, his voice bouncing off the walls.
And whatever patience he’s been performing for the last few minutes just—runs out. I see it happening, the mask dropping, and underneath it is the same thing that was in the basement. The flat-out hunger with nothing reasonable beneath it.
I know what’s coming before his body moves.
Darting around him, I barely miss his outstretched hand before I’m at the door, ready to throw my body against the glass.
But I’m too slow, and he snakes a hand around my throat, stopping me—I open my mouth screaming, hoping someone will hear me, anyone.
It’s useless.
My head goes flying into the wall?—