Chapter 3 Mira
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Mira
My hand checked my left eye before I was fully awake.
Habit. The first thing I did every morning for six months, making sure the brown contact was still in place, that I was still invisible. But this time, my fingers came back empty.
My stomach bottomed out. The lens was gone. Probably lost during the chaos last night, or maybe it had finally given up after being irritated by smoke and tears and whatever else I’d put it through.
Either way, six months of careful anonymity had just walked out the door.
I pushed out of the thin inn bed, Solomon’s jacket still wrapped around my shoulders, and padded to the bathroom. The disaster in the mirror was worse than I’d feared.
One brown eye and another ocean blue. Heterochromia. The feature that made me memorable when my entire survival strategy depended on being forgettable.
And my hair, God, my hair. It was so much more than a bad hair day.
The dark dye I reapplied religiously every three weeks had faded overnight, courtesy of maybe the inn’s shampoo and whatever stress did to hair follicles. Copper-red roots crept down in streaks of rust, bleeding through the dark brown until I looked patchy and half-finished.
Hudson always said my coloring made me easy to spot.
“You’re built to be found, Mira.”
I gripped the sink until my knuckles ached.
The disguise was gone and same went for my quiet life. The shop, the apartment, the savings I’d hidden in a coffee can because I was apparently an idiot who didn’t trust banks.
All I had left was a dead phone someone had plugged in to charge, no wallet, borrowed scrubs from the hospital, and a firefighter’s jacket that smelled of their scents.
I pulled the jacket tighter and told myself I was just cold.
Movement outside caught my eye. I crossed to the window and pulled back the thin curtain just enough to see the street below.
The freckled one. Percy.
He was sitting on a bench across the street with a coffee cup in one hand and a paperback in the other. Not even pretending to hide. When he caught me looking, he straightened up and pointed at himself, then made a walking motion with two fingers, circling them around.
Patrol, he mouthed, then pointed down the street and back again.
Right. Patrol. Because firefighters definitely patrolled small-town streets at seven in the morning with paperbacks and lattes.
I raised an eyebrow.
He shrugged, grinned, and waved. Actually waved, as if this was normal.
Maybe it was normal here.
Small towns were different. Neighbors checked on neighbors.
People brought casseroles when bad things happened and asked too many questions at the grocery store.
Maybe this was just what firefighters did after pulling someone from a burning building.
Followed up, made sure the victim didn’t have a breakdown in her cheap inn room.
Or maybe he was keeping watch because he knew danger was still out there.
That thought should have unsettled me more than it did.
Against my better judgment, I waved back.
His grin got bigger. He held up the coffee cup in a salute and went back to his book.
I should have been annoyed. Should have marched downstairs and told him to leave, that I didn’t need a babysitter, that I’d been taking care of myself for six months without three strange men deciding I required supervision.
Instead, I stood at the window watching him read and felt something loosen in my chest.
He wasn’t crowding me. Wasn’t demanding anything or banging on my door insisting I let him in. He was just there, close enough to help if I needed it, far enough to give me space.
And the part of me that had spent months jumping at shadows, checking locks before bed, sleeping with a knife under my pillow? That part of me finally exhaled.
Having him out there felt safe. I didn’t trust it. But I couldn’t deny it either.
When was the last time someone had given me space while still making me feel protected?
My phone buzzed on the nightstand. I’d forgotten they’d charged it. The screen showed a text.
Unknown Number: Coffee’s getting cold. Want me to bring one up? Two sugars, right?
I stared at the message. How the hell did he know how I took my coffee?
Before I could spiral too far down that rabbit hole, sirens split the morning quiet.
I looked out the window in time to see Percy leap off the bench, phone pressed to his ear, his whole body going tense. Another text followed.
Unknown Number: Sorry, there’s a big fire emergency but I’ll be quick. Sol will come here in a bit, okay?
He looked up at my window the same time I lifted my gaze and mouthed two words.
‘Stay here.’
I sighed and gave him a thumbs up.
It wasn’t like it was his responsibility or I could stop him selfishly.
Percy gave me his boyish smile then he was running toward the firehouse, coffee abandoned on the bench. Big emergency, huh? How odd.
Since this is a small town, I bet every firefighter in town converges on the same location. I wonder if he can even afford to switch with Solomon and why they are going out of their way just for me.
