Page 16 of Priest

I shrug. “I think so.”

She studies me, not invasive, just attentive. “You don’t feel like someone running anymore.”

I smile faintly. “Good. I wasn’t.”

Not exactly.

Running is fear making the choice for you.

I had fear. Of course I did. I still do sometimes, when the apartment gets too quiet or a bike passes close enough for my body to lie to me.

But I didn’t leave Priest because I was afraid to be alone.

I left because I remembered how.

Men before him had liked the idea of my job until my job took something from them.

They liked telling people they were dating a doctor. They liked the pride of it, the shine. Then reality walked in wearing blood on my shoes. Missed dinners. Canceled plans. Nights when I came home too tired to be soft for anyone. Calls I had to answer because someone else’s emergency mattered more than their ego.

They called me strong until my strength inconvenienced them.

After a while, I stopped explaining. I stopped giving men pieces of my life they could turn into ammunition later.

Then Priest happened.

Priest, with his club and his rules and that voice that made every bad idea sound like a dare.

A biker president with command in his blood and violence sitting easy in his hands? I knew exactly what kind of man I thought he would be.

So when he told me the limits, I heard space.

I heard room to breathe. Room to work. Room to want him without handing over the life I’d fought so hard to build.

At first, his rules felt like freedom.

I could take what he offered and still belong to myself when I left.

For a while, that was enough.

Then he started changing things.

He started reaching for me in ways his own rules were never supposed to allow. His bed stopped feeling temporary because he stopped letting me leave it so easily. He texted when there was no reason to text, then held me after like letting go had started costing him something.

I didn’t ask him for more.

He made more feel possible.

I had known the rules and accepted them. Lived inside them without complaint. I asked for nothing he said he couldn’t give and took no space he wasn’t ready to share.

But I’d outgrown the container.

Not because I wanted too much.

Because he kept filling it with things he refused to name.

That was his doing, not mine.

Rules I could live with.