1. The Good Girl #2
"Morning, sunshine." Matt was already behind the bar, taking inventory with the same methodical precision he brought to everything. He was fifty-three, built like a retired boxer, with hands that could crack walnuts and eyes that had seen too much. "Coffee's fresh."
"You're a saint." I poured myself a cup, adding the exact amount of cream Nathan had taught me to like. "What's the count looking like?"
"Short on the rye, overstocked on the gin. Someone ordered wrong last month."
"That was me."
"I know." He gave me a look that was half exasperation, half affection. "I'm just giving you shit. You've been distracted lately."
"Happy," I corrected. "There's a difference."
"Is there?" He set down his clipboard. "You've got that look. The one you had when you first started here, like you were waiting for the other shoe to drop."
"I don't know what you mean."
"I mean you're still sleeping with a knife under your pillow."
I didn't deny it. "Old habits."
"Old habits don't make you flinch when someone says your name." He leaned against the bar, studying me with those sharp eyes. "Something's eating at you. You want to talk about it, or you want to count bottles in silence?"
"Bottles."
"Fair enough."
We worked through the morning inventory together, the comfortable silence broken only by the clink of glass and the scratch of Matt's pencil.
He'd been in the military once—Special Forces, though he never talked about it—and then he'd done something else, something that had left him with scars he didn't explain and a tolerance for violence that had made him my first real ally.
I'd asked him once, early on, why he didn't turn me in. Why he let me use his basement for things that would have sent most people running for the police.
"I've seen what monsters look like," he'd said. "You're not one. You're just someone who learned to fight back."
I'd cried after that conversation. The first real tears I'd shed since Gabriel had abandoned me, and the first time I'd understood that kindness didn't have to come with a price tag.
"You're doing it again," Matt said.
"Doing what?"
"Going somewhere else in your head." He set down a bottle of bourbon with a decisive thunk. "That's the third time this morning. You want to tell me what's really going on?"
I hesitated. Matt knew about Gabriel—the broad strokes, at least. He knew I'd been conditioned, knew I'd escaped, knew Nathan had helped me rebuild.
But he didn't know about the pills. Didn't know about the strange dreams that had started creeping into my sleep, dreams where I was back in the pink room and Gabriel's voice was telling me things I couldn't quite remember when I woke.
"Have you ever had a feeling that something was wrong," I said slowly, "but you couldn't figure out what?"
"All the time. Occupational hazard."
"This is different. It's like..." I searched for the right words. "Like I'm forgetting something important. Something I should remember, but every time I reach for it, it slips away."
Matt was quiet for a moment. "You think it's related to what happened to you?"
"I don't know. Maybe." I traced the rim of my coffee cup with one finger. "Nathan says it's just my brain healing. That flashbacks are normal."
"Nathan's not a doctor."
"He was FBI. He knows about trauma."
"He knows about interrogation," Matt corrected. "There's a difference."
The words hung in the air between us. I wanted to argue, but something stopped me. Matt had never liked Nathan—not actively, but there was a wariness in the way he watched us together, a reserve he didn't show with anyone else.
"You don't trust him," I said.
"I didn't say that."
"You didn't have to." I set down my cup. "He saved me, Matt. When I was at my lowest, he found me and he helped me and he never asked for anything in return."
"Nobody does anything for nothing."
"He loves me."
"Maybe." Matt picked up his clipboard again. "But I've been around long enough to know that love looks different on different people. Just... be careful, Bunny. You've been through enough. Don't let someone else write your story for you."
I wanted to be angry at him. Wanted to defend Nathan, to list all the ways he'd proven himself, to point out that Matt didn't know what it was like to be broken so thoroughly that you forgot how to be human.
But the strange pill in my medicine cabinet sat in the back of my mind like a splinter, and I couldn't quite find the words.
"I should finish the inventory," I said instead.
"Sure." Matt turned back to his work, and I knew the conversation was over. But his words followed me through the rest of the morning, a shadow I couldn't shake. Don't let someone else write your story for you.
Nathan picked me up at noon, right on schedule. He'd changed into a grey sweater that made his eyes look like forest shadows, and he kissed me hello with the easy familiarity of someone who'd been doing it for years instead of months.
"Good shift?"
"Uneventful." I buckled my seatbelt, watching the city slide past as he pulled into traffic. "Matt thinks I'm distracted."
"Are you?"
"I don't think so." I paused. "Do you think I'm different? Since the flashbacks started?"
His hands tightened on the steering wheel, just slightly. "Different how?"
"More... uncertain. Like I used to be sure of things, and now I'm not."
"The healing process isn't linear." He reached over and took my hand, his thumb stroking across my knuckles. "You've been through something most people can't imagine. It's going to take time to feel like yourself again."
"But what if I don't know who 'myself' is?"
He glanced at me, and I caught something flickering in his expression—too fast to name. "Then we figure it out together. That's what partners do."
Partners. The word settled into my chest like a stone dropping into still water.
I'd spent so long being owned—first by Gabriel, then by my own desperate need to survive—that the idea of partnership still felt foreign.
But Nathan made it feel possible. He'd shown me that two people could be equals, could choose each other without losing themselves in the process.
"Thank you," I said quietly.
"For what?"
"For being patient. For not giving up on me when I'm... complicated."
He lifted my hand to his lips and kissed my palm. "You're not complicated. You're healing. There's a difference."
Back at the apartment, I started dinner while Nathan took a shower.
The rhythm of cooking—chopping vegetables, seasoning meat, stirring sauces—had become one of my favorite rituals.
Gabriel had never let me cook; meals had been provided through slots in the door, carefully calibrated for nutritional content and psychological impact.
But Nathan had given me a kitchen and told me to make whatever I wanted.
I'd burned the first three meals. The fourth had been edible. By the sixth, I'd started to understand that food could be an expression of care instead of a reward for compliance.
Tonight's menu was coq au vin—complicated enough to be interesting, familiar enough that I wouldn't ruin it. I was browning the chicken when Nathan emerged from the bedroom, his hair still damp, wearing the same soft pants he'd had on that morning.
"Smells amazing." He came up behind me, his hands finding my waist. "What did I do to deserve you?"
"You saved my life," I said, and meant it.
"I didn't save you. I just... helped you find the door." His lips brushed my ear. "You walked through it yourself."
I turned in his arms, the wooden spoon still in my hand. "Can I ask you something?"
"Anything."
"When you found me—at the bar, that first day—how did you know where to look?"
His expression didn't change, but I felt his hands tighten slightly on my waist. "I told you. I'd been tracking the Institute for months. Your case came across my desk."
"But how did you know I'd be at The Lost Hours? Out of all the bars in the city, all the places I could have gone..."
"Lucky guess." He kissed my forehead and stepped back. "I'm going to set the table. Don't let the chicken burn."
I watched him walk away, and the strange pill in my medicine cabinet felt heavier than it should. Lucky guess. That wasn't like Nathan. He didn't do lucky guesses. He did careful research, meticulous planning, the kind of preparation that left nothing to chance.
But I was being paranoid. Gabriel had made me that way—always looking for the trap underneath the kindness, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Nathan had never given me a reason to doubt him. He'd been patient, gentle, everything I'd never known a man could be.
The chicken sizzled in the pan, and I turned back to the stove, pushing my doubts aside. Nathan loved me. He was going to marry me. We were building a life together, and I wasn't going to let Gabriel's ghost ruin it.
Don't let someone else write your story for you.
But what if they already had? What if the story I'd been telling myself—the rescue, the healing, the happily-ever-after—was just another script, written by someone else's hand?
I added the wine to the pan and watched it bubble. Tomorrow I'd throw away that strange pill and forget I'd ever found it. Tomorrow I'd go back to being Nathan's good girl, his equal partner, the woman he was going to marry.
Dinner was perfect. The coq au vin came out exactly right, and Nathan had seconds and then thirds, praising me between bites.
We talked about the future—the wedding, the honeymoon, the house we'd buy somewhere quiet where I could garden and he could write his memoirs.
It was a beautiful fantasy, and I wrapped myself in it like a blanket against the cold.
Afterward, we made love in the bedroom with the curtains open, the city lights painting silver patterns on our skin.
He was gentle at first, reverent almost, his hands mapping my body like territory he'd already claimed but never stopped appreciating.
When he entered me, it was with a sigh that might have been relief or might have been homecoming.
"I love you," he said against my mouth. "I love you so much it scares me."
"I love you too." And I did. That was the terrible thing. Whatever doubts I had, whatever cracks were forming in the story I'd told myself, I loved him completely.
When he came, he buried his face in my neck and whispered my name like a prayer. And I held him through it, my perfect partner, my rescuer, the man who'd shown me that love didn't have to hurt.
After he fell asleep, I lay awake watching the ceiling. My body ached pleasantly, my skin still warm from his touch. This should be enough, I told myself. This should be everything.
But the strange pill sat in the back of the medicine cabinet like a secret waiting to be told, and the lullaby I'd been humming all day was one I couldn't quite place.
Somewhere in the dark, something was waiting. Something I should remember. Something I was afraid to know.
I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. Tomorrow, I'd be Nathan's good girl again.
Tomorrow, everything would be fine.