The street emptied as the sirens faded into the distance.
I told myself I wasn’t disappointed he’d left.
So to take my mind off it, I spent the next fifteen minutes trying to figure out my next move.
Another town or another name. Maybe a new life built from nothing. The thought exhausted me before I’d even started. I had no money and no ID. I couldn’t even afford a bus ticket out of here.
Minutes passed and the street stayed empty.
I was just convincing myself to stop staring out the window when I heard it.
Footsteps in the hallway. Slow, deliberate.
They stopped outside my door.
My blood turned to ice.
A knock. But it was not a polite knock. Instead, it was loudly demanding.
“Mira.”
I knew that voice.
I’d heard it in my nightmares for two years. I’d heard it whisper terrible things while his hands did worse. I’d heard it say my name a thousand different ways, and not one of them had ever sounded close to love.
“I know you’re in there.” Hudson’s voice was calm. The voice he used in public, the one that made people think I was crazy when I tried to tell them what he was really like. “I can wait all day, baby. Or you can open the door and we can have a conversation as adults.”
The handle jiggled but the lock held.
For now.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit!
I backed away from the door, my brain cycling through options at a speed that felt too slow and too fast at the same time.
Window.
I crossed the room in three steps and grabbed the frame, yanking upward. It didn’t budge. I tried again, putting my whole weight into it, and the wood groaned but held fast. Painted shut or warped from age.
Or just my shit luck continuing its winning streak.
Come on, please!
A shoulder slammed against the door behind me, the bang echoing through the room. I yanked harder at the window, fingernails scraping against the frame, and it moved maybe half an inch before sticking again.
Another slam. The wood around the lock began to splinter.
I pulled until my arms burned, until my shoulders screamed, and the window gave me nothing.
The door exploded inward. Hudson filled the doorway, exactly as I remembered him. Handsome in that bland, forgettable way that made people trust him.
The kind of man who knew how to hurt you without leaving visible marks.
“There you are.” He smiled, and my stomach turned. “I’ve missed you.”
I grabbed the nearest thing to me and threw it.
The lamp caught him in the shoulder as he ducked, ceramic shattering against the doorframe, and his expression shifted. The mask cracked and the monster looked out.
“That wasn’t very smart.” He stepped through the broken ceramic, glass crunching under his shoes. “Really, sweetie, stop making me the bad guy. You know what happens when you fight.”
Yeah. I knew. I had the scars mapped across my body to prove exactly what happened.
But I wasn’t the same woman who’d learned those lessons. I had built a life without him. Months of sleeping alone and making my own choices and remembering who I was before he spent two years teaching me to be small.
That woman would have frozen. Would have gone limp and quiet and waited for it to be over.
This woman? This woman was fucking furious.
I grabbed the chair from the corner and swung it between us, keeping the bed as a barrier. Not much of a weapon, but enough to slow him down.
“You think that’s going to stop me?” He laughed, but he didn’t lunge. He was circling, looking for an opening, the way he always did. “Put it down, Mira. You’re embarrassing yourself.”
“Come any closer and I’ll break it over your head.”
“And then what? You think you can outrun me? Outfight me?” He shook his head, all false disappointment. “We both know how this ends. It always ends the same way. You fight, you lose, and then you apologize for making me do it.”
My phone was on the nightstand. Three feet away. If I could get to it, if I could just buy myself thirty seconds...
I threw the chair at him.
He cursed, arms coming up to block, and I lunged for the phone. My fingers closed around it just as he shoved the chair aside, and I was already dialing.
It rang once.
“Mira.” Solomon’s voice.
“He found me.” The words came out in a rush. “Hudson. He’s here. I need-”
Hudson grabbed the phone from my hand and hurled it against the wall. It shattered into pieces.
“Who the fuck did you call?” He advanced on me, and I grabbed the TV remote, the ice bucket, anything I could throw. “Those firefighters? You think they can help you? You think anyone can help you?”
I threw the ice bucket. He batted it aside.
“When I’m done with you-”
Then we both heard it.
An engine screaming closer, tires screeching against asphalt, car doors slamming.
Hudson’s head snapped toward the window. I watched the calculation happen behind his eyes. The way he weighed his options, measured the distance, did the math on whether he could finish what he started before they got here.