Chapter 8
Nova
I wake up and don’t know where I am.
Ceiling. Why is there a ceiling. Why is it so dark. And the smell. It’s wrong—clean, not damp, not concrete, not the alley.
Then it comes back. The house. The men. The way I couldn’t think straight, couldn’t stand straight, couldn’t do anything except retreat to this room and press my back against the door until my hands stopped shaking.
I don’t remember falling asleep.
That bothers me. I don’t sleep like that. Not in new places, not around strangers, not when I don’t know the exits or the locks or who might be listening. I lie awake for hours, days sometimes, until exhaustion drags me under against my will.
But I closed my eyes and then it was dark and now I’m awake and I don’t know how much time I lost.
The clock on the dresser says 3:17.
The house is quiet. Not silent—there’s the hum of something electrical, the faint tick of pipes cooling, the weight of a building settling into itself. But no footsteps. No voices. No movement.
My stomach cramps.
Four days. Almost five now. The smell from the kitchen earlier nearly dropped me, and I stood there refusing water like it was poison while my body screamed at me to take it, take anything, stop being so fucking stubborn—
Whenever you want it, there’s always food in the fridge.
That’s what he said. Rane. The one who called me beautiful and then turned red and told everyone else to shut up.
I lie there and listen to the house breathe.
They said I could. They said any time. That’s not stealing. That’s not owing anyone anything. They offered and I’m just… taking them up on it. Late. When no one’s watching.
That’s not weird.
That’s fine.
I sit up slowly. My feet find the floor without sound. I’m still in the gray clothes they gave me at processing—I never changed, never even looked at the dresser to see if there was anything else. Why would there be, I don’t belong no matter what their system says.
The door doesn’t creak when I open it. I checked earlier, before I—before I fell asleep. Old habit. Know your exits, know your sounds, know what gives you away.
The hallway is dark. I keep one hand on the wall and move slowly, placing each foot before I shift my weight. The kitchen is at the end, past the living room where they were all sitting, watching me like I was something fragile and dangerous at the same time.
The living room is empty now. Just shapes in the dark—couch, chairs, the window where Kyron with those blue eyes stood and smirked when I couldn’t stop staring.
I don’t think about that.
The kitchen is darker than the hallway, but there’s a light over the stove that someone left on, dim and orange. Enough to see by. I stop just inside the doorway and listen again.
Nothing.
The refrigerator is large and silver and hums quietly in the corner. I cross to it. Wrap my fingers around the handle. Hesitate.
This is fine. They said I could.
I open it.
The light inside is bright enough to make me squint. Shelves of food—real food, more than I’ve seen in one place in months. Containers and bottles and things wrapped in foil and—
My name.
There’s a plate covered in foil with a piece of tape on top, and someone wrote my name on it in black marker.
Nova.
I stare at it.
I don’t know what to do with this. Someone made me a plate. Someone covered it and labeled it and put it in the fridge for me to find, and I don’t know who or why or what they expect in return. My mom used to…
My hands are shaking again.
I take the plate. Close the fridge. Stand there in the dim orange light holding food with my name on it and trying to remember how to breathe.
The bathroom. I can eat in the bathroom. Door locks, no windows, easy to clean up if I need to, and if someone wakes up I’m just—I’m in the bathroom. That’s normal. That’s not suspicious.
I move before I can talk myself out of it.
The bathroom is down the hall from my room. I passed it earlier. Small, clean, tile floor. I close the door behind me and lock it. Flip on the light. Sit down on the floor with my back against the tub.
The foil comes off easily. Underneath: roasted vegetables, bread, a piece of chicken. It’s cold but it doesn’t matter. Nothing has mattered less in my entire life than the temperature of this food.
I eat slowly.
Small bites. Chew until there’s nothing left to chew. Swallow. Wait. Listen.
Another bite.
My stomach cramps around the first few bites, angry and confused after so long with nothing.
I breathe through it. I’ve done this before—reintroducing food after a long stretch.
You can’t rush it. You take what your body can handle and you stop before you’re full and you don’t throw up, because throwing up wastes food and food is—
I stop that thought. I’m not in the alley. I’m not scrounging. There’s a whole refrigerator twenty feet away and apparently people in this house make plates with my name on them.
I don’t know what to do with that.
I eat half the plate and make myself stop. Wrap the rest back up. I’ll figure out what to do with it later—hide it in my room, maybe, or put it back in the fridge, or—
The door opens.
The door opens. I thought I locked—
I freeze. Fork still in my hand, plate in my lap, caught in the bright bathroom light like an animal on the road.
Rane stands in the doorway.
He’s wearing a t-shirt and shorts and his hair is messed up from sleep and he freezes too, one hand still on the door, eyes going wide as he takes in the scene—me on the floor, the plate, the foil, my face.
One second. Two.
I can’t move. Can’t speak. Can’t do anything except sit here and wait for whatever comes next.
His expression shifts. The surprise fades into something else that I don’t understand. He doesn’t look at the plate again. Doesn’t look at how I’m sitting on the bathroom floor at 3am eating in secret like a feral animal.
“Sorry,” he says. Quiet. “Didn’t know anyone was in here.”
I still can’t speak.
He nods once. “Take your time.”
Then he steps back and closes the door behind him.
I sit there for a long moment, heart pounding, waiting for the knock, the questions, the check-in to make sure I’m okay. Waiting for him to tell someone, to make it into something, to turn this into a conversation I don’t know how to have.
Nothing.
Footsteps moving away. A door closing somewhere else in the house.
That’s it.
I look down at the plate in my lap. Half-eaten, my name still on the foil in black marker.
He saw. He knows. And he just… left.
I don’t know why that makes it worse.
I get up, rinse the fork and head back to the kitchen. I open the fridge and shove the plate toward the back where it’s not the first thing someone sees. I shut the door and stand there in the dark for a second, listening.
Nothing.
I go back to my room, closing the door behind me.
As I lay down, I realize I keep waiting to feel something—shame, maybe, or anger, or the sick twist of being caught doing something wrong. But all I feel is the food settling in my stomach for the first time in days.
He didn’t make it into anything.
He just let me have it.
I stare at the ceiling and know that I still won’t sleep, but this time it’s not because I’m scared.
I don’t know what it is.