Chapter 7 #3
"Don't thank me yet. You have forty-eight hours until I walk through that front door for the safety check. And thirty days until the social study begins. If there’s anything—anything—that doesn't look right, my hands will be tied."
She stepped closer, lowering her voice so it wouldn't carry.
"And there’s something else. Off the record. Todd has been calling our office three times a day. He’s the one who tipped off his lawyer about the date of your marriage license. He’s been… persistent."
The relief in my chest curdled, turning sharp and cold. I turned to Liam without thinking, the words catching as they came.
“He’s watching us.”
My gaze stayed on him a beat too long. The fear slipped through before I could rein it in—old and instinctive, the kind my stepfather had trained into me long before I was old enough to understand what it meant.
"He’s doing more than that. He's trying to find the cracks," Sandra warned. "Be careful. Men like him don't stop just because a judge gives a temporary order. They escalate when they feel they’re losing control."
She nodded once to Liam, then turned and walked back toward the courthouse, leaving her warning hanging in the air like a storm cloud.
I watched her go, the brief hope in my chest already souring. We didn't just have to pass an inspection; we had to win a war against a man who knew exactly where to twist the knife.
Liam’s hand was still on my back. His thumb shifted, brushing the fabric of my coat, a quiet reminder of where I was.
“Hey.” A pause, gentle but alert. “Hey. You okay?”
“No.” The word came out bare, unguarded—rare for me.
I lifted my eyes to his, a sick, exposed feeling settling in as the admission hung between us.
The ranch felt a hundred miles away, and we had less than two days to turn it into a fortress.
“We have forty-eight hours to make it look like I didn't just move my life into your spare room yesterday. Let's go home.”
The word slipped out before I could stop it.
Home.
Dinner that night was quieter than usual.
Mia had been waiting on the porch when we pulled up, her whole body tense with questions she was too afraid to ask.
I'd told her the basics while Liam started cooking.
We won. For now. The judge was letting her stay, but she was sending a caseworker to the ranch in two days to make sure the house was safe.
Mia had nodded, her face carefully blank, and retreated to her room until dinner was ready.
We sat at the kitchen table, the three of us, pushing food around our plates. Liam had cooked pasta—Mia’s favorite, though he didn’t know that. He’d chosen it because it was easy, because it didn’t ask for much.
Mia ate anyway. Quiet, careful, but she finished most of it. That felt like something.
The silence wasn't uncomfortable, exactly, but it was heavy with the deadline hanging over our heads.
"Was he there?" Mia asked suddenly. She didn't look up from her plate. "Todd?"
I hesitated. Liam's eyes found mine across the table, steady and encouraging.
“Yeah.” I kept my eyes on my plate. “He was there.”
Mia’s fork scraped against the plate. Her shoulders drew in, chin dipping as if she were bracing for the answer. She didn’t look up. "Did he say anything?"
"Nothing that matters."
She looked up then, her dark eyes sharp. "That means he did."
I didn't know how to lie to her. I'd never been good at it, and she'd always been too smart to believe me anyway.
"He's trying to get in my head," I drew a breath, steadying it before continuing. "That's what he does. But it doesn't matter what he says. The judge ruled in our favor. That's what counts."
Mia was quiet for a moment. Then, so softly I almost missed it: "He used to do that to Mom too. Say things. Get in her head. Make her think everything was her fault."
My chest ached. I reached across the table, and this time, Mia didn't pull away. Her hand was small in mine, her fingers cold.
“I’m not Mom.” The words came out steady, anchored there between us. “And you’re not going back to him. Ever.”
I tightened my grip just a fraction.
“I promise.”
"She's right."
Liam's voice was steady, quiet, but it carried weight. We both looked at him. He'd set down his fork, his full attention on Mia.
"I know you don't know me very well yet. And I know this whole situation is strange. But I want you to know something."
Mia watched him, wary—but listening.
“This is your home now,” he spoke without rushing, like he was giving her room to follow.
“Yours and Riley’s. And as long as you’re here, no one is going to hurt either of you.
Not Todd. Not anyone.” He held her gaze, not flinching, not looking away.
“I don’t make promises I can’t keep. So when I tell you that you’re safe here, I mean it. ”
The kitchen fell quiet.
Mia studied him with the same careful scrutiny she gave everything that mattered—eyes narrowed just enough, breathing held, like she was testing the space for hidden traps. I recognized that look. I’d worn it myself for years.
She searched his face for the crack, the hesitation, the place the promise would unravel.
She didn’t find it.
“Okay.” The word came out small, tentative. Barely more than a breath. But it was something.
Liam nodded, then cleared his throat. “Now. Who wants ice cream? I’ve got rocky road in the freezer.”
Mia blinked at the sudden shift. “You have ice cream?”
“I have a lot of things. The pantry’s basically a survivalist bunker. My grandmother was convinced the apocalypse was coming and we’d need to live off canned goods and frozen desserts.”
“That’s weird.”
“She was a weird lady. Very lovable, but weird.” He stood, heading for the freezer. “Three bowls?”
Mia looked at me.
I nodded.
“Okay.” Mia’s eyes flicked between us. Then she nodded too. “Three bowls.”
It wasn’t much. A small moment of normalcy in a day that had been anything but. But watching Liam scoop ice cream into a bowl—watching the corners of Mia’s mouth twitch, those almost-smiles she reserved for moments that felt safe enough not to cost her later—I felt something loosen in my chest.
He’d meant what he said. I could see it in the way he’d looked at her, the way he’d spoken without hesitation. This wasn’t part of the arrangement. This wasn’t for the court or the caseworker or anyone else.
He’d promised to keep us safe because he wanted to.
I didn’t fully understand that. Had never learned to. Most people who’d claimed they cared had only ever taught me how much it hurt to believe them.
I didn’t know what to do with that anymore. Didn’t know how to fit it into the careful boxes I’d built for this relationship. Business arrangement. Temporary solution. Nothing more.
The labels still existed. They just didn’t hold the way they used to. What sat between us now wasn’t cold or distant. And that unsettled me more than if it had been.
But watching him hand Mia a bowl of ice cream, I felt it shift.
She took it from him without hesitation.
No flinch. No calculation. Just acceptance—quiet, tentative, and startling in its simplicity.
Something close to trust. Something she’d never really been given.
Her childhood hadn’t left room for it. Innocence had been taken early, replaced by vigilance and loss.
The careful categories I’d built began to blur at the edges.
Business arrangement. Temporary solution. Nothing more.
Maybe we could do this. Maybe we could make it work.
If nothing else, we could play the part well enough.
At least for a little while.
The ranch was silent when my phone buzzed at 2 AM.
I'd been asleep, or something close to it. Drifting in that half-conscious space where dreams blurred with reality and every sound seemed amplified. The vibration sliced through the quiet, and I was awake at once, heart slamming, hand groping for the nightstand.
Unknown number. No caller ID.
I knew who it was before I answered. Knew, and answered anyway, some part of me still the sixteen-year-old who flinched at his footsteps in the hallway, who'd learned that ignoring Todd only made things worse.
“Hello?” My voice came out low and cautious, barely more than a test.
Silence on the other end. Then breathing, slow and deliberate. And underneath it, the faint clink of ice in a glass.
"Riley." Todd’s voice oozed through the line—thick, slurred, soaked in alcohol and something darker. Satisfaction. The kind that came from believing he’d already won."Did you really think I wouldn't figure it out?"
My blood went cold. Not metaphorical—actual cold, flooding my limbs, stealing heat from my hands. The room tilted and, for a split second, I wasn’t in my bed anymore.
I was back in the kitchen. Linoleum biting into my knees.
My mother’s breath caught between sobs she wouldn’t finish.
His shadow moving first, the hit coming after—always after—like punctuation.
The smell of whiskey and metal. The rule I learned early: don’t cry too loud.
Don’t move too fast. Don’t give him anything he could enjoy.
The memory snapped shut as fast as it opened.
I swallowed, forcing air into lungs that had forgotten the rhythm, the phone slick in my grip as if it might slip free.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” My voice came out steady, flatter than I felt, the way you speak when you’re trying not to give anything away.
"Don't play dumb with me." A laugh, harsh and humorless. "I know what you're doing. The marriage, the ranch, the whole happy family act. It's fake. All of it."
My breath locked halfway in. My chest tightened until it hurt, ribs pressing inward like they were trying to collapse.
The room seemed to contract, walls inching closer, the ceiling lowering, air thinning with every second I stood there frozen.
My legs went weak, useless, the old instinct screaming don’t move, don’t provoke, don’t let him hear you breathe.
There was nowhere to run. Not from his voice. Not from the fear that had learned my body better than I ever had.
"You're drunk," I forced the words out evenly, clamping down on the tremor before it could surface. "You don't know anything."
"I know enough." Another clink of ice. A long swallow. "I've been watching, Riley. Paying attention. And something about this whole thing doesn't add up. You don't look at him like a woman looks at a man she loves. You look at him like a business partner."
The tremor finally reached my hand. I pressed it hard against my thigh, knuckles whitening, trying to pin it in place. My pulse thudded there, loud and traitorous, as if my body were answering him before I could.
"You're seeing what you want to see."My words stayed level and controlled—the way they always did when I was bracing for impact.
"Am I?" He laughed again. "Maybe. Or maybe I'm seeing the truth. And sooner or later, I'm going to prove it."
"Mia isn't yours." The words came out sharp, hard. "She was never yours."
"I'm going to prove it, Riley." His voice dropped, turning cold and flat. “I'm going to prove your marriage is a fraud."
The line went dead—abrupt, final.
I stood there in the dark, phone clenched in my hand, fear crawling up my spine like something alive. The house was too quiet. The shadows in the corners seemed to be watching, waiting.
But Todd had always been good at that.
At watching instead of rushing. At finding the soft places no one else noticed.
He didn’t want Mia because he loved her.
He wanted control. Money. The satisfaction of reclaiming something he believed had been stolen from him when I escaped at eighteen.
He fought in ways that looked reasonable on paper and rotten in real life—late-night calls, legal motions, smiles in court, threats whispered where no one could hear them.
He knew how to hurt without leaving marks, how to bend the system until it did the damage for him.
And the worst part was this: he was patient.
If he dug long enough. If he found the right person to talk to. If he convinced the court that our marriage was exactly what it had started as—
He wouldn’t stop.
Not until there was nothing left to take.
If I lost Mia, I’d lose everything. Loving her wasn’t optional—she was a child, my beloved sister. I had to keep her out of his hands. Had to.
The phone stayed dark in my palm, the screen gone black. All I’d heard was drunk rambling. Empty threats.
That's all it was.
That's all it could be.
I'd promised Mia I would protect her. Promised myself I would never let Todd touch her again.
But sitting in the dark, his threats still ringing in my ears, the promise and the fear pulled at me in opposite directions. One voice demands I stand firm. The other whispering all the ways I could fail. I wondered if I’d sworn to something I couldn’t actually hold together.
I wondered if everything I touched really did turn to ash.