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I don’t get to force my explanation on her before she’s ready. That’s not my decision. And boy, is that a motherfucker.

Instead, I keep my hands steady and finish the tattoo.

Same as I’ve been doing for the last week or however long it’s been. I’ve lost track of time; the days seem to run together. Needless to say she didn’t show up to her tattoo appointment. I haven’t canceled it because technically she hasn’t either. I have instructed Frankie to push it to the next Saturday if she no-shows, holding a spot for her, just in case.

When my client leaves—happy, wrapped, and paid up—I return to my workstation and stare at that fucking chair. The chair where this whole thing started. Where we met for her lotus sleeve, and later, the moth.

I will never forget the day I pulled up the back of her shirt and saw those scars. Part of me went soft that day—in a way I didn’t understand for a long while. It wasn’t that I turned weak at the sight of them, but that was the moment I became acutely aware of her. She lingered in my thoughts. I noticed more. She was funny, overly regimented, put together on the outside, but soon I saw the way she was scratching to break free of the box she’d constructed around herself.

But it started with the scars. One look at the damage left on her and I decided right then and there she needed protection. Maybe it’s because my wiring was soldered together in foster homes, long nights, and hours spent in closets that I did what I did. Those experiences taught me that safety is something you build yourself—a place where you can keep your back to the wall.

I mastered the ability to monitor, anticipate, intervene, fix, because no one was coming to save me. When the system fails you often enough, you eventually stop being surprised and start getting ahead of it. People are temporary—conditional.

Somewhere along the way, protection and control became tangled together until I could no longer tell where one ended and the other began. It kept me safe for a long time. It also put a hole in her wall.

Frankie sets a coffee on my workstation without saying a word.

“Thank you,” I mutter, picking up the warm paper cup and letting the hot liquid burn my tongue.

She must see the bags under my eyes. Anna stole my ability to sleep when she left.

I repaired everything. Went back to her place when I knew she was at Rhys and Micky’s. I patched the wall permanently, replaced the wood panel and matched the stain. The old me would have done it as a temporary gesture, a strategic placeholder until my next impulse took control. However, this time I’m actually trying to determine the difference between protecting and stalking. I struggle knowing how to do one without the other, but it helps that I no longer have to worry about her abusers coming back.

Logan folds his arms on the partial wall dividing our workstations. “Are you spiraling?”

“No,” I answer with a sigh.

“Are you lying?”

“Yes.”

He hums his understanding. “Keep doing whatever it is you’re doing. Don’t chase her.”

I laugh at the cosmic joke of becoming self-aware only after I’ve terrified the woman I was trying to keep safe. The path I chose led me straight into . . . well, a fucking wall. I want her to understand that what I did came from a place of fear and love. Right idea, wrong execution.

She also needs to know that there will always be some part of me that operates that way. I can’t change who I am or undo what I did, I can only become a man who doesn’t do it again—and I’ll do that for her. Before everything came out, she felt safe with me. Earning her trust was magical to witness, and in that assurance she softened, and made me softer too. However, now I’m too soft and don’t know how to act without her. I’m just . . . waiting. Unfortunately, I don’t know if I’m waiting for her to come back, or waiting for me to let go.

He patched it.

The hole is gone as if it was never there to begin with. I would have thought I’d imagined the entire thing if it weren’t for the faint smell of wood stain left behind. He was here. I slowly slip my bag off my shoulder and set it on the floor, keeping my eyes glued to the repaired panel. After a week staying and working from Rhys and Micky’s place, it was time to face the music.

I approach the wall, running my fingertips over his work. He even put up a new nail for me to hang my mirror on—which is leaning up against the bed where I left it, though this time the glass is normal. It appears he’s fixed that too.

There’s a note taped to the front and even the sight of his handwriting has my stomach flipping in a way I’ve missed.

Anna—

I only came to fix what I broke. I’m sorry.

—Casper

After hanging the mirror back on the nail, I reach to tear the note off but stop myself. I frown at my name scrawled in ink.

Not Duchess . . . Anna.

I don’t like it.

I crack open one of my bedroom windows, even though the cold December air rushes in like sharp knives. It lifts the curtains and wraps me in a chill. I stand there and bear it, letting it suck out the stale air, wood stain fumes, and bad memories.