Chapter 18 #2
Hoodie. Cap. The uniform of nothing to see here. I keep my head down through the loading dock past diesel and busted pallets. Security offers the side door with a look. I take the same hallway as everyone else because hiding is its own headline.
Outside, the air bites. The drive home is muscle memory—red to green to red, city stacked like blocks. The radio stays off. A billboard flashes our logo and a brand I’m supposed to thank; my jaw clicks and resets. I breathe through it.
Home is lit the way someone kind leaves it—foyer dimmer set to mercy. My shoes thump down; the house exhales. Her shampoo catches me in the hallway before the corner—clean, eucalyptus, something floral I can’t name—and my balance shifts six inches left like the floor moved.
She’s on my couch. Legs tucked under. Hoodie sleeves shoved to her elbows. Blanket thrown wrong like she tried to be still and couldn’t. Damp hair. Smaller than usual and somehow untouchable. The TV is on mute, a panel of men with opinions mouthing brEAKING like the word does anything.
Her eyes find me and search for damage the camera missed. I start to apologize and she kills it with one shake of her head.
“How bad?” she asks.
“Bad enough.” I take the far cushion because I promised myself not to crowd her. The space between us is exactly the width of a coffee table and a lawsuit. It feels obscene.
Her gaze drops to my split lip, the angry red across my knuckles. A small wince. “Did it help?”
“No.” Copper on my tongue. “Made me want to do worse.”
The quiet knows both of us. The vent hums a baseline under my ribs. Then she reaches across the wreckage of the night and sets her hand on mine—small, warm, decisive. No speech. Just physics: two bodies sharing a load.
Noise dials down like someone found the right switch. Breath goes in without scraping on the way out. Her palm is smooth, mine raw; for once the math balances.
“I’m here,” she says. Not a promise. Not a threat. A pin on the map so I don’t get lost. “Breathe with me.”
So I do. Count to her silent beats. Match her lungs the way I match a line-mate’s stride. The room stays small and good. The world can have its chyron. I have this. For the first time since the faceoff, my jaw unclenches and stays that way.
Her thumb strokes my bruised knuckles once—
—and color drains out of her face so fast I feel the room tilt.
“Riley?” My voice is too loud in the soft room. Her pupils flare, focus slipping like a camera trying to find a subject in low light.
“I—” She swallows. One hand flies to her stomach, palm pressing just below her ribs like she can hold something steady from the outside. “I need a minute,” she whispers, already standing.
The blanket slides off her lap, a slow wave onto the floor. I’m up without meaning to be, hands half-raised like I’m spotting a lifter. She shakes her head—don’t—and I freeze. We said space. I don’t know what kind of help she needs. I’m suddenly terrified of choosing wrong.
The hallway is eight steps; it looks like a mile. She takes two brisk and sure, the third shorter, the fourth a misstep that kisses the baseboard with her sock. A small sound scrapes out of her, like breath dragged over sand. The metronome I built from her hand on mine shatters.
“Easy,” I say—to her, to me, I don’t know. “Hey—Riley.”
She doesn’t look back. The bathroom light flips on—bright, clinical, punching a white square into our dim room. She palms the doorframe like the bench after a dizzy skate. Her other hand stays at her belly, fingers spread, protective without permission.
Everything not important falls out of my head. The game, the fines, the headlines—they drop clean away. What’s left is heat under my ribs that isn’t anger anymore; it’s older and meaner and wants to carry.
“I’m fine,” she says through a breath that isn’t. “I just—give me a minute.”
I stop two steps short of the light, like there’s a line taped on the floor I’m not allowed to cross. “I’m right here.” My heart is a fist in my throat. “Tell me what you need.”
She nods, small and fierce, and disappears into the white. The door doesn’t slam; it clicks, polite as a doctor’s pen. The fan hums up a soothing lie. I stand in the not-quite hallway with my hands useless and listen to the sounds I can and can’t hear.
Water runs. Stops. The fan drones. My breath gets too loud; I clamp my teeth, taste blood, unclamp—because clamping never fixed anything and my body is a slow learner.
The badge scanner’s red light. The way she went quiet over coffee. The envelope in her locker I don’t know about but somehow do, because nights like this don’t travel alone. Dots connect without permission into a shape that makes my knees feel hollow.
“Riley?” I try again, softer, knuckles skimming paint without knocking. “Talk to me.”
A beat. Another. Silence with content.
Then a small, raw sound breaks it—guttural, undeniable—and the edge of the world goes thin.
The lock turns. The door stays closed.
My heartbeat spikes so hard I have to put a palm to the wall to stay upright